Linger

1	Little Hours 3:30
2	Good at Love 5:04
3	Me Be Me 5:14
4	Manchild 3:43
5	'Til I Get There 5:14
6	City 5:34
7	Numbers 4:38
8	Hurry Up Sky 3:59
9	Passive People 4:23
10	Regular Life 3:45
11	Gold 6:09
12	I Could Fall (In Love With You) 7:00

Barnes & Noble

“You and me we can make ourselves a good stew, when you let me be me, and I let you be you.” So purrs Jen Chapin on the sexy track “Me Be Me” from her newest release, Linger. The album itself is a musical stew, a fusion of familiar ingredients -- jazz, pop, funk and folk -- that combine to surprise and delight in exotic ways. Chapin, a graduate of Berklee College of Music, wrote all 12 songs herself, and she not so much performs as becomes them, her voice sweet one moment, sassy the next, taking unexpected scat and bebop turns that are tethered tautly to earth by the agile accompaniment of multi-instrumentalist Stephen Crumb, who contributes a wide range of musical talents and textures. Fans of singers ranging from Norah Jones to Rickie Lee Jones should thoroughly enjoy Linger, a tantalizing introduction to pop jazz that doesn’t dumb anything down for the masses. Lissa Kiernan

All Music Guide

Sometimes singer/songwriters with eclectic musical tastes can seem bland or unfocused. Fortunately, Jen Chapin is able to blend her folk, jazz, blues, and other influences into a coherent and expressive urban folk style. She tends to favor measured performances over cutting totally loose, but her singing is soulful enough to give her music some backbone. The lyrics to "Gold" provide a good indication of how she is both similar to and different from her father, Harry Chapin; she shares her father's interest in social issues, as indicated by the song's inspiration (a comment by a sharecropper who was interviewed by civil rights leader James Foreman), but she has also been influenced by R&B, as indicated by her name-dropping trombonist Fred Wesley (James Brown, Parliament) during the song. Chapin seems equally comfortable gently chiding people for their political apathy ("Passive People") or using food metaphors for sex ("Me Be Me"); other songs are about heartbreak, hope, nostalgia, self-discovery, and her friend Kristy Ryan, who was killed on 9/11. The album also includes a couple numbers, "'Til I Get There" and "Manchild," that Chapin performed on Live at the Bitter End. ~ Todd Kristel, All Music Guide

Entertainment Weekly

Harry Chapin's daughter inherited the songwriting gift. (B+) Larry Blumenfeld