Rating: NN
Gentle Glaswegian singer/songwriter Jo Mango’s debut disc is layered with all sorts of fancy flutes, fiddles and even a few kalimba trills. They’re like the sonic equivalent of frilly crocheted doilies that, while pretty, only momentarily distract from the fact that the structure they’re covering up is nondescript. Mango writes simple songs with chirpily generic melodies about loving and missing boys, with a reference or two to god thrown in for good measure, delivered in a girlish lilt reminiscent of Edie Brickell but without the boho quirks. If she were framing them in minimal stripped-down acoustic arrangements with restrained flourishes, Mango might be able to pull off a lonesome folkie act. As it stands, the Damien Rice-sized accoutrements create the effect of tiny watercolour paintings on outsized canvases, and the dynamic discrepancy just doesn’t work.
Jo Mango plays the Indie Music Market in Yonge-Dundas Square at 1 pm and the Drake at midnight, both on Saturday (June 10), as part of NXNE.
