The Random Hubiak Recommends: Bianca Jazmine

Some new music I hope you will enjoy from an amazing up-and-coming artist (you can click the photo for the video to her single “You’ll Find Love”)

I’ll be heading back into the studio for three separate dates in early April with drummer Paul Galiszewski. We’ll be doing one new song from the in-progressCapital Idea project, half a dozen songs from the in-progress Jabberwalrusproject, and then reworking some of the back catalogue from Memoirs, Endless Street, and Surviving the Joneses for Pandora and Spotify content (and, of course, eventual vinyl reissue!).

Meanwhile, I want to take a little time each week to help promote other indie artists whose work I admire. This week, I want to talk about a wonderful, talented songwriter I met in Harrisburg last month at the Millennium Music Conference.

Her name is Bianca Jazmine. I first met her and her bassist in the merch room on Thursday night before the kickoff, where we were in line to help fill the promotional bags for vendors. What caught me instantly was her quick wit and droll humor, as well as the easy rapport she and her bassist had with each other and with other folks in line whom they’d just met. I wound up sharing a dinner table with her whole band, as well as her father and the core duo of Colorado outfit Trivial Nonsense, and then saw everybody again on Saturday night at a showcase in Enola.

On my drive home, I listened to her debut EP four times and found all four songs on it to be wonderfully crafted pieces of pop in the traditional sense: Catchy, hummable, instantly familiar, and yet full of surprises. This isn’t the pop you hear on the radio or at the gym; this is pop in the sense that ABBA and the Beatles were pop, or that Aimee Mann is pop. There are actual tunes there, excellent ones at that! And the same wit she brought to bear in her conversation is evident in her carefully constructed lyrics: each song is used to tell a meaningful story and often provides psychological insight the belies a wisdom far beyond her twenty years. Instead of the throw-away afterthought lyrics one hears the major labels foist on us through their personality-devoid pop idols droning across the airwaves, Bianca Jazmine gives us what pop music was supposed to be and should be… and could be again if we allowed our popular art to come to us through actual artists such as Bianca Jazmine instead of accountants and marketing focus groups. In fact, if you go to her Reverb Nation page, you’ll hear, in addition to a handful of originals, several covers, including her earliest recording, a cover of Nilsson’s “Without You” that eschews the unnecessary and distracting vocal pyrotechnics that Mariah Carey ruined the song with in the 90s and instead embraces a straightforward reading of the song that renders all of the psychological complexity of the dual moods of the songwriting and original recording — severely repressed emotion in opposition to an explosive inner turmoil — in full relief and in a way that not only honors the original but also would do Harry proud in its confident ownership of the source material.

With that said, you can check out any and all of her various social media below. Plus, the image above the video for her wonderful lead single, “You’ll Find Love.” Bianca Jazmine on Facebook. Bianca Jazmine on Twitter. Bianca Jazmine on Instagram. Bianca Jazmine Official Website. Bianca Jazmine on YouTube.

You can hear the Spotify playlist for my song, “Static,” which includes Bianca’s song, “The Key,” at THIS LINK.

The contents of the playlist are as follows:

The Random Hubiak/Static

Aimee Mann/I’ve Had It

Crowded House/Better Be Home Soon

Foo Fighters/Learn to Fly

Fleetwood Mac/Gypsy

The Cure/Lullaby

Madonna/Frozen

Bianca Jazmine/The Key

The Blue Nile/Stay

Peter Gabriel/Red Rain

Arcade Fire/Wake Up

The New Pornogrpahers/Whiteout Conditions

John Cale/Chinese Envoy

Peter John/Majestic Sun Keep ’a Rising

Eurythnics/17 Again

Crowded House/Together Alone

Rusted Root/Back to the Earth

Passion Pit/Where We Belong

Erasure/Take Me back

Depeche Mode/Waiting for the Night

New Order/Vanishing Point

Annie Lennox/Dark Road

Ásgeir/Dreaming

Suzanne Vega/Pilgrimage

Madonna/Sky Fits heaven

Lindsey Buckingham/D.W. Suite

Dar Wiliams/Mortal City

And you can read about “Static” at this prior blog entry.