My Light, My Destroyer (PINK)

Cassandra Jenkins is quite simply one of the best songwriter-storytellers

currently making music. Hers is a specific and singular corner of the Great American

Songwriters, artists like David Berman, Adrianne Lenker, Jeff Tweedy and Sufjan Stevens.

They're artists connected by a sense of immediacy, not just in the writing - which is precise,

evocative, brutal at times, pitch-back funny right when you need it - but by their delivery, by

the way they sing with an immersive, total belief that carries you through their songs. These

are the artists and songs that sneak up and really live with us forever, and on My Light, My

Destroyer, Jenkins joins their ranks.

What's most remarkable about My Light, My Destroyer is it captures an

artist at an exciting leap in her evolution. So much about the album feels of-a-kind with it's

predecessors; field recordings and found sound permeate, narrative songwriting crashes

into heady, swirling compositions. Jenkins sings with what can only be described as a powerwhisper (think Sufjan Stevens, Annie Lennox, Margo Timmins or YHF-era Tweedy), her

vocals up close and intimate but subtly confrontational. But it all feels bigger here, more

finely honed, bolder and richer than her previous work and than her peers.

Born and raised in New York City, Jenkins has been touring and performing

since she was a child, self-releasing her early recordings before releasing breakthrough An

Overview on Phenomenal Nature in 2021. On My Light, My Destroyer, many of the songs are

devoted to specific feelings, and to really getting inside those feelings as opposed to getting

inside a narrative arc. Lead single "Only one" is one example, as Jenkins's asserts that a

moment, or a song, can be wholly myopic; it can embody a singular feeling, and provides no

answers.

Songs like Devotion, Delphinium Blue, Clams Casino, Echo, and Only One,

speak to the liberating quality of focused observation, even to the point of disillusionment.

"There's this idea about disillusionment that I've held onto," she says. "I really appreciate

disillusionment as a process to discover new, unexpected outcomes. We let go of expectations

this way. Expectations hold us back. It's easy to focus on jadedness or disappointment but I

actually see it more as freedom."