Cassandra Jenkins
My Light, My Destroyer
★★★★
SECRETLY CANADIAN
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 among the reworked My Light, My Destroyer’s substantial supporting cast. The many hands, however, make for enlightening work.
Opener Devotion is Jenkins’ own private Astral Weeks, a gently strummed plea for salvation warped into something transcendental by her acute reflections on time passing (“the clock hit me like a hammer”) and some weepy Hovis ad brass.
Faint hope springs eternal on the grunge-y Clams Casino, even though hotel living fails to deliver a reason to believe; “I’ve been out looking for a silver lining,” she sings. “Just found a stray hair in the bedding.” A local news report on William Shatner’s 2021 trip into space becomes a reflection on the fragile beauty of existence on Aurora, IL, while a masseur fails to cure a broken heart on lead single The Only One. “How long will this pain in my chest last?” Jenkins asks. The answer, as she knows only too well: probably forever.
My Light, My Destroyer recognises the faults in the human condition; pain, isolation, grief are all inescapable, but the possibility of love and redemption are the payback. Devotees of Judee Sill, loved-up Bill Callahan and When Harry Met Sally will find it bright-eyed, glossy of coat and gentle of snout. Take it home. Feel less alone.
My Light, My Destroyer is out now on Secretly Canadian.
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