Eyes Full is no break with Zoh Amba’s free-jazz past. Rather, her new album is a translation into another musical language. Instead of placing the saxophone at the centre, she shapes acoustic guitar, folk, blues, flecks of noise and grunge into a singer-songwriter album that possesses the same physical urgency as her earlier improvised work. Thematically, Zoh Amba returns to her roots in rural Tennessee. In raw, at times overloaded songs, she sings of failed dreams, social abysses and the desire to be seen.
»OCD« opens the album with a sparkling country guitar. The form feels somewhat uneven, almost like a tentative attempt first to find an adequate perspective for the story. Gradually, a certain structure emerges – in »Southern Soil«, Amba drives her voice, as on all the songs, uncompromisingly beyond its breaking point: fractures and croaks create audible tension and reveal vulnerability. Jim White’s agile drumming and Kevin Hyland’s electric guitar give these songs support, without any intention of calming them down. Eyes Full is no decorative excursion into rural Tennessee. The album is rough and wild, yet furnished with genuine tenderness. It shows that Amba’s real strength lies in intensity.
