"Blessed with the kind of high, disconsolate voice that sounds as if it’s blowing through the pages of a Cormac McCarthy novel, Jesse Sykes seems to be a woman unlucky in life and love but, as is the way in alt. country, her losses are our gain. 'Reckless Burning' is a gloriously bleak collection of songs, sparsely ornamented and drifting like smoke in evening chill. Sykes has a talent for pared down, sometimes oblique but always intensely evocative lyrics. “We ride across this city/Starting fires recklessly”, she reflects in the title track and, more directly, in Lullaby: “I was just your passenger/Hoping you wouldn’t see the sign/Funeral parking only.” Ouch. The etherised honky tonk of Don’t Let Me Go and the ‘no shit sheriff’ banjo shuffle of Lonely Still provide mildly sprightly relief, but then, if you’ve found yourself in these parts, you don’t want relief, you want a good wallow."  (Mojo)

"A very pretty alt-country debut from acoustic songstress Sykes. Flourishes of organ, mellotron, harmonium, violin, and cello enhance the standard country instrument coloring from upright, banjo, and lap steel, but the moonlight is shared by Sykes' smoky pipes and the delicate guitar work of Phil Wandscher, late of Whiskeytown. His reverbed feedback and high-noon duel pickings on the opening title track set a spooky and sorrowful tone for Sykes' stories of grief and desire. "Pretty thing I've got you/Right where I used to be," she implores on the title track, and she closes with the refrain, "It's not hard to forgive when you're holding back a river of drowned men" on "Lullaby," and Wandscher's voice echoes along with empathy perfectly as his guitar intones understanding. A project born of breakups - Sykes' marriage and previous band Hominy - this record finds glory in soldiering on through the bleak, holding fast to the hand by your side."  (Big Takeover)

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