There are little details scattered through My Light, My Destroyer, the third album from the Brooklyn singer songwriter, that catch in the skin as they pass. Moments in the lyrics like ‘the wind cools me like aspirin’ that just trip the ear in a way that evokes the life lived behind. A voice recording of her mother staring at the stars that carries the jazz inflections of ‘Betelgeuse’ has the joy of a parent sharing their world, the doomy small town Americana of ‘Delphinium Blue’ pulls in the rich tactile detail of a florist lost in monotony. Her breath catches at the line ‘pain in my chest’ on ‘Only One’, a piece of somnambulant City Pop that shares the feeling of the city at night of chamber pop maximalists, Talk Talk.
Fragments of background noise and field recording trickle throughout and imbue the whole album with a sense of having a bit of dirt under its fingernails, a spoonful of real life leaking out.
While she still provides the confessional guitar pop storytelling that former tourmates Andy Shauf and Courtney Barnett are so good at – on the overdriven tour diary of ‘Aurora, IL’ or thrashy punning of ‘Clams Casino’ – it feels that Jenkins has expanded her palette on this album. This happens subtly at first – the sparse opener ‘Devotion’ is a showcase for her lyricism, but there’s a sly bit of plucked double bass and some brass tucked in the background there. As the album goes on though, we’re in full power pop territory – ‘Omakase’ is a big shiny production that feels like a lost slice of eighties chart trivia, and there are moments like ‘Shatner’s Theme’ and ‘Music??’ that wouldn’t be out of place on a scratchy free improv album.
There are themes of the cosmic running throughout, from the wistful stargazing to the near pass of an asteroid that informs the title. Jenkins isn’t staring at the sky so much as finding her place in it.
My Light, My Destroyer is out now via Dead Oceans. Available here.
Main Photo Credit: Pooneh Ghana
