Mid-set, between songs, David Mayfield sidled up close to his sister, Jessica Lea, and spoke to the crowd at Seattle’s Chop Suey. “Just so you guys know,” he began, “this girl’s only a wee baby. So, after her set’s she’s gonna get kicked out, only to hang around outside the club.” In the middle of a tour opening for the Annuals, Ohio’s Jessica Lea Mayfield won over a Seattle audience made up entirely of individuals older than she, with arresting performances of material from her debut, With Blasphemy, So Heartfelt.
Entering Chop Suey, my girlfriend’s purse was checked and I was patted down for weapons, this being part of the club’s regular policy following the January 4th shooting death of local rapper 29-E during a hip hop show. I don’t think I’d been patted down since the Ozzfest I’d attended in high school and this evidence of the violent world outside seemed ironic, in that we were there for the often gentle-sounding Mayfield and her songs of teenaged confusion and heartbreak.
R.E.M.’s Peter Buck once said he could imagine nothing more depressing than hearing a middle-aged rocker sing teenage love songs but in the case of Mayfield, she’s the real deal. At 19, not only is she getting some serious attention for herself, getting “Kiss Me Again” worked into prime time television and landing spots on Starbucks compilations, but her Dan Auerbach-produced debut album is a perfect documentation of the ups and downs of romance from the point of view of a confused, emotional teen girl. On “For Today,” Mayfield sings about kissing a boy with her eyes open, staring at the sky. In the chorus, she sings “I could care less about you/I love the sound of you walking away.” Mayfield’s lyrics paint a portrait of a girl desperate for attention, affection, and validation from some boy who “kisses all the girlies that [he] knows,” knowing full well that he’s no good for her. While her material’s not as arch as the Shangri-Las, she has mastered some of the same melodramatic territory.
Mayfield’s vocals draw comparisons to Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval, but there’s a lazy drawl that makes her sound folksy and unpolished. At Chop Suey, dressed in a long dress and black tights, Mayfield played an acoustic guitar and commanded the room to pay silent attention to her spacious, country-tinged folk noir. Her brother alternated between an electric and an upright bass, rocking out as though he were Cliff Burton on the Ride the Lightning tour. Her bleached blonde drummer, Anne Lillis wore a plaid skirt and a black fedora and guitarist Richie Kirkpatrick looked like a young Kinky Friedman in a cowboy hat, Grimace t-shirt and pink pants. The band’s appearance was that of some kooky, ironic alternative dance band yet this is betrayed by a song like “Bible Days,” where Mayfield eschews stern Midwestern Christianity, singing “I don’t want to be tested/by God or anyone else” and “Get thee behind me, Jesus,” the audience quickly realized they were listening to an artist wiser than her years.
Between songs, Mayfield was grateful, if less comfortable than while singing, introducing a gorgeous cover of Buddy Holly’s “Words of Love” with a long endorsement of the recent Valentine’s Day-themed Starbucks collection, Sweethearts. Her set’s highlight was the stormy “I Can’t Lie to You, Love,” as the melancholy poured down in sheets and Kirkpatrick’s stinging solo flashed like lightning. Up until this, he favored atmospheric accents with the help of delay and volume pedals, creating a sound I first mistook for a phantom keyboard player. During the song’s finale, Mayfield climbed atop her brother’s upright, while he played, slamming away at her guitar’s strings and etching an image in my mind of a talent who could be huge in time.
After her set, Mayfield indeed made her way out of Chop Suey, content to stand in front of the door in a long fur coat. Shifting her weight from foot to foot, the smokers and the drunk kids who couldn’t decide where to go next largely ignored her, until Lillis, just as young, appeared alongside her. At that point, two women, looking like they’d been to their fair share of Lilith Fairs, cornered her, telling her about their long drive from Portland to see her tonight. They shuffled on and the two performers then got trapped by a boy who kept repeating, “Wow, you’re HOW old?” Part of me wanted to step over and tell Mayfield that the boy’s bad news. Given her performance, I think she’s learned her lessons by now.
by Chris Middleman
[Photos: Stephanie Moore]
