TRACK REVIEW: Jehnny Beth - We Will Sin Together

TRACK REVIEW:

Jehnny Beth

PHOTO CREDIT: Tristane Mesquita

We Will Sin Together

9.4/10

The track, We Will Sin Together, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8WMhLzBU94

GENRES:

Post-Punk/Indie Rock

ORIGIN:

Poitiers, France

The album, To Love Is to Live, is available here:

https://store.universalmusic.com/jehnnybeth/*/Music/TO-LOVE-IS-TO-LIVE/6DFR0TVW000

RELEASE DATE:

12th June, 2020

LABEL:

20L07 Music

TRACKLIST:

I Am

Innocence

Flower

We Will Sin Together

A Place Above (ft. Cillian Murphy)

I’m the Man

The Rooms

Heroine

How Could You (ft. Joe Talbot)

French Countryside

Human

__________

THIS seems like a weird time be…

PHOTO CREDIT: Johnny Hostile

reviewing an artist, as the world seems like it is on fire, and one naturally just wants to hide away and find some sort of quiet. If anything, music is providing a shelter and sense of comfort. I think artists like Jehnny Beth (Camille Berthomier) are people who one can listen to and get inspiration and strength from. He new album, To Love Is to Live, is out, and it is sensational! I have been following her since she was in Savages, and I love the fact that she can mix intensity and passion with music that is a little more calmed and reflective. She can deliver deep messages and blend that with something freeing and uplifting. She is an amazing artist, and, during this lockdown, I have been getting a lot from her music. I do think that To Love Is to Live will be ranked alongside the best of 2020, and I would urge people to go and get the album. I am not going to review every track, but I wanted to select my favourite song from the album, We Will Sin Together, and have a look at that. Before I come to that track, I wanted to get a better picture of Jehnny Beth, and bring in some interviews that she has been involved with. Like everyone else, the songwriter has been in lockdown and it has been a very unusual time to release music. In an illuminating interview with The Forty-Five, she discussed the current situation and her response:

“Now, more than ever, most of us can relate to being exhausted by The State Of Things. “I was feeling quite disgusted at the world and sick of people and I really needed to regroup myself. I felt very fragmented. Everything felt too frightening, too violent almost, the world and everything and even my rapport to it and I wanted to find a way to change. I felt that personal change was the only way to do that moving forward. I had to go through a certain level of pain because I believe that to be happy you can’t be so impervious to pain.” She chuckles, to lighten the mood but it’s a sentiment that resonates, particularly now, where the world is questioning what they’ve done – and what more they can do – to help eradicate others’ pain and make a better, more accepting society”.

Excuse me if the chronology goes askew slightly, but I have been reading up a lot on Jehnny Beth, and it has been interesting seeing how she has moved to various cities at certain times - and what she has learned from each move. It seems like Jehnny Beth’s experiences in France were quite different to how she found London. As a bi artist, the attitudes on display when she was a child were quite closed-off. It must have been quite strange and a struggle to grow up in an environment that was not very open when it came to the spectrum of sexuality; there were very few people she could have talked with who would have been role models or overly-accepting. I do wonder whether Jehnny Beth’s move to London opened new horizons and was like an escape to her. When she spoke with CRACK this year, she talked about the contrasts between her childhood setting and moving to London:

“During Beth’s childhood, in Poitiers, France, there were few openly bi artists to relate to, she explains. “I didn’t know what bisexuality was and I didn’t have many role models,” she remembers. Her parents were intellectual, artistic, but her wider family was traditional and Catholic. “It created a lot of anxiety for me. I left home because I wanted to understand where all that anxiety was coming from.”

Home was first her parents’ house in Poitiers and then her sister’s nearby, but it wasn’t until 2006, when she was in her early 20s, that she fully escaped her conservative upbringing by moving to London with her longtime partner Nicolas Congé. Starting over in a new city, he became Johnny Hostile and she Jehnny Beth. They performed as a Kills-inspired duo called John and Jehn, but her breakthrough came in 2012 when she joined guitarist Gemma Thompson, bassist Ayse Hassan and drummer Fay Milton to form Savages”.

I think it is important to look back at where Jehnny Beth started and her earlier life, so one gets a more complete picture of the artist. To Love Is to Live is Jehnny Beth’s first solo album, and many might know her from Savages – the band’s last album together was 2016’s Adore Life. I do think that going solo allows Jehnny Beth to have that autonomy and produce something that is more personal.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gabriel Green

One can feel a different tone on To Love Is to Live to her work with Savages. Before reviewing a track from the album, I wanted to get a sense of what Jehnny Beth was trying to say and what themes defined the record. I looked back at the interview with The Forty-Five, and an interesting passage stood out:

“There are moments of quiet and beautiful reflection too, alongside those of uncomfortable self-realisation. ‘French Countryside’ is a pared back piano track about promising to change, to better yourself for your partner. “Oh my love, don’t desert me know”, Beth pleads. “It was the track I struggled the most with. It’s the most exposing, the most personal”, she says of the song.

At its core ‘To Love Is To Live’ is a record about doing what we’re all realising we need to do: to look within ourselves and face up to the darkness, the prejudice that lives inside us all. In order to change personally and collectively, introspection is vital and on creating an album focused on that journey, Beth may just be about to release the perfect record for our times.

“When you’re changing, all your alarm bells go off. You feel afraid, you feel anxiety. I try to follow that path and tell myself if it’s uncomfortable, I’m doing something right. It’s uncomfortable, but not life threatening”.

I have skipped a bit when it comes to timeline, but I shall come back to her current endeavour and moving away from a band. I do think that your natural environment is very influential when it comes to creativity. Jehnny Beth would have gained an awful lot from moving to London, and that is where her band were based. By going solo, I guess it is another chapter, so remaining in London was, perhaps, not the best decision. A lot of time has passed since she lived in France, and I think returning home was quite cathartic and therapeutic.

Things have changed since she was in Savages, and, as she explained to The Face, her move back to Paris has been overdue:

“How has the recent move back to Paris been?

Going back, I started therapy and it was a way for me to reconnect with my roots. Mentally, I left when I was 15. Then I left actually, and didn’t go back. When I did, it was a way for me to try and understand where I was coming from. I thought I could live my whole life without connecting to where I was from. I was rejecting it completely. I spent all my twenties finding my own voice and own identity and Savages was the pinnacle of that, the loudest expression of that. Then I felt that one doesn’t exclude the other, actually. You have to uproot yourself to find yourself. I’m still trying to reconnect but it’s been good. What saved me was finding a boxing club that I love. I found a community there that I didn’t know I needed.

Has the process of reconnecting with your past influenced the new record?

There’s jazz influence, especially in the song The Rooms. My first bands were jazz bands – I learnt piano at the age of eight and did 10 years of piano jazz training. That’s how I learnt English. The songs were in English. My teacher would tell me I sounded like Chet Baker because I was so quiet. That’s also why I never sang in French. I tried and I can’t.

How has your life changed since Savages?

When I stopped Savages, I couldn’t see another band without crying. I talked to Bobby Gillespie about it. At one of his shows I was side of stage, I had to leave for a while because I was so emotional. I came back and it was a great show. I saw him after and he asked me if I was OK. I was like: “I loved your show but it really made me cry.” He said to me this beautiful thing: “I know, it’s like seeing an old love.” It’s exactly that. It wasn’t jealousy. It was the beauty of the act, him and the crowd and that communion. I was overwhelmed and missing it very very much”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Sarah Piantadosi

It is scary for an artist who has been with a band to step out on their own. A lot of people will naturally compare Jehnny Beth’s solo work with Savages, but the two are quite different propositions. It is a shame Savages did not go for longer, but I can understand they came to a natural end, and there were good reasons for their split. I can imagine how liberating it was being in a band and being able to express herself musically. The music of Savages is remarkable and, even though they put out two studio records, they captured a large fanbase and made a real impression. I do feel like Jehnny Beth’s solo career offers her the chance to be more expansive and not be quite so defined in terms of tone and sound. In an interview with The Guardian, Jehnny Beth discussed Savages, and making her solo record with Johnny Hostile (Nicolas Congé; the two were in a duo together, John & Jehn), Flood and The xx’s Romy:

“The band offered the freedom she had craved. “You’re a gang against the world,” she says. But their identity became restrictive. “It can become a prison for creativity. I felt that Savages was very pure musically and as an art form and I didn’t want to break it.” Keen to collaborate with other musicians, Beth pursued a solo album in 2016 – To Love Is to Live is out in May. She respects Savages and cherishes their time together but they haven’t discussed future plans. “It’s whatever it will be.”

Made with Hostile, the producer Flood and the xx’s Romy Madley-Croft among others, the album was intended to put her in unexpected contexts: although not miles from Savages, it is broader, spanning industrial noise, dissonant jazz and eerie balladry. The process was exciting, she says. “Dangerous, actually frightening as well, weirdly. I found some sharpness again, creatively, from putting myself on edge”.

There are a few things more I want to cover and tick off of the list before I move on to the actual review itself. I think the recording and production process for To Love Is to Live was a very different experience to working with Savages.

PHOTO CREDIT: Maxime La

Not to keep labouring over the contrast of band versus solo work, but there has been this big leap forward in terms of the way Jehnny Beth is working at the moment. When she spoke with The Line of Best Fit, she talked about working alongside Johnny Hostile, and what the recording experience was like:

“Whilst reflecting on working out the skeletons of the songs with Hostile, her eyes light up whilst providing an insight to the liberal and almost mad scientist approach that they took: “It was research time. There was no boundaries, no stone unturned. It would be very free, but so much so that we would have seven or six versions of each song.” She bursts into a cackle before clarifying that there were indeed benefits to working in this method and it ended up being: “an important phase of exploration”.

One thing that strikes me about the work of Savages is the rawness and energy they projected. The fact that there were four women in the band producing this incredible kinetic and physical sound was very exciting and new (to me). Of course, there are other all-female bands, but Savages were something fresh and unique. When you are in a band, I guess the demands on you are very different in terms of what you write and what sells. Maybe there was this desire to put out something quite raw and intense; intimacy and tenderness might not have been at the forefront. Not that Jehnny Beth has radically altered her writing style, but a solo album is a more personal project, and, as such, it is more rounded and gives us a closer look at all of her sides. Perhaps there was a pressure to project this very strong image that did not allow a lot of self-reflection in. Savages’ gift was these defiant and amazing women doing something very important and new.

PHOTO CREDIT: Anthony Byrne

It must have been hard adapting to a solo palette and being able to write about things that, before, were not necessarily on the table. Jehnny Beth touched on this when she was interviewed by The Guardian:

“With Savages, she sung about sex, but never intimacy. “I liked the contrast,” she says. “Four women with aggression in the music, that was something I felt I hadn’t seen before. Four women talking about care, that didn’t seem like something that was missing.” She sidelined softness “as an artistic decision”. It’s only recently that she discovered her nurturing side. “I can take care of people who are suffering,” she says, heavily. “I didn’t know I could.”

If the album has a theme, says Beth, it is “the multiplicity and complexity of being human”. She mentions raging single I’m the Man, where she embodies a hated figure: “There’s no bitch in town who doesn’t understand how hard my dick can be,” she sneers. She is disappointed to see it labelled a “gender song”; for her it was about how “we sometimes love people who have done things that we think are monstrous, but we can’t deny that we belong to the same humanity. We have to face the human truth that evil exists in the world”.

Of course, Jehnny Beth is not completely alone on her latest record. She could have written and produced it herself, but I think the richness one hears on To Love Is to Live comes from her collaborators. Not only is her boyfriend, Johnny Hostile, in the mix and a crucial part; The xx’s Romy is not someone I would naturally bring to mind when thinking about muses for Jehnny Beth. I am not sure how the two met, but it seems like they have a great chemistry when it comes to the music, and Romy seems to have released something from Jehnny Beth.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gabriel Green

Returning to the interview from The Line of Best Fit, Jehnny Beth discusses Romy and how important this partnership is:

“Romy Madley Croft of The xx was instrumental in bringing this fearlessness out of Beth as she recalls: “I remember a really great moment, and I mean great,” she says with a light-hearted eye roll and heavy dose of sarcasm, “writing "Heroine" which was a song was called The Heroism before, and I was really happy with it and [during] one of our writing sessions with Romy she literally strangled me with her two hands cause she was like so fed up with me fighting her, and fighting myself, really.”

Croft would often take Beth out for the evening without ever giving away what she had planned for them, but what would normally transpire is them heading to a restaurant or a club where Beth would end up rambling about things which Croft would write down on her phone so that they could turn it into a song the next morning.

Through this process Beth says she learned, “things I would say very simply in the conversation, I would feel too shy to say through song.” It’s almost difficult to imagine Beth as somebody who feels shyness, but as the narrative of the album unfurls, it becomes apparent that there is a power in the secrets of a closed door, and a freedom of expression and disinhibition that we succumb to”.

I will look at Jehnny Beth as this evolving artist but, before then, I was hooked by that CRACK Magazine interview I sourced from earlier. Naturally, when people are faced with a band consisting women, they might assume that their music concerns feminism or read too deeply into things. That is something Jehnny Beth was asked about a lot when she was in the band, and it raises interesting questions as to whether women are too easily labelled as solo artists or band members.

Naturally, there is a strength and passion that comes out in the band’s music, but I think it is quite limiting putting these tags on bands and making assumptions. Stepping out solo means that there are fewer confines in that respect, and, as I said, Jehnny Beth can write from a more personal space and be broader. It is interesting to think about the media and public perception of Savages and their lyrical themes. When she was chatting with CRACK, Jehnny Beth addresses feminism and those interviews with Savages:

“For someone clearly resistant to assigning limitations to experience, Beth naturally doesn’t want her art to be read as “Women’s Work”. In early Savages interviews, Beth was often asked if she was a feminist artist. The press was beginning to use celebrity, musicians in particular, as a lens to view a particular brand of feminism that was mainstreaming and, in fairness, their manner in interviews seemed to indicate feminist intentions. The singer denied all charges, expressing some confusion as to why she would be asked about it at all. She claims this dissonance in her own listening habits. As a teenager she listened to feminist electropunks Le Tigre but she tells me that their political message didn’t matter to her. The messages of strength and personal empowerment translated instead. “There’s so much in music that makes you more aware of yourself,” she says. She now understands why journalists may have conflated Savages’ messages with feminism but is still adamant that she is not a political artist. “Not all artists have to be activists. I know activists who do a wonderful job,” she states. “That’s not my job. If I wanted to do that, I’d do it full time. I’m an artist, ask me about art”.

Apologies for bringing in so many interview extracts and words from other people, but I wanted to provide some background and illumination regarding Jehnny Beth and how she has grown and changed as an artist. I am keen to crack on but, on her debut solo album, there has been this natural and impressive evolution. To Love Is to Live will take a few listens before everything starts to sink in. There is so much going on, that it rewards a lot of attention. Jehnny Beth has cited everyone from Low, to Beyoncé to David Bowie as influences on certain songs, and I think Bowie is a particularly strong fountain of influence. I do love the fact that Jehnny Beth’s first solo album is not just her; we hear Joe Talbot from IDLES and actor Cillian Murphy in the mix. The xx’s Romy, as mentioned, is on the album (as a producer and vocalist), and all of that results in this magnificent debut offering. I should really get on to discussing We Will Sin Together, as it is the song that I have chosen from the album to review:

PHOTO CREDIT: Johnny Hostile

Singles such as I’m the Man have offered a more intense and enflamed side of To Love Is to Live. I think We Will Sin Together offers the counteraction of that; a gentler song that shows a different side to Jehnny Beth. The track begins with the feint sound from the streets; there is a bit of a rumble and murmur, and one feels like they are in a dark setting, maybe watching these two people walk hand in hand. After a few moments of quiet and a bit of street buzz, we get this electronic bounce and incredible sound. The composition of We Will Sin Together is quite sparse, but there is this beauty and power that comes through. Jehnny Beth’s vocal is sublime, and the lyrics made me imagine and think hard. “Young boys forever/A key sinner murder” is an opening that had me imagining and trying to get to the bottom of its truth. The lyrics are quite oblique in the early stages, so each listener will have their own interpretation. Maybe Jehnny Beth is talking about a friend or lover, or a figure that is running from danger. “I’ve seen with a stranger/Your safe is my danger” comes next and, again, I was wondering what the origin was. There is this sense of contrast throughout. Someone who is bringing something out of the heroine. The two seem to be very different, but I think there is this connection and trust between them. I chose this song to highlight, as the lyrics really fascinate me, and I think we get one of the strongest vocal performance of the album. I love the emotion coming from Jehnny Beth’s voice, and how we get this smokiness, tenderness, and beauty. The song’s video, perhaps, offers more explanation and depth. It is very artfully shot, and we see Jehnny Beth and a lover. They look almost like statues or works of art, as they entwine and move with each other. It is a beautiful video, and there is a literal nakedness.

PHOTO CREDIT: Johnny Hostile

Having seen the video, I was thinking more about these sweethearts coming together and submitting to one another. The composition works beautifully with the vocal, and it provides just the right amount of movement and energy. “All I want is your sexy eyes/Your legs parting to the skies/We will sin together” is one of the least ambiguous sections of the song, and I do like the way there is a mix of the oblique and literal. We Will Sin Together is almost this paen or poem that takes us from the streets, to the bedroom. One can feel a palpable rush, but Jehnny Beth keeps things quite retrained – her voice does not explode like it does in other songs from the album. The video sees Jehnny Beth and her lover, as mentioned, like statues, as the camera moves and we approach the entangled duo from different angles. It is a fantastic video, and one that perfectly encapsulates the song’s sense of the artistic and the naked; the beautiful and the raw. The composition gets heavier as the song progresses, and that mantra of the two sinning together keeps coming back. I wonder whether this love of theirs is illicit, or they have sworn off of one another. One will find themselves coming back to the song, as you get more from it the more you listen. It is a stunning track that I was compelled to review, as it is a song that I have been listening to a lot. On the first spin, I felt that I had it figured out but, the more I go back, new things keep coming to the surface. It is a very rich and affecting track, and it just shows what an extraordinary artist Jehnny Beth is.

I am not sure what the rest of this year has in store for Jehnny Beth. It is an unsure one for all artists, so I guess she is looking to 2021 and will make up as much ground as possible. Releasing an album in lockdown is a very new experience, but I think a lot of people can get something from To Love Is to Live. In fact, I think the listening experience is quite different to what it would have been if things were normal. I think the songs sound even more resonant under lockdown. That might seem like a strange thing to say, but To Love Is to Live offers a sense of release and relief. Not only has Jehnny Beth released an album, but there is a book out. More is explained in the interview from The Line of Best Fit:

“To coincide with the release of her debut solo album, she has written a book of erotic short stories called C.A.L.M. (Crimes Against Love Memories) which was a natural progression from the C.A.L.M. (Crimes Against Love Manifesto) exhibition that herself and Hostile curated in 2018 which showcased his photography alongside some of her writings. Every Friday, Beth holds a ‘meeting of the perverts’ and reads out chapters of the book. So far, she has had special guests such as Joe Talbot, Eliot Sumner, Collier Schorr, with more to come.

Explaining the connection between the two, Beth says: “The exhibition if you hadn’t seen it was a recreation of a corridor in our Parisian flat. We recreated the corridor and at the end we would screen the pictures that were taken in that corridor, and there would be a spoken word voice that I recorded of the C.A.L.M. manifesto. So that, and ‘because a life lived in fear is equal to no life at all’ is the end of the first story of C.A.L.M – the character says that – so it’s about the liberation of the safety behind closed doors. Basically, we are able to be free to express ourselves, to express anonymously, to express our bodies and not die with a life half lived, and be the heroes that would be blamed for having not lived too timidly.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Michelle Helena Janssen

Whilst the exploration of carnal desires and sensualism isn’t something that is seen in such an archaic mindset anymore, I can’t help but question if there is any symbolism between To Love Is To Live, and C.A.L.M echoing Madonna’s choice to release the orgiastic coffee table book Sex to coincide with the Erotica album. The crude and lascivious decision of a libertine who intended to promote open mindedness was met with scandalous criticism from those who simply misunderstood its intent”.

It is a busy time for Jehnny Beth, and I think that her solo album is one of the very best from this year. She will be keen to get on the road and bring her songs to the fans, but I would encourage people to buy To Love Is to Live in the meantime, as it is a very compelling and nuanced album. I have been following the music of Jehnny Beth since her Savages days, and I can hear this very real leap from her. I can envisage a lot more music coming from Jehnny Beth, and it seems like she is in inspired form right now. I shall wrap things up, but do go and get her album, and follow her on social media. There will be gigs at some point, and I would also encourage people to see her perform live, as Jehnny Beth is a phenomenal artist on the stage. It has been wonderful reviewing Jehnny Beth, as she is someone I admire, and I was excited when she announced a solo album. To me, Jehnny Beth is…