First Impressions: My Light, My Destroyer by Cassandra Jenkins

The cat woke me early this morning with loud meows and louder yowls. He wanted breakfast. I swooped him from the floor and plopped him beside me, hoping to buy myself more minutes in bed. He lied beside my head for a moment, let me use him as a pillow. At night, his purr is a white noise machine that pushes me into sleep. In the a.m., however, it turns into a revving engine that powers his disdain for his obstinate man-servant. He wiggled away and thwacked me on the head. He wanted to be fed. A thin line exists between butler (or maid) and chef—the top of the container filled with ocean white fish.

The above may read like mundane meanderings, but let me recite the same words over a jazzy backing track and, somehow, they resonate with meaning. And a choir singing “ocean white fish” would make it sound delicious. Am I right?

Of course not. There’s a reason why Cassandra Jenkins’ third album, My Light, My Destroyer, has received rave reviews from The Guardian, Mojo, Paste, Slant Magazine, Stereogum, Uncut, and Variety, among others, as well as from many music blogs, while my silly musings remain confined to this blog. She transforms everyday moments, observations, self-reflections and questions into jazz-inflected explorations of what it means to be alive in the modern age, much as the poets of long ago pondered the philosophical underpinnings of life. Like An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, her last outing, the nominal stops and starts turn her musings into the movements of an existential symphony. As she sings in “Aurora, IL,” in which she turns William Shatner’s fleeting trek into the stars via Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin spaceship into a profound commentary, “It’s a thin line over the planet/Just a thin line between us and nothingness.”

Kierkegaard and Sartre would be proud.

Unlike Phenomenal Nature, which found her grappling with the untimely death of David Berman—whose Purple Mountains band she had just joined for a tour—she’s designed a song cycle that contemplates the full canvas of life.

“Clams Casino,” perhaps the most traditional tune of the set, finds her admitting, “I don’t want to live alone anymore.” “Betelgeuse” is a “field” recording of her mother, a science teacher, discussing the stars and how an asteroid the size of a building recently flew between the moon and Earth, while an overdubbed piano and various instruments drip and dribble beneath the monologue. “Petco,” on the other hand, channels “Clams Casino” in both form and sentiment; it finds her wandering the aisles of a pet store and wondering whether, to feel less alone, she should adopt an animal companion.

I’ll skip further song-by-song analysis, as My Light, My Destroyer—much like Van Morrison’s forays into melodic mysticism during the 1980s—is best experienced in full. Do not press play if you don’t have time to listen, in other words. Rather, carve out 40 minutes from your day, slip on headphones and explore the layered soundscape, from the jazz-like interplay between instruments to Jenkins’ oft-lush vocals and conversational lyrics. It’s a remarkable album.