Jane Weaver’s the twelfth solo studio album is more inward-looking than its dance orientated predecessor ‘Flock’ (2021) which was promoted as “pop music for post-new-normal times.”
For ‘Love In Constant Spectacle’, she is in a dreamier state of mind which experienced producer John Parish is more than qualified to explore and enhance. Take, for instance, the motoric in slow motion and hushed vocals of The Axis and The Seed or the exotic drum-driven mood of Happiness in Proximity.
Inhabiting a musical space somewhere between Broadcast and Goldfrapp while drawing on themes of mortality and fragility, Weaver says “A lot of the album’s themes stem from interpretation and translation, observations and emotional cues.”
Her eclectic sources include the nuances and ambiguities to be found in foreign film subtitles so its no surprise that her lyrics are often impressionistic and surreal
The woozy customized synths of Romantic Worlds are in tune with a song about love’s complications. Univers opens with the great line “Don’t blame me, it’s the universe that’s wrong”; a perfect riposte to make use of when everything gets too overwhelming.
The eclectic sources include the nuances and ambiguities to be found in foreign film subtitles so its no surprise that the lyrics are often impressionistic and surreal.
The cinematic Family of the Sun closes with a Krautrock inspired instrumental passage and Weaver says she imagined a film character searching for meaning in life and ”relying on fate and astrological intervention, chasing symbolism in everything.”
The ten songs touch upon wilder experimental urges but by keeping the more extravagant flights of fancy in check, the effect is all the more powerful.
