MOJO PRESENTS

New York’s CASSANDRA JENKINS grapples with the complexities of life, death, the universe and everything on quirky, melodic, meticulously artworked LPs that encompass jazz and ’90s grunge-pop. But her sophistication, she insists, is rooted in the fundamentals. “I just want to love and be loved,” she tells VICTORIA SEGAL.

ON OCTOBER 13, 2021, AMAZON MOGUL JEFF BEZOS SENT WILLIAM SHATNER TO the final frontier. The trip in the Blue Origin space shuttle was intended as a gift to a childhood hero, but it nearly blew the 90-year-old actor’s mind. Back on earth, the former Captain Kirk spoke of the overwhelming grief he felt at seeing his planet all alone in the darkness of the universe. It’s a recognised syndrome in astronauts: humans, it seems, aren’t meant to see the earth from space. It’s too much beauty, too much terror, too much awe. Too much perspective. It’s called the ‘overview effect’.

There’s a track on My Light, My Destroyer, the third album by New York singer-songwriter Cassandra Jenkins, called Shatner’s Theme, an untethered instrumental snippet of radio interference and atmospheric static. Another song, Delphinium Blue, is ostensibly about a job Jenkins took in a florist’s, but quickly opens out into something significantly more cosmic. “I had moments in that flower shop where I would look at an orchid and be like, How does this exist?” she says cheerfully. “I have these mini-overview effects all the time – like, Oh my God, how are we not just getting sucked up into the vacuum right now?”

DESPITE SUCH BLAKEAN RAPTURES, JENKINS IS A REASSURINGLY GROUNDED PRESENCE when she speaks to MOJO, the only ethereal vapours around her the steam rising from her mug. She lives with her parents in Manhattan – an arrangement that makes sense given the family home has long doubled as a music venue, hosting concerts by musicians passing through town. “Usually my sister and my brother and I will play one song to warm up the show, and that’s where I always try out all my new material,” Jenkins says. “It’s the kind of setting I’m most comfortable in – a living room with people, so you can see all their faces and hear their laughter.”