Jenn Wasner’s third album as Flock of Dimes is a mellow meditation on codependency.
Jenn Wasner, one of the founding members of the critically beloved ‘10s outfit Wye Oak and current touring member of Bon Iver, released her third album as her solo project, Flock of Dimes, this month.
She’s been verbose about the record’s contents, releasing dozens of track notes and sitting for in-depth interviews, taking a magnifying glass to the album. It’s a rumination on codependency — one Wasner started from the angle of reviewing the codependent relationships in her life, but in the making of the album realized that it just as much about the falsity of her savior/helper/giver role.
Wasner has historically avoided the acoustic guitar out of an abundance of caution around falling into the “female singer-songwriter” trap. She embraces it here in service of letting her words lead. The sonic world of The Life You Save is very minimalistic. Lovers of the quieter things in life may appreciate its unfailing mellowness; popheads and rock fans may find it sleepy.
Wasner may not be the archetypal singer-songwriter, but the album prompts comparisons: initially Sarah McLaughlin’s warbling, then a Kacey Musgraves pedal steel-backed psychedelic-folk; then Angel Olsen’s tender Americana. On that note, this record is kind of like if you took Angel Olsen back from the sublime, eldritch canyon of grief she faced on Big Time and tucked her snugly into a little room outfitted in all neutrals and Pottery Barn cream blankets. Both albums look deeply inward with Olsen after her revelation of her sexuality and the nearly-concurrent death of her parents; Wasner following the thread from propping up her troubled parents to playing God in her current relationships. The difference is that Big Time, as you might expect, builds: it has quiet moments, but then takes off, with Olsen seemingly commanding a grand orchestra to match the enormity of her grief. The Life You Save, meanwhile, skirts such a build: you can’t even particularly groove to it. The last track in particular, “I Think I’m God” borders on spoken word.
The hardline pare-down requires a lot of patience and presence from listeners, but it is by design. Wasner said in an interview that one of her band members noticed “the words are the guitar solo,” and she agreed. She wanted the music to be as accessible as possible so no listeners would encounter a barrier to connecting with her words.
Her voice sounds like a string instrument: warm, steady and light, but with a consistent grain. She uses it with great restraint and evenness to carry delicately crafted lyrics like “if you don’t want to feel it, all you have to do is wait / the pain will be inflicted in some other eventual way,” “I know you’re not the enemy I seek, just a vision of the dark in me” and “you wouldn’t trust me if you knew how hard I tried.”
“Long After Midnight” is a highlight. Deceptively sweet fingerpicking and dreamy pedal steel-backed lyrics that scream savior complex, like Wasner offering “please take the keys to my car.” “The Enemy,” too, leaves an impression, partly thanks to the sole instrumental explosion on the album. That moment is like the record itself: coziness atop an undercurrent of grating insanity. It brings home the tension and agony of the codependency Wasner chronicles, and the record would do better with a touch more of the drama in its content bleeding into its form.
The team behind this album, Wasner foremost, clearly approach their work as a craft. It pulls many punches to direct attention to others and is comfortable demanding close, quiet attention. Subsequently, it’s not one to put on en route to the train, but it does leave well-articulated moments of profundity in its wake: “it is not love to be a constant,” “I poured into you like wishes down the well, now I’m trying to tell you how to be, afraid that what you do to you, you’ll do to me.”
You won’t fully feel the epic highs and lows of enmeshment in The Life You Save. We have Snail Mail’s discography for that, anyway. Find instead a few dozen wise little poems bundled in strings.
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