“On My Mind“
from the album Thirteens
2008
iTunes
British singer-songwriter (by way of New York) Leona Naess has been a working musician for almost a decade. Busting onto the scene in 2000 with the buzzworthy Charm Attack, Leona has since delivered four respectable albums, the most recent entitled Thirteens, which was released earlier this year. Honing a penchant for honest songwriting, Ms. Naess certainly has a way with words and demonstrates so in the bittersweet “On My Mind.“
The delicate love song begins with piano and builds throughout adding a triangle, strings, mandolin, glockenspiel, and a full brass section which culminates in a grand polyphony. She woos you in and out with her lovesick analogies comparing her yearning to hipster cigarettes, nostalgia for the holidays, and the uncomfortable talk you get when you blossom into an adult. While her smitten similes seem a bit off, it is her dainty and genuine delivery that make them believable. Hey, love makes you say and do crazy things, and this girl is enamored, so who cares if it’s nonsensical? It only makes it that much more endearing.