It comes as no shock at all to find out that Karen Mansfield comes from Asbury Park, after all that small boardwalk town on the Jersey Shore has a track record of being a stepping stone for artists from Springsteen and Bon Jovi to The Gaslight Anthem and Patti Smith on their way to bigger things. And even with that heady mix of music passing through its scene, Karen Mansfield sounds like none of them.
Hers is a wonderful mix of muscular pop, chilled punk swagger and rootsy vibes, in fact I recall her being summed up as a Hippy-beach-punk-folkie and to be honest as sound bites go, I can’t really improve on that. And if There Was A Girl is one of those songs that is difficult to tie down generically, it also seems not to follow trend or fashion and so can’t be placed easily on a time line. It feels at home in a 60’s Greenwich Village coffee shop, a late 70’s Lower East Side punk club, as a 90’s indie single and as the modern slice of gorgeousness that it actually is. I guess that is what they call timeless?
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