Spartan Jet-Plex, the prolific project of Nancy Kells, is back with a new album, Godless Goddess. If you’re unfamiliar with Spartan Jet-Plex, Kells uses the moniker to create her own unique brand of bedroom pop, what we have previously described as “not so much between genres but rather apart from the discussion entirely,” forming unsettling atmospheres to communicate more efficiently. “[Kells’s] skill lies in the ability to transport us to another dimension,” we wrote in a review of All the World, “part digital landscape, part strange dreamworld, a place that ripples at its edges and nothing is quite as it seems.”
Having followed Kells’s releases pretty closely for the last few years, it’s interesting to watch as her music develops. As the above descriptions suggests, Spartan Jet-Plex has never been afraid to experiment, and has utilised all manner of layering and atmospherics to evoke feelings impossible through words alone. However, her latest release, Godless Goddess, sees that reigned in a little, proving to be perhaps the most focused and minimalistic Spartan Jet-Plex album to date.
In demonstration of this, first track ‘Stop’ is patient and beguiling, a hit pop song slowed just slightly, giving it a before unheard dreamy majesty. The themes are well worn and universal, that age old struggle between dark and light, of pushing against past pain and trying to be okay.
I’ve got to stop, turning me around
don’t know what’s in my mind
sometimes I’m doing fine
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Kells is joined by Berko Lover for the gauzy quirk of ‘Chronostasis Interlude’, before ‘Fear’ puts down roots with its subtle guitar and richly emotive vocals. The song is prime example of the willingness to dial back on the experimentation in favour of slightly more conventional songwriting. The individuality that makes Spartan Jet-Plex is still present, but bestowed with a new lucidity.
Which is not to suggest that the inventive weirdness of previous releases is excised entirely. ‘Baubo’ burbles with electronics and great tidal washes of white noise, like some future robot’s attempt to reimagine a past organic world. Then things get unsettling, as disembodied laughter fills the air and the song fades out, and the effect is as recognisable as it is hellish—the subcutaneous itch of dread that will arise when one is surrounded by laughter but not in on the joke.
Stripping things right back to the bare bones, ‘Everything’ is basically an acoustic folk song built of strummed guitar and subtle church-like keys. ‘Entrance’ begins by following a similar pattern, a stark and richly felt love song made ethereal with susurrant backing vocals. That threatens to change around the halfway mark, although the electronic breakdown proves little more than an interlude. The decision to include this little break, aside from again showing how Kells is uninterested in following conventional song structures, has the effect of making the rest of the song seem brighter, like a painter placing complementary colours side by side to make them both stand out.
An instrumental interlude, ‘Trust and Believe (Survivors)’ sounds like the soundtrack to some ominously mind-bending sci-fi scene, although, as the title suggests, its message lands a lot closer to home. Then finale ‘Light’ leaves us with crystalline atmospherics and wittering birdsong, eventually morphing into acoustic guitar and Kells’s vocals. It might be the closest thing to a warming ballad Spartan Jet-Plex has ever made, and sees a return to the dichotomy of the first song—the search for light and good in what can be a very dark and troubled world.
What can you or I give life
be what it may there’s always light in this life
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Godless Goddess is out now via Grimalkin Records on vinyl and cassette and you can get it from the Spartan Jet-Plex Bandcamp page. Grimalkin has launched a new Patreon campaign too, so do consider subscribing to that.
