A comment on the recent Jane Remover post from C X:
I obviously like Revengeseekerz but it felt like a premature headstone on the whole JR project that had opened up with Census Designated. Not because it’s a stylistic hybrid but because the coming out/cash out of Revengeseekerz committed to exhausting the tension that had been built up until then – Census Designated, beyond even its aesthetics, touched limitless tension in a way that was legitimately shocking and traumatic, like it might truly build forever. Ghostholding building into/against that felt properly Baudrillardian, its putative placement in urban LA biographic misdirection for its sheer basalt curvature, like falling on the moon. So if Revengeseekerz insisted on slash and burn, surely it’s deserved relief, but its entropy dump is something like a Death Stranding whiteout, a hard launch on whatever was folding up here. In that sense, I thought the ubiquity in the press of the “terminally online” descriptor, while obviously lazy case by case, was actually earned: a meltdown indicator readout. If she really does another rebrand it’ll be appropriate: once you call your shot on being main pop girl I don’t really know that you get to just defer forever.
This is an amazing comment, honestly, and incredibly perceptive. Byro and I were talking about this recently and I think C X has completely hit the nail on its head.
I should emphasise that a lot of the previous post on Revengeseekerz and getting to see Jane live (offline) was reflecting on a personal connection, and that connection is particular, irrespective of a kind of individual-artist trajectory.
I feel very new to this universe, and so I didn’t hear Teen Week or Frailty or Census Designated when they came out. If I did, I reckon they would have resonated a lot (as they have since), but I reckon I’d have felt a deeper attachment to them then, as the affective structure of all of those records is totally where my head was at, especially during lockdown.
My introduction to Jane remains dariacore, and so I love the hybridity of that plunderphonic approach being applied to Jane’s own music, collapsing everything together, self-plundering. The shift from last year’s singles to now was nonetheless jarring, and I felt disappointed initially, because I was really looking forward to whatever that album was gonna be. Expectations quashed, however, I respect the shift massively. What’s more, if I feel hooked into the Revengeseekerz slash-and-burn impetus this year, perhaps that’s also about being in a similar stage of (gender/life) transition and seeking a similar catastrophic break from the melancholic plateau that Census Designated held open so majestically.
That being said, Census Designated is the album of Jane’s that I’ve yet to have a really deep connective moment with. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy it or I don’t rate it as highly as the others. When Byro and I were chatting about it, we were reflecting on how it feels cinematic, like a movie (not for guys), and it is best experienced as a whole. I’ve had blissful experiences listening to it on long walks or on trains, but in my day-to-day listening, it doesn’t often get the dedicated listen it warrants.
But putting all of that aside, and removing the personal, I think C X is right on the money. I’d honestly love to read more on this, cos this is the sort of engagement that I really want to see around Jane’s work. (That’s partly why I’ve been attempting to produce something like that for myself — if you haven’t yet seen what you want to see, make it for yourself, etc.)
I guess my question is whether there is really a perpetual deferral going on here. What is the difference between deferral and evasion? Is there one? Is Jane vying for a “main pop girl” crown? Is its acquisition inevitable? Is deferring forever not the Census tension, and why can’t it be explored through another affective mode? Melancholic avoidance versus defiant deferral?
At the moment, I’m thinking about all of this alongside the whole “”””hyperpop”””” scene’s relationship to pop, the pop-as-total-noise position of John Oswald’s plunderphonics manifesto, and the noisy pop that Ray Brassier talks about via To Live and Shave in L.A. in his “Genre is Obsolete” essay…
More to come, but I thought this intervention from C X was really vital. It will remain in the back of my mind going forward, for sure.
How flattering to get a XG post. I don’t want to attempt a real response right this second but I will just note that my “main pop girl” thing comes from JR’s own comment* on the unreleased album ultimately replaced by Revengeseekerz, specifically that it’s not what she wants to do. As you imply, I think this deferral is perhaps something of a turn of the spiral rather than an outright rejection. Yet it is a detour through precisely the personal, which is a naturally a blast, but predictably ends up replicating the breakthrough which it was putatively a rejection of!
And this may seem needlessly joyless. Yet what I’m really getting at is that this groundswell of consensus vis a vis generational singularity ends up masking (even risks diffusing, no shade intended) the recurrence of the properly ancient in the JR project. Naturally the third album flameout can only in fact reinforce this. But I think there’s at least some minimal sense in which we (the newly old heads) bear trace obligation to keep open the peril of escalating it.
* https://www.billboard.com/lists/lola-young-gigi-perez-artists-to-watch-2025/jane-remover/#:~:text=to%20be%2C%20like%2C-,main%20pop%20girl,-.%20And%20I%20didn’t
Yes, I remember reading that comment from them too, although it seems to have been only a deferral as you suggest. I saw in a recent Instagram AMA that they said the ‘scrapped’ album was now “more on hold” and wished people would stop asking about it (lol). I get the impression that people want it so badly still that they’re not about to deny people the joy of it (and hearing them play “Flash in the Pan” at ICA was a good indicator that there’s still life in those songs for them).
But yes, I do agree with you, or rather, I’m increasingly open to the challenge you’re making here. I’m frequently running the risk of making overt generalizations at the moment, which are really only a reflection of my personal feelings. But you’ve challenged these in a really productive way with these comments, with a perceptiveness I’m lacking as someone very new to it all. Much to chew on. I appreciate it a lot.