Jehnny Beth - You Heartbreaker, You

On pressing the play button on this second album from Jehnny Beth, two key elements are evident before it’s possible to complete a count to ten. First, a bassline evocative of Nine Inch Nails’ ‘The Fragile’, and a juxtaposition between an aggressively human, blood-curdling scream over a mechanised industrial composition. The former won’t come as any surprise to anyone familiar with her time as frontwoman of Savages. The latter part, however, marks a full foray into the industrial, her needle pointed closer to Ministry than Coil on the stylistic spectrum. 

With a title inspired by graffiti seen during a London walk with long-time collaborator and partner, Johnny Hostile, ‘You Heartbreaker, You’ explores a darker side of long-term monogamy and its related anxieties. “How many years are we gonna last?”, she asks on standout ‘Stop Me Now’ over glitchy guitars, and drums that suggest the breakdown of a machine: a pleasing synchronicity between form and content. On the seductive ‘Out Of My Reach’ - distracting in its similarity to Faith No More’s ‘Ashes To Ashes’ – she sings “I would go down on my knees, just to make you stay,” tipping the balance between desperation and desire. 

A cautionary tale on the dangers of repressed emotions and running a relationship on auto pilot, ‘You Heartbreaker, You’ presents the contrast between machinery and primal urge. Guess which will win.