Tim Sample:
If you were Jane Burke you would not need to listen to this recording or memorize portions of it for the school play. Your wallpaper would already be rinsed,
bleached and set with it. Since you aren't, you do, and the sooner you accept that the more off-the-wall you'll be. DON'T SELL YOUR EARS BEFORE LISTENING TO THIS MUSIC !
I first met Jane on a wailing expedition in a previous life. I was immediately struck and picketed by her trade union. Large and powerful, she had the look and feel of a stunned waitress,
the brains to ignore evil and small fragments of Beatle lyrics pasted on her dashboard. The fact that Jane's heart comes up through her lungs (not just sometimes) is as inescapable as
a fifty-five gallon drum of perfume ... or a child's crayon drawing of a beloved animal ... HOT, FUNNY BRAINS WITH A SNAPPY BEAT ! Yes, Jane's flower is on fire today. She's always
been more important than sex and now you can hear it for yourself. Like finding a King James Bible on a pool table at a gay bar or visiting your mother's orphanage, if this music
doesn't build you a fresh sandwich for your trip, do me (and everybody else) a favor and have your wheels checked before you hit the road. ITS THAT SOLID !
Like a snare drum in search of language THIS CD IS FUNNY, PROVOCATIVE AND LAUGH ALOUD SAD... so in tune with eclectic nature that when my speaker skips it sounds even better!
Jane's voice (always as sharp as a stencil) has spread out, relaxed, and raised the bedspread almost to the point of final departure. Even when she's croaking like a man and taunting her
friends, you know damned well it's her and you have to sway and laugh and quit drinking for a day. Every good boy deserves favor and the musicians, technicians, and pediatricians you hear
splashing around in the foreground, resonate like a closed mineral exhibit being examined and finger-printed at spring break. Their hats are off!
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Charles Cook, WOBC radio, Oberlin College:
She who manipulates the semi-confessional-female-folk-rock-singer-songwriter archetype with a suitable proportion of
tunefulness, charm, and swagger these days is going to be, ipso facto, a paragon of radio friendliness. Jane Burke, under the moniker "Jane Loves Maine," has produced in POP
TART, a debut album with the goods to hold this axiom at its word. Lovers of the aesthetic will find that POP TART has at least enough moxie to compete with the big girls, while incurable
Maine-iacs will appreciate the tribute to the manifold joys, abstract and otherwise, of Maine-ness. It's a credit to Jane that the album for the most part consigns itself neither to the
bottom-drawer ephemerality of 'local color', nor to the formulaic self-indulgence of what so many of pop music's 'empowered' women seem to be recording.
It's a rewarding listen, this cunningly tarty confection, not the least because of its purposeful structure. The interplay of the content and the track arrangement ensures that the album
grow gradually better as it unfolds -- from the Doors-esque jam at the conclusion of "You're So Beautiful", through the reprise of track one("Fill It Up"), to the
stirring, full-bodied conclusion, in "For Your Love," that,like the album as a whole, saliently (and deftly) incorporates both "Jane" and "Maine."
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Maryellen O'Brien, Author, Radio Personality, WBLM-Maine, KRXQ-Sacramento, CA., ALTA-252 of Ireland and U.K. and others
…hilarious, ingenious, strong musical celebration of pathos and potatoes. It rocks! The lyrics are genius, and (Jane’s) voice is swelled with emotion and seduction. ...(Jane Loves Maine) sounds like the offspring of Chrissie Hynde if she mated with a B-52 (and the fairy Godmother was Robin Lane and the Fairies' Godfather were Queen).
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