Those with an ear to the musical grindstone can understand an album’s ability to alter their mental state. The more conscious listeners among us may even use these auditory powers to their own devices, blasting bubbly surf rock to make a sunny day sunnier or work the ceaseless riffs of a jam band to fuel their acid trip—because we’re all burning up under the same ball of fire, man.
Music is like a drug, yes, but not just for those on the receiving end. Enter Maryn Jones, an artist daring enough to pour her pain into song with The Offer, an album released just last month from Jones’ work under the solo moniker, Yowler. A noteworthy outcoming from the significant Double Double Whammy collective, The Offer starkly contrasts Jones’ time fronting All Dogs, a Columbus four piece with a pop punk take on mid-’90s nostalgia and her place in Saintseneca, a band mixing stompy folk songs with textured, quirky rock.
Clocking in at less than thirty minutes, these eight tracks slip into your conscious as effortlessly as they’ll leave you. From the album’s opening, “Water,” Jones spins lyrics alongside straightforward guitar stylings and the faintest hint of piano. Such simplicity plays a perfect backdrop for Jones’ voice, her true instrument and easily the album’s greatest highlight. While the All Dogs’ short discography hears Jones’ speaking from a similar perspective of broken romance and twinge of longing, her time with Yowler paints a more mature point of view. Though by no means is it a healed one.
From one track to the next, the shadows are there, as Jones’ eerily layered vocals transform each song into something genuinely haunting. With “7 Towers” Jones waves a flag of troubled outlook, alarming listeners with vulnerability and circling, discordant reverb. It’s a song that opens with darkness, closes with stillness, and resounds long after its hushed close. It’s a song for contemplation.
Slow-burning and rife with fevered longing, Jones’ collection of poetry finds liquidity with fire, as she sings of a dripping bathroom faucet and a storm on the way. Creeping tides, crashing waves, and freezing layers of ice lay a spellbinding foundation for Jones to offer raw hindsight and a warning that love, like water, is something we can’t control.
