REVIEW: Prolific Songwriter Jenny Owen Youngs Delivers Two Magical Sets
5/30 @ Caffe Lena, Saratoga
“I found myself amazed at how, with each song, she could wrench the heartstrings and uncover some piece of realness that hides beneath the surface of everything.”
Within only a few minutes of taking my seat at Caffè Lena on Friday night, I learned just how lucky I really was: half the room had driven from Burlington, Vermont to see Jenny Owen Youngs as part of Lena’s “Bright Series,” put on by Kevin and Claudia Bright to showcase nationally acclaimed artists. They had driven three hours to see her; I had driven a mere 25 minutes. Point for Cap Region!
Owen Youngs took the stage just after 8:00 PM, grinning sheepishly and waving hello to the audience that was already at her fingertips as she told them she felt like her mom had emailed ahead to make sure they covered all her accolades in her introduction – her records, her prolific songwriting, and even her Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast, “Buffering The Vampire” (don’t worry, more on that later). She kicked off her first show at Lena with a set full of songs from her 2023 record, Avalanche. I happily watched as the young girl at the table in front of me positively glowed with joy, smiling at her mom, in awe that she was so close to the stage. Ah, the magic of an intimate setting and a charming artist.
As she wove her way through her track “Everglades,” her voice settled into her unique mix of lightly breathy with a rough edge surrounding it. Especially on the long, drawn out chords of a word, it was fascinating to hear the softness be curbed by just a little darker tone.
In the midst of the track, she stopped abruptly and looked at the crowd. “Sometimes in a young girls’ life,” she began, “she’s vibing, everything is going well…and hubris sets in. And your brain switches everything around,” indicating that she had no idea what her next verse was. “It’s behind the curtain. Welcome in!” As usually happens at Lena, this night really was a peek behind the curtain. Quick jokes about pollen turned into a monologue about how silly banter between sad and serious songs may just serve as her defense mechanism—a backstory about an episode of the X-Files involving past-life regression hypnotherapy was revealed to have inspired a song about knowing your loved ones across many lifetimes.
Owen Youngs was right there with us while she displayed this candor between songs, but each time she began to strum, you could see her drift away into her own inner world. Gently swaying back and forth, squeezing her eyes shut, or gazing up at the ceiling, in a place entirely separate from the stage. “Bury Me Slowly” got chokingly raw as she slowly plucked through the notes, voice ever so slightly breaking at the chorus: “Bury me slowly, I got a long way left to go / I’m feeling mostly one hell of a pull from down below.”
The first set ended right after this with a new unreleased track, “Aftershock,” featuring a complete energy shift from the prior. It was short chords, tonally lighter, quick verses with word play to make the catching rhymes. In bringing the vibes back up, she left the crowd eagerly awaiting the second set, which she had dubbed, “Jenny Owen Youngs: A Journey Through Time.”
And what a journey through time it was. For a true Owen Youngs fan, this would have been the perfect set as she held our hands through her many different eras: the journey was just getting started as she sang a 21-year-old song that she wrote at 21 (“Fuck Was I”) and “Last Person” as a request from a little girl who wanted to hear “the T-Rex song.” After forgetting a verse from the latter, she joked with the crowd that, “Anybody could play a show where they play the songs right. It’s my philosophy that that’s what a record is for. We’re having a human experience!” And, frankly, I’d like to meet anyone who is as prolific a writer as Owen Youngs who can remember each and every chord, verse, and word they wrote. Even Springsteen uses a teleprompter!
As she continued to deftly switch between acoustic and electric, she told us about a record she called Exhibit, featuring songs she had written after visits to various New York City museums. Go on Tuesday, write and record a song throughout the week, release it the following Tuesday, and begin the cycle all over again. One such track was “Here Comes The Monster,” courtesy of the ocean life diorama at the American Museum of Natural History, but don’t be fooled – this was no cheesy song about sharks or the depths of the sea. She began again in that slow, soft roughness: “Here comes the monster, so ready yourself, cup full of ashes, a knife in your belt. Here comes an answer that I harpooned, dragged it to the deck now so we should know soon.”
I found myself amazed at how, with each song, she could wrench the heartstrings and uncover some piece of realness that hides beneath the surface of everything – The X-Files, museum exhibits, and, yes, Buffy The Vampire Slayer. See, I told you I’d get there. With a song written for each episode of the show, and more for the musical episode, the host of “Buffering the Vampire Slayer” has written upwards of 160 songs about the show. This one in particular, was the story of Buffy and Angel’s fated love and heartbreak, for a moment so real and the next, completely forgotten by Buffy thanks to the cruel powers that be. Again, it was gutting to listen to her sing about a vampire-vampire slayer romance fallen apart, and only Owen Youngs could make it so.
With that, she ended the show and met a long line of fans at the merch table, smiling for photos, signing drawings, and making the night worthwhile for those who traveled both near and far.
