Jenny Lee Lindberg plays bass with psychedelic dream-pop band Warpaint. On her solo debut, Lindberg and co-producer/drummer Norm Block pare the music down to its essentials: thick, ambient bass; sparse drum loops and percussion; and a smattering of electric guitar to provide a spacey, dub-like texture. Lindberg delivers the album’s cryptic lyrics with a quiet, bemused melancholy that amplifies the desolate emotions she expresses. She’s clearly spent a lot of time listening to her collection of Joy Division/New Order albums, and her music echoes their rumbling mix of suspicious hope and forlorn despair.
Her wordless keening on “blind,” “he fresh” and “long lonely winter” accentuates the desolate longing implied by the ambient guitars and deep throbbing bass lines. On “bully,” “riot” and “white devil,” the anger breaks through to the surface, and her screams take on a chilling intensity that expresses an anguish that’s beyond the power of words.
—j. poet
