[show_avatar email=jess@iwenttoashow.com align=left avatar_size=62] In March, singer-songwriter and Michigan native Jes Kramer spent four days in the Benton Park neighborhood with pals Beth Bombara and Kit Hamon recording her second full-length album in the couple’s home studio (she’s also released a split cassette and an EP). And until now, it has remained there under figurative lock and key, as Hamon mixed and mastered Kramer’s sad, startling, and beautiful sophomore effort.

Entitled Nine, and containing fourteen tracks, Kramer crafts a unique mix of Casio beats and acoustic guitar woven with a voice that plants itself in your head for days. She puts a bright, colorful sheen on the more troubling (and most universal) aspects of intimate relationships, and how those relationships shape our view of ourselves and of our dusty little corners of the world.

Already There

Still in her early 20s, Kramer writes a hell of a lot older than her years, but doesn’t rely on exhaustive metaphor or bitterness to give her songs a certain bite. Instead, on Nine, she moves seamlessly through images of discarded mix CDs, favorite sweaters, natural disasters, and the occasional backhanded biblical reference.

Something

With her bittersweet, reinvented brand of lo-fi folk-pop, Kramer purposefully wades through cold, cold water so that we don’t have to. The result is a collection that, as friend and fellow musician Cassie Morgan explains, contains “lyrics that push you to the edge of the cliff alongside melodies that pull you back.”

Heartbeat

“It didn’t work in St. Louis,” Kramer begins on ‘Wherever You’re Headed Now,’ but with your help…it just might.

You see, Jes is two and a half weeks away from the end of her Kickstarter campaign designed to fund the pressing/production of Nine, and is a mere 300(ish) bucks from being successful. She will be in our city playing a show at Schlafly Tap Room on January 22nd, 2011, with Bombara on the bill as well. Should her Kickstarter succeed, Kramer’s St. Louis concert will provide for us a “local” album release show and a just a fun time all around. Mark your calendars.

Choosing to support a young, DIY talent like Kramer is a leap of faith. The inexplicable spark of excitement that accompanies discovering an artist on the verge is the reward of taking that leap. On ‘Olympia’, another track from the album, she muses, “It seems I can love you/ from any longitude”. And from Michigan to Missouri and anywhere in between, my guess is that you’ll find a place to love Jes Kramer’s Nine.

Put your eyes and ears here: Twitter, Facebook, JK Website, JK Bandcamp.

Put your money here: Kickstarter.