“I am naked all the time / I am burning inside” sings Jehnny Beth in the introductory “I Am” from her debut album To Love Is To Live. Jehnny Beth welcomes us into a world carved in the depths of her emotions, a chaotic utopia filled with reverence to one’s own condition, ambition, creativity, an openness as an artist that blends without demand of a selfish view of the world: this is me, this is me, this is me. With contributions from Romy from The xx and actor Cillian Murphy, the album was produced by Flood, Atticus Ross, and Johnny Hostile — who is Beth’s collaborator and partner since she relocated with him to London from her home in France. Even the “h” in her name is meant to reflect and mirror her relationship with Johnny Hostile. These are the kind of decisions that ultimately would seem scary or doubtful for a few, but Beth has always known who she is. Even with the atmospheric build-up in “I Am”, we can hear her honest, and not lost in between fogs of synths, reminiscing of PJ Harvey, with power in her voice more than any melody surrounding her.
To Love Is To Live is not just a nod to the dramatic, it is a nod to the cathartic experience of unveiling one self. There’s this industrial almost cinematic experience that blends with moments of upfront and personal verses, filled with themes of sexuality, sin, love, religion and more. Jehnny Beth is able to flip the script, from front-woman of Savages, to alien-human persona. “Innocence” starts breaking the line in this dual and first proposition. Beth is antagonistic and introduces each chorus with an empathetic chant, inspired by a Catholic experience. “Flower” broadens on personal experiences. Beth, who is bisexual, describes how she doesn’t know “how to please her,” as she talks about a woman. Even as “Flower” comes as a track made by perfectionists, Beth is able to break from the partnership of this relationship made up in her head, a frustration that probably is not real until she is willing and able to make it happen.
Think about this though — Beth points to David Bowie in the making of her solo debut album. The night David Bowie died, it made her realize how the work of an artist lives beyond them. Bowie knew he was dying when he made Blackstar — this inspired, ignited and revealed in Beth the desire to make something as if it was her last. Beth definitely harnessed this mentality, and the performative energy that Savages allows her to show us. And by doing so we see a quasi-organized idea of what Jehnny Beth is as a solo artist, and how she is able to present herself without battling delicacy and turbulence. How both may well work comfortably. You hear it in “The Rooms”, you hear it in “The French Countryside” — she can’t separate herself, and in between these rhythms she is whole. Such experimentations of genres within alternative music has been experimented before, of course. PJ Harvey in To Bring You My Love, Kim Gordon in No Home Record — albums without patterns, music of vanguard and true identity. Beth makes space for the unexpected, after this, looking into her psyche could be a ball of noise or silence, or both.
With her debut album, Beth is able to create for herself, an unequivocal voice of raw emotions that intertwined in synth driven atmospheric buzz; where either if she is haunted by Catholic guilt or deciphering her truth in front of us, by being honest and open as if a prerequisite of entering her realm is to be open-minded and able to expect the unexpected. Even in the last track To Love Is To Live, Beth disassociates herself from what we’ve learned so far of her journey, she’s ever evolving and ever welcoming of her surroundings, aware, waving us goodbye the same way she greeted us. Beth is ready to take it all, what’s hers, over, and over, again.
To Love Is To Live is out via Caroline Records.