6. A REVIEW OF FRAILTY BY JANE REMOVER

 A REVIEW OF FRAILTY BY JANE REMOVER

The many places of Jane Remover

I spend a lot of time in music discussion circles and always see comparisons between Jane Remover and Underscores. I will always prefer Underscores to Jane Remover. It’s no competition, they’re both great but it’s just a matter of finding Wallsocket before Frailty. I’ve had more time to explore Wallsocket’s world. Wallsocket felt like a true destination and Frailty just felt like a rest stop on my way home but I judged it too soon. I still prefer Wallsocket greatly but Frailty is still an amazing album, the genius of it flew over my head the first time around. I think I have a better grasp on it now. Before I begin the review; trigger warning for mentions of suicide and dysphoria which are two topics the album deals with— the former more than the latter.

LAYER 1: I CAN’T FIND A WAY TO MANIPULATE ONE OF THE SONG TITLES TO FIT THE CONTENT OF THIS SECTION SO I’M BLOATING THE HEADING WITH WORDS TO APPLY SOME UNFUNNY FORM OF HUMOR

Hey, eyes off the heading, let’s focus on the star of this review; the music. I won’t give the sonic elements of this album as much focus as I did for my last review because this is pretty much just hyperpop. There’s an interesting blend of acoustic elements and noise that I like on this and both of them can be powerful when they need to be Movies For Guys is an amazing sounding track. Even before I paid attention to the lyrics at all, I loved that song and Kodak Moment. Those are the noisier songs though. On relisten, I’ve grown to appreciate the more acoustic elements at play here. I do prefer the way they’re blended on Census Designated but the reason why I love this album isn’t because of how it sounds. I love this album because of the lyrics.

LAYER 2: COPS AND ROBBERS, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, DOSTOYEVSKY AND TOLSTOY

I’m glad I never promised not to compare Jane Remover to Underscores because that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Just like Underscores, Jane is an amazing lyricist but they’re amazing in their ways… like a horseshoe! On the one side you have Underscores with her vast and ever-reaching scope and on the other side you have the up close and personal storytelling from Jane. Can I call her Jane? That seems too personal, I don’t know her like that. Anyway, they’re equal in quality but opposites (except Underscores is more equal). It reminds me of two classic authors; Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky is Ms. Remover and Tolstoy is Underscores. Your favorite out of the two depends solely on personal preference. I want you to guess which one is my favorite between Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. I’ll reveal at the end.

I don’t bring up this comparison just so I have a reason to compare two artists to two classic literature authors but also because when I first heard the director’s cut of Wallsocket, I was in awe of how some of the new songs were written. I didn’t care much for lyrics at the time so I’d never heard anything quite like it before. On My Guy (Corporate Shuffle), Underscores sings “My Guy” three times, and with each mention, the context changes and she is talking about her doctor, her lover, and her enemy. It’s genius and Jane does something like this too with grace and graze, describing the different ways that the person she’s singing about makes her feel. His presence both graces her and then it grazes her. There’s also the song Misplace. It is something she lost and something she longs for, ‘mis-place’ and ‘miss place’.

LAYER 3: FRAILTY THY NAME IS JANE REMOVER

That was what I wrote for my review of this album on AOTY. I was just referencing Hamlet but I may have been onto something. The quote is originally “Frailty, thy name is woman” which is just Hamlet being sexist and moody by saying women are delicate but let’s reframe slightly. Instead of delicate, let’s say she’s vulnerable and she needs protection and shelter. Not just any shelter but a home. I think Ms. Remover is anything but delicate according to the events described in this album. I don’t want to assume things about Ms. Remover’s life so we’ll say the speaker is a survivor of suicide attempts and when people speak of the delicacy of human life, they often mean how easy it is for us to succumb to death. However, the title holds some truth. Mentally, the speaker is as we said: vulnerable. The more personal and focused perspective lends itself well to emphasizing her vulnerability too.

LAYER 4: IDLING SOMEWHERE

The Hamlet references did not end in the previous segment, I think they run deeper. Spoilers for a play from the 1600s. There are two main female characters in Hamlet, his mother and Ophelia (his love interest) but let’s focus on Ophelia. Hamlet and her fall out, her father dies at the hands of none other than Hamlet and her brother is off somewhere in France. Ophelia finds out about her father’s death and has nobody to turn to. In such a vulnerable state, without a place to go… she drowns herself. I see some parallels except Ms. Remover is very much alive and kicking but this album has that uncertainty, that vulnerability and not knowing where to go with it.

I’ve danced around it for a while now but this album is about places. The setting is incredibly important to Jane Remover’s albums as a whole but the setting through the eyes of the speaker. The speaker is in search of a home and goes from place to place and it never really feels right. These temporary shelters represent different people and different relationships, she tries to find solace in these people but then there’s this deep longing for something else. No person ever quite feels like home to her.

LAYER 5: LET’S GO HOME

The final two songs are a great conclusion to this album. The eye’s Off the Wheel, I’m A Star is her expressing her dissatisfaction. All that time she wasted, the desire to change her circumstances, and then in Let’s Go Home, the title starts with an action word, ‘let’s’ and with that,t she starts to move forward towards what she wants but of course, she’s still unsure and that’s okay! She doesn’t have to have everything figured out just yet. She can think about the details later but for now, she’s going home, wherever that may be.

EPILOGUE:

I am tired. I want to sleep but I’m no NARC, I will reveal that I am a Dostoyevsky fan. See you next week.