Dinner Music #155: The weekly lineup
experimental folk, gospel R&B, indie rock (with Cassandra Jenkins)
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This week we’re listening to selections by Cassandra Jenkins(The Cassandra Jenkins Complex), a musician and performer, though the designations are not adequate to describe the beauty (and humor!) in her work. A native New Yorker, Cassandra came up through the East Coast folk scene playing in her family’s band before launching a solo career in the mid-2010s. I came to her music through the 2021 album Overview on Phenomenal Nature, which experiments with jazz alongside dream pop and fuzzy indie rock (and also was named a Best New Album by Pitchfork). Her follow-up, the album My Light, My Destroyer, took hold of tenderness and injected it into everything, the lyrics, the music, the elements, like adding a field recording of stargazing with her mother. Though My Light, My Destroyer is my favorite, I’ve listened to her most recent album My Light, My Massage Parlor the most. An album birthed from her so-called “spa era,” it traces over previous songs, finding avenues not taken and investigating them anew, creating the sort-of particular bliss that exists only within spa walls, in those spaces for those seeking wellness.
I do write very slowly. I usually start with a few brush strokes and I mean, I think about it more like clay actually than I do a canvas: Start with a slab and slowly whittle it down and edit it and change its shape so many times before it feels like it reveals itself. I’m always looking for cues for what something wants to be. I rarely go at it with a finished idea in mind, like a concept in mind. I get pretty bored pretty quickly if I’m just simply executing an idea that I’ve had. When it becomes execution, it loses its spark for me.
Cassandra sent an extra long playlist this week—full of indie rock, folk, psych pop, rock n’ roll plus so much more—and it’s so good. She included a song I used to love and had forgotten about, Nectarine by Mr Twin Sister, which set me down a nice nostalgic journey.
And, I have to mention, Cassandra sent us her very own recipe for Gazpacho, which means this is the very first original recipe in the newsletter. Very special!!
Enjoy.