JANA HORN
Optimism NO QUARTER
Abandon, hope: intrepid Texan’s leap of faith.
By Jim Wirth
JACOB BLICKENSTAFF
DISCOVERED
Searching out the best albums new to Uncut
8/10
IT seems simple enough on the surface. “Baby, there ain’t no clouds,” Jana Horn sings blithely on the title track of her debut album, voice as clear as a mountain stream. “Baby, there ain’t no crying, or figuring this thing out”. However, for all of the promise of blue skies, sunshine and one-word answers, there’s something profoundly inscrutable about Optimism, a curious deepfake ‘folk’ record which smacks of Broadcast, hippy Donovan, Julia Holter, Syd Barrett and the more wistful bits of The Cure while retaining an odd, metallic taste entirely of its own. By the time you’ve realised that her pond has no bottom, it’s already too late.
Raised in a strict Baptist household in Glen Rose, not too far from Dallas, Horn tells Uncut that her only significant childhood exposure to pop was Michael Jackson’s Greatest Hits, a bit of Queen and a spell playing bass drum in her school marching band. However, she embraced local psychedelic-country culture after a move to bohemian Austin in her late teens and started to make music of her own.