AJ JANSEN

A Country Girl Can Survive

ajjansenmusic.com

It’d be a drag to live through most of this New England country singer’s tunes—lots of small-town boys and girls breaking each other’s hearts—but they make for fun listening. Jansen clearly has a hoot writing them, too. While she seldom strays from genre tropes, she does tough-chick anthems (“Can’t Tame Me,” “A Country Girl Can Survive”), wounded ballads (“Darlin’”), and semiautobiographical tales of showbiz dreamers (“Guilty,” “Heartbreak Kid”) with a freshness remarkable for someone who’s been writing songs since she was 6. Musically, she’s more a classicist than a pop-crossover threat, and that’s the smart play. Her keg of inspiration is nowhere near kicked, and this type of light honky-tonking always goes down smooth.