Audio By Carbonatix
The American heartland has been unfairly deprived of its share of plainspoken, homegrown frat-dude acoustic-guitar troubadours. Good ones, I mean. Minnesota’s Mason Jennings aims to fix that: On his lovely Use Your Voice, he makes like a Midwestern Jack Johnson, singing simple, tuneful little ditties about lowercase concerns in a sotte voce purr that sounds like he’s talking to you over a cup of coffee. The appeal of his music is in its understated modesty, which doesn’t mean he can’t shine when he wants to–his “Ballad of Paul and Sheila” movingly eulogizes the late Minnesota Senator Wellstone and his wife.
