Jennifer O’Connor

Photographed for
Spin at Welcome
to the Johnsons
in New York City,

July 8, 2008

Steely singer writes love
songs for the long-suffering

Jennifer O’Connor is comfortable exorcising demons in her music, just not in a movie theater. “One of my songs is in [the Liv Tyler horror flick] The Strangers, but I haven’t gone to see it yet because

I’m terrified of scary movies,” the Brooklyn resident explains sheepishly, rooting for ice in her drained cocktail glass. “I know my song plays toward the beginning, so I could watch that, then leave, and come back and see the credits.”

Maybe she just shouldn’t go alone. But O’Connor, ³⁴, is autonomous even by indie standards, a self-taught singer-guitarist whose unflinching lyrics and stunningly strong voice leap from distressing folk ballads to buzzing rock with ease. Her last album, ²⁰⁰⁶’s Over the Mountain, Across the Valley and Back to the Stars, was stuffed with more tragedy than Anna Karenina— most horrifically, the deaths of her two sisters—but she handled it all with the elegance of someone clearing her mind, not manipulating anyone else’s.

And even after falling in love recently, she’s kept a certain repose. “I get a lot that I’m numbed—people think my tone is detached,” she explains amid the mosquitoes at a bar where she used to sling drinks. “I just try not to be too obvious.”

Here With Me (Matador), her fourth album, peers into romance with the bittersweet dexterity of Elliott Smith and Aimee Mann (not coincidentally, both idols). “Always in Your Mind” takes apprehensive first steps toward trusting another person, while her wail on “End of the Hall” suggests the fallout. But tellingly, closing track “Next to Mine” is resolutely rose-colored; she whispers, “Lately I don’t feel afraid / I see the world around us / The noise in my head fades” over curls of gently picked guitar. It’s dedicated to her girlfriend, pictured nuzzling O’Connor on the album’s cover.

“That photo wasn’t intended, but it just worked
well with what the album was about,” says O’Connor.
“It wasn’t some big statement or anything, just
organic. Just me and her.”
Perhaps she’s available for a matinee?
B Y STACEY ANDERSON
PHOTOGRAPH BY ABBEY DRUCKER

GE T MORE

SEE EXCLUSIVE VIDEO OF O’CONNOR PERFORMING AN ACOUS TIC SE T. > SPIN.COM/JENNIFEROCONNOR

FAST FACTS
> In college, O’Connor met Dave Grohl, and he
put her on his guest list for a sold-out Foo Fighters
show. “He said, ‘Jennifer is my [first] wife’s name,’
and lifted up his shirt to show me his tattoo.”
> O’Connor majored in English at Atlanta’s Emory
University: “I was going to be pre-med like my dad
wanted. Then I failed chemistry in, like, a second.”

62 MONTH 2008 WWW.SPIN.COM