Whilst some people feel the need to pursue new styles, create new fusions and try to move things forward through strange chimeric musical experiments, others are just content to walk classic and familiar pathways. And whilst the dynamic vocal led soul and the emotive deliveries join the dots from Etta James to Nina Simon to Aretha Franklin and on to her own modern R&B peers, Jessie Wagner does that rare thing of bringing something new to the table.
Not so much as in a new aspect but new in that everything seems designed along classic lines but just, well…more. It is more deeply soulful and indeed soul searching, more emotively heart-tugging, more gracefully elegant…just more of everything. It is a difficult thing to do, to visit such defined territory and come away both with something that adds to the musical canon but honours its heritage. Difficult for many, not, it would seem for Jessie Wagner.