CASSANDRA JENKINS
My Light, My Destroyer DEAD OCEANS
New Yorker’s third finds her still in love’s gutter, but staring at the stars with a fresh sense of hope. By Laura Barton
POONEHGHANA
Lookingup:
Cassandra Jenkins
9/10
WHEN Cassandra Jenkins released her second album, 2021’s An Overview On Phenomenal Nature, it was in the spirit of a last hurrah. A little lost, a little disheartened, its collection of songs spoke to the dislocation of that particular time in Jenkins’ life when, following the death of David Berman, there came keen grief, a cancelled tour with Purple Mountains, a questioning of whether music was really the career for her.
She half-sang, half spoke, her voice slow and dusky and beguiling, and wound her storytelling with richly drawn characters and field recordings: birdsong, a guided meditation, a security guard discussing a Mrinalini Mukherjee exhibit at The Met Breuer. The effect was beautiful, intimate, inquisitive, wise; a record that felt so complete, one wondered how she might ever devise a follow-up.