Day 68: Jen Cloher — Jen Cloher
Someone recently described Australia to me as a huge expanse that doesn’t have many people living in it. What I didn’t know is that the wasteland down under is so sparsely populated that two of its best indie songwriters are married to each other. Not only is Jen Cloher the (nearly-lawfully) wedded partner of Courtney Barnett, but her new self-titled album is full of tracks that channel past approaches to making guitar-driven music into vivid storytelling and fresh, incendiary takes on the present moment.
Speaking of Barnett, her presence looms large on parts of the album, both as a subject and source of sonic guidance. “Forgot Myself” chronicles what it’s like for Cloher to be left behind while Barnett’s on tour. Adopting her partner’s tendency towards a half-sung, lilting cadence, cataloguing the Patti Smith poems and hair ties Barnett’s left behind while losing herself between the lines of a delayed text reply. “I was feeling kind of free, but now I’m desperate. Oh god I forgot myself,” Cloher sings as the beat behind her builds and swells into the same tonal space as some of Thurston Moore’s recent-vintage solo work.
Part of Cloher’s appeal is her willingness to speak in plain language about the world’s problems, leaning on her personal experience to ditch the artifice that others rely on for a refreshingly blunt approach. “Shoegazers”, which finds Cloher lamenting the grind of life as a touring “muso” and calling out the “privileged white kids” making indie rock and perpetual hot take machine that is the music press: “most critics are pussies who want to look cool. Those who can, they do. Those who can’t review.” Her willingness to speak the hard truths that indie’s insular community doesn’t want to hear makes the lack of reverb on the song not an oversight, but a smart, subtle dig.
Similarly, the political is personal on “Analysis Paralysis”, which finds Cloher grappling with a vague, first world unease that becomes more acute as the sprawling meditation unfolds. After minutes spent demonstrating her uncanny ability to slide into unconventional spaces and pockets of off-kilter melody that other guitar players often miss, she’s able to shift her focus from “faith without works” and “#activism” to Australia’s recent referendums on gay marriage. If she can pay her taxes on time, why does “the feral right get to decide if I can have a wife”? Alright, so “Kinda Biblical” is a bit opaque, but still at least makes reference to tangible concepts like Black Lives Matter and the war on Christmas rather than alluding to Trump with a line that mentions “the howling baron with many faces” or something.
If you’re a fan of PJ Harvey’s varied output, Jen Cloher’s got plenty for you to enjoy. Thematically, vocally, and compositionally, “Strong Woman” is a particularly apt homage. In a sort of first-person identity ballad, Cloher chronicles an upbringing torn between her desire to ride bikes and kiss girls as “John” and a catholic schooling that taught her “to love is to live in sin”. Harvey’s presence hovers over other tracks, with “Great Australian Bite” offering a less Steve Albini-ified take on Rid of Me’s bottle up and explode into a cacophonous crash approach, and you can practically here Polly Jean do the backing vocals on the aforementioned “Kinda Biblical”.
Still, Cloher does more than enough to make this work her own. The songs here range in sound from Neil Young meets late Sonic Youth to Urban Outfitters-friendly acoustic-driven tracks. It’s all enough to position Cloher — who despite a long musical career hasn’t broken through stateside yet — as far more than just a muse for Courtney Barnett. She has been and remains an ably talented musician in her own right, and possesses a voice that we could certainly stand to hear more often. And in the spirit of her speaking directly, I’ll leave at this: Jen Cloher is good, and if you care enough about my music opinions to have read this far, you’ll like it too.
This is Day 68 in my 100 albums in 100 days series, where I review a new album or EP I haven’t heard in full before every day through December 31st. Check out yesterday’s post or see the full archives for more.
