Jessica Lea Mayfield and Margaux
Songbyrd, Washington DC
January 27, 2025
Someone could probably do a JD Vance-style think piece about
Jessica Lea Mayfield based solely on the show that I saw at Songbyrd on Monday night.
She, like Vance, is of Appalachian descent via Ohio, grew up the bluegrass community performing spartan haunted folk songs, and now she has embraced something like an ironic trailer trash aesthetic with her gaunt frame covered in tattoos, American eagle and flag artwork, and opioid-addict themes in her lyrics. She took the stage with a three-piece band and her opening music was Kid Rock’s “Bawitdiba” and the Marilyn Manson-produced Orgy cover of New Order’s “Blue Monday.” A very late 1990s white-trash cultural aesthetic and quite a vibe for someone who has done full folk albums, including an excellent Elliott Smith record with an Avett brother.
I did not resonate much with Jessica Lea Mayfield’s set at all, even when I could make out and appreciate the lyrics and her Appalachian-inflected singing. She and her band took a harsh, abrasive approach to metal-influenced 1990s rock, including the critically reviled elements of that era, alongside later garage-rock minimalist purists like White Stripes and Black Keys. The sound mix was almost punishingly harsh and tinny, and her fondness for a canned “eagle cry” audio clip between songs (famously it’s actually a red-tailed hawk call) got grating after a few repetitions. She can shred on guitar and she really can sing, but the visual and sonic effect was almost completely alienating.
I was reminded a bit of a show I saw years ago with EMA, who was similarly playing with tropes of white lower-class culture (albeit without the Appalachia component). EMA’s touchstones aesthetically were NIN and Guns N’ Roses; industrial machine noise and suburban dystopia; I think Mayfield was aiming a bit later and a lot more Southern than that. Mayfield did songs about pills and recriminations and one called “WTF” (for "white trash fighting"). All of it was very tongue in cheek but she and her band are very committed to the bit. Like I said, this could become a JD Vance think piece if I’m not careful.
If it sounds like I hated it all, I didn’t. She did three songs solo, including a few which I had known from her records like “Seein* Starz” and those were great. Even on solo electric guitar and vocals she imbued them with some of the richness and emotion of the recordings, even if it was a bit more jagged and frayed at the edges. But the band set, definitely not my thing.
Opening was the mononymic
Margaux whose set showed a very profound Elliott Smith influence. She’s one of dozens of younger women in music now who clearly took their cues from the closely-mic’ed acoustic guitar and half-whispered singing of the early Elliott records. I was debating with my friend if that singing style is a giveaway for a writer who doesn’t have a strong enough voice to project, or if it’s an aesthetic decision to convey intimacy and physical proximity, like a literal illustration of “bedroom pop.” (The first Soccer Mommy and Beabadoobee and Japanese Breakfast records all sounded like that, before they all became bigger pop artists with more dynamic production.)
Anyway I really liked Margaux, my quibbles about her singing notwithstanding. A lot of her lyrical content was a bit limited, mostly interpersonal relationships and inner monologues, but I liked it a lot overall. I kept thinking that Wes Anderson would find a place for her music in some reflective scene in a movie with a protagonist staring at the ceiling in a perfectly composed if kitschy hotel room.
