Cassandra Jenkins - My Light, My Destroyer (2024) FLAC (209.0 MB) music download

Quality: FLAC 16 bit / 44.1 kHz (Tracks) / FLAC 24 bit / 48 kHz (Tracks)
Artist: Cassandra Jenkins
Album: My Light, My Destroyer
Genre: Indie Folk, Alt-Country, Singer-Songwriter
Released: 2024

Tracklisting:
01. Devotion (3:56)
02. Clams Casino (3:27)
03. Delphinium Blue (3:38)
04. Shatner's Theme (0:44)
05. Aurora, IL (3:37)
06. Betelgeuse (2:54)
07. Omakase (4:45)
08. Music?? (0:11)
09. Petco (3:03)
10. Attente Téléphonique (1:32)
11. Tape and Tissue (4:23)
12. Only One (3:09)
13. Hayley (1:33)

Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Cassandra Jenkins—who has performed as a back-up singer for Eleanor Friedberger and Craig Finn—can fit her steady, calm North Star of a voice to almost any situation. She's not a shape-shifter so much as a fixed constant around which the music finds a way to flow. On the slow-moving, dark and lovely jazz of "Tape and Tissue," she sounds so close you can almost hear her lips brushing the microphone; the musical tension builds, but she remains chill. Co-produced by Katie Von Schleicher of Wilder Maker (along with Andrew Lappin, who worked on every song), "Clams Casino" is excellent—a country rocker à la 1970s Linda Ronstadt, with scorching guitar and strident drums. You can hear where and how another artist might belt it, but Jenkins keeps it at a low, slow simmer. Dreamy "Delphinium Blue," meanwhile, gives off Enya vibes with ghostly backing vocals, random industrial percussion and Jenkins' voice pouring slow as honey. Produced with Isaac Eiger (Strange Ranger, Threshold) and Von Schleicher, it's about how a flower-shop job saved Jenkins during "one of the bluest periods" of her life, as "I began to dream in technicolor; flowers became the language of my subconscious." ("I sweep the floors but I'm talking to you," she sings. "I see your eyes in the delphinium too/ I've become a servant to their blue.") Jenkins' violinist brother Reid helped arrange and plays on several of the tracks, including "Hayley," which trembles with the power of a deceptively fragile hummingbird, and "Aurora, IL." Co-arranged with Rob Moose, who played violin on Sufjan Stevens' Illinois and with Anohni and My Brightest Diamond, the strings on the latter swell and bloom, almost like fireworks. Free-floating and ghostly "Omakase" evokes Mitski (who Jenkins has toured with) while "Petco" is a pretty classic '90s-style indie rocker—woozy guitar, punchy dynamics—but without any lo-fi fuzz to cloud it. There is serene clarity as Jenkins sings, "It's become my second nature/ To wander through the pet store/ And stare into the sideways gaze of a lizard/ Doesn't always make me feel better/ Just less alone." And there's a neat trick on "Only One," its mood set by cool-zephyr sax, where the chorus rushes, almost like an editor has snipped out milliseconds and Jenkins seems to be hop-skipping at a new pace.

Cassandra Jenkins - My Light, My Destroyer (2024) FLAC (209.0 MB)