Kendall Payne
Jordan’s Sister
Capitol
Major record labels continue to try to figure out why artists like Sleater-Kinney and Ani DiFranco have such loyal followings without a huge publicity machine behind them. They keep trying to find a way to tap that demographic with artists like the Spice Girls, with their “Girl Power” catch phrase, which is a vacant as a Larry Flynt donation to NOW, and Alanis Morissette, who mistook raunch for soul and didn’t understand the concept of irony. Their latest attempt is Kendall Payne, a decent singer who has been making the Lilith Fair rounds and now has a major record deal. Kendall Payne’s Jordan’s Sister is one of those records where you keep wanting the artist to not be doing these songs. The girl has a pretty good voice and writes pretty good songs, but the whole project sounds too calculated. It sounds like they’re trying to make something just for the Lilith Fair demographic. Like Poochie the Dog, it never works. The songs are far too varied, and there doesn’t seem to be a unified voice behind them. A song like “Supermodels,” with it’s juvenile beauty bashing, is far more real to the singer than a song like “On My Bones,” which is too drawn out and emits too much pain and desperation to be believed.
