FILTER ALBUMS
New Yorker gently brings down fire from heaven.
Cassandra Jenkins ★★★★
My Light, My Destroyer
SECRETLY CANADIAN. CD/DL/LP
WALKING THE pet shop aisles, auteur Cassandra Jenkins wonders whether – despite craving warm company – she really has the right to bring another fragile creature into her life. “Don’t wanna take you home,” she sings, addressing the bunnies and guinea pigs on slacker pop stumble Petco, one of many highlights of her third LP. “Just because I’m trying to be less alone.”
Jewel-sparkly and gently devastating, My Light, My Destroyer is a record about vulnerability and the search for meaning in a godless universe, which holds on to a quiet belief that some overwhelming revelation could yet come along and make sense of it all. “Pull me apart, I want to see who I am,” Jenkins sings, willing on a transformative meteorite amid the Skylarking-era XTC strings of Omakase. “Pull me apart, put me back together again.
Jenkins’ second album – 2021’s An Overview On Phenomenal Nature – mined not dissimilar ground, the thirtysomething documenting her quest to move on after a grim period which included the suicide of Silver Jew David Berman, on the eve of a tour where she was set to be part of his backing band. A patchwork quilt of accidental wisdom gleaned from New York conversations, her signature tune Hard Drive was a delicious mix of homeopathy jazz and indie-pop pitter-patter, casting Jenkins as a modern-day Joni Mitchell with a bit of a thing for healing crystals. It proved a tough act to follow.
Jenkins abandoned a first attempt to make a third album and started again, with local luminaries like Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy and Katie Von Schleicher amon
