Review
Review
Cassandra Jenkins is a master of understated bliss
The 'Hard Drive' singer's headline show at Lantern Hall, Bristol is cosmic and cathartic
While the indie rock of New York City was once defined by scratchy rhythm guitars, yowling leads and loud disco-punk beats, in recent years the best of its scene have favoured a dynamic shift. Inspired in no short part by city’s illustrious folk history, acts such as Big Thief, Widowspeak, Sam Evian and, on a bigger scale, The National, have opted for an understated blend of muted rhythms, crisp but gentle percussion and an overall softer amplitude both live and on record.
When Brooklyn-born Cassandra Jenkins released her second album An Overview on Phenomenal Nature in 2021, she began a journey that has propelled her to the fore of this group of songwriters, as fans across the Atlantic have become enamoured with her vignettes of New Yorkers, all coddled in a glowy ambience that captured the tenderness of starting again after grief.
My Light, My Destroyer, easily one of the best records of 2024, made this ambience its world – filled with chirping crickets, smokey jazz interludes and snippets of life as Jenkins continued to heal, meditating on the “thin line between us and nothingness,” as she sings on ‘Aurora, IL’. It’s a song that even when building to a full-band climax somehow remains measured and understated.
The critical success of My Light, My Destroyer has allowed Jenkins to bring her band and writing partners from home to the UK for the first time, having performed with the Scottish band LYLO on her last visit. At Bristol’s Lantern Hall, Jenkins and her band pull us closely into their repose.
However intimate the opener ‘Devotion’ might feel, a microphone might help. A red-faced sound tech runs to the stage with an XLR cable in hand as Jenkins laughs the immediate blip off graciously. Adam Brisbin’s finger picking is dextrous but his guitar sounds more like a xylophone, twinkly and reverberating but without a sharp edge; so much so that at times this balance of dexterity and tone help him resemble a saxophone or piano. When soaked in delay and other softening tools, his busy playing style serves a more atmospheric role, except for a few moments where he lets rip with snarling solos, as on ‘Michelangelo’.
On ‘Delphinium Blue’, Jenkins sings into a mic’ed up corded telephone, but her vocals throughout are breathy and lush enough to replicate a confessional intimacy without a neat prop.
With the room bathed in the lilac-blue of My Light‘s artwork and ambient interludes filling the spaces between songs, this tour feels like an immersive experience of the album. Given that it is one that deals with feeling lost and alone, there is an especial emotional charge to these songs in this live setting, shared with others; at one point she encourages us to invite someone who cannot be here to join the show’s “cosmic guestlist”.
It’s one of a few moments where Jenkins is honest about her spirituality, for want of a better word. Another comes when she explains the idea of an album as its own cosmos with portals into other individual worlds. The next portal she is exploring from My Light? A massage album, she admits with a joking secrecy that it’s hard to tell if she’s joking. However fitting it might be, as far as tonight is concerned it’s unnecessary: songs such as ‘Hard Drive’ and ‘Ambiguous Norway’ are and always will be tearjerkers, but everyone leaves with a feeling of meditative bliss.
