JennyLee - Heart Tax

You worry that this second solo full-length from Jenny Lee Lindberg might end up being one that slips through the net for many, arriving as it does just weeks before Warpaint, of which she’s a founding member, make their long-awaited return with fourth album ‘Radiate Like This’. It wouldn’t be the first time a solo effort from one of the Los Angeles art rockers went under the radar either. Theresa Wayman’s ‘LoveLaws’, released under the pseudonym TT, was an elegant, loop-based postscript to Warpaint’s 2016 album ‘Heads Up’ but was largely overlooked when released a year later and remains under-appreciated. It’d be a crying shame if ‘Heart Tax’ were to meet with the same fate. This is a different beast entirely to Jenny’s avowedly minimalist debut album, 2015’s ‘Right On!’; where that album felt like a bass player writing their own record specifically around that instrument, ‘Heart Tax’ is much more expansive, and has her spreading her wings in a number of different stylistic directions whilst maintaining her trademark hypnotic rhythms as a through-line with which to tie everything together. Outwith that, the record is free to run the gamut from breezy acoustic reflections (‘Newtopia’, ‘In Awe Of’), poppier territory than she’s normally able to explore with Warpaint (superb opener ‘Stop Speaking’ features Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode on the chorus) and, on ‘Clinique’ and ‘Hallows Eve’, more complex delves into the brooding atmosphere she conjured up on ‘Right On!’ The supporting cast, meanwhile, includes the likes of Trentemøller and Goldensuns, but the most crucial collaborator is one much closer to home: Stella Mozgawa, Jenny’s other half in indie rock’s most consistently brilliant rhythm section of the past decade. After five Warpaint-less years, two buses have come along at once, and ‘Heart Tax’ is every bit as deserving of your attention as ‘Radiate Like This’.