Cassandra Jenkins - My Light, My Destroyer [CD]

Format: CD
Catalogue No.: DOC346cd
Barcode: 656605164625
Release Date: 12 Jul 2024
Genre: Alternative

Cassandra Jenkins is quite simply one of the best songwriter-storytellers currently making music. Hers is a specific and singular corner of the Great American Songwriters, artists like David Berman, Adrianne Lenker, Jeff Tweedy and Sufjan Stevens. They’re artists connected by a sense of immediacy, not just in the writing – which is precise, evocative, brutal at times, pitch-back funny right when you need it – but by their delivery, by the way they sing with an immersive, total belief that carries you through their songs. These are the artists and songs that sneak up and really live with us forever, and on My Light, My Destroyer, Jenkins joins their ranks.

What’s most remarkable about My Light, My Destroyer is it captures an artist at an exciting leap in her evolution. So much about the album feels of-a-kind with its predecessors; field recordings and found sound permeate, narrative songwriting crashes into heady, swirling compositions. Jenkins sings with what can only be described as a power-whisper (think Sufjan Stevens, Annie Lennox, Margo Timmins or YHF-era Tweedy), her vocals up close and intimate but subtly confrontational. But it all feels bigger here, more finely honed, bolder and richer than her previous work and than her peers.

Born and raised in New York City, Jenkins has been touring and performing since she was a child, self-releasing her early recordings before releasing breakthrough An Overview on Phenomenal Nature in 2021. On My Light, My Destroyer, many of the songs are devoted to specific feelings, and to really getting inside those feelings as opposed to getting inside a narrative arc. Lead single “Only one” is one example, as Jenkins’s asserts that a moment, or a song, can be wholly myopic; it can embody a singular feeling, and provides no answers.

Songs like Devotion, Delphinium Blue, Clams Casino, Echo, and Only One, speak to the liberating quality of focused observation, even to the point of disillusionment. “There’s this idea about disillusionment that I’ve held onto,” she says. “I really appreciate disillusionment as a process to discover new, unexpected outcomes. We let go of expectations this way. Expectations hold us back. It’s easy to focus on jadedness or disappointment but I actually see it more as freedom.”

~ PRESS: Previous Press support includes Pitchfork Rising, Talkhouse, Under the Radar, KEXP, Nylon, Stereogum and many more. An Overview on Phenomenal Nature made dozens of 2021 Year End Best-of lists including: Loud and Quiet (#4), Under the Radar (#5), Stereogum (#10), Pitchfork (#17 + BNM, #2 for Hard Drive +BNT), Uncut, Rough Trade, Paste, The Guardian, and many more
~ STREAMING: Over 70,000 Monthly Listeners on Spotify; multiple singles over 3M streams to date; playlisting history includes Infinite Indie Folk, badass, Folk Arc and more
~ SESSIONS: Pitchfork x Abbey Road Studios, Live on KEXP (at home), Brooklyn Vegan Show (Vans Channel) relix + some older ones
~ Touring + collaboration history includes Craig Finn, Kevin Morby, Eleanor Friedberger, Purple Mountains, Lola Kirke and others. Cassandra has appeared at Austin City Limits, Outside Lands, Newport Folk Festival, and Pickathon as well as touring with Kevin Morby, Courtney Barnett and Mitski.
~ SOCIAL: Instagram 15,000+; Youtube 3500+; Spotify 35,000+
~ First vinyl pressing on limited edition Pink Clear Wave viny

SIDE A: 
1) Devotion
2) Clams Casino
3) Delphinium Blue
4) Shatner’s Theme
5) Aurora, IL
6) Betelgeuse

SIDE B:
7) Omakase
8) Music??
9) Petco
10) Attente Téléphonique
11) Tape and Tissue
12) Only One
13) Hayley

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