Jenn Champion – Famous

Jon Doyle — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 18:32:44 +0000

Anyone paying attention to indie music in the early 2000s would likely have come across Carissa’s Wierd, one of the premier slowcore/chamber rock acts of the period who won acclaim through their ability to make melancholy something almost comforting, as though gloom was a blanket to be wrapped inside. Adopting the moniker S, founding member Jenn Champion took such sensibilities into her solo music, pushing the style towards increasingly poppy directions to capture the queer experience in all of its glimmering heartbreak.

To be released under her own name via Gay Forever, The Last Night of Sadness is a brand new album from Jenn Champion which feels like the culmination of everything before it. A product of every sadness and consolation, as well as every year spent honing her craft. The most confident record she has ever written and as a result the most honest. And if we’ve learnt anything across Champion’s oeuvre, honest means sad.

Because while the title might suggest a certain conquering or closure, The Last Night of Sadness is in fact marked by the absence of both. A dread runs through the record, a too-keen awareness of mortality which comes with a far sharper edge than Carissa Wierd’s enveloping sorrow. Champion is here to open up her chest so that we might see the real picture within. Comes to terms with life in all of its messy, fragile truth. Suffering is real and constant. To be alive is a miracle in itself.

Lead single ‘Famous’ positions this dread at the forefront, holding it at arm’s length so as to better take in its contours. “As an artist sometimes it feels like fame and success are used interchangeably and over the course of my career in music I’ve seen how fame can bring with it all this money and opportunity but is also a gilded cage,” Champion explains. “This song is one that just came to me on a run one morning as I looked out over the city and I had to pull out my phone and start writing. I’ve gone through a reset of my priorities in the last few years and this song and this album are about the journey through existential dread that has me where I am now.”

The Last Night of Sadness is out on the 13th October via Gay Forever and you can pre-order it now.

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Millennium Mix: 2002

Jon Doyle — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 18:42:43 +0000

Millennium Mix is a new series in which we remember our favourite songs released since Jesus turned two thousand and the Millennium Bug failed to show and left us with a mixture of relief and strange disappointment. The rules are 1) the song must have been released within the specific year (though we’re not going to worry too much if a Japanese vinyl release was actually 1999 or whatever) and 2) only one song is allowed from any one album (so it’s likely we’ll miss out some of our very favourite tracks, but that’s okay). Seeing as we began 2000 as nine-year-olds, it’s likely the mixes will grow longer as we progress through the 00s and pass into an era where we got a little obsessed with music.

Ah, 2002. Who could forget the International Year of Ecotourism, Mountains, and the Outback (in Australia)? If that wasn’t enough, the queen celebrated her golden jubilee, the king came back with a bang to win the World Cup, and Hollywood decided it would release (almost) nothing but sequels. Of course, there was also a lot of great music, and here’s a selection of our favourites.

Tracklisting:

1) Broken Social Scene – Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl
2) Say Hi To Your Mom – Kill the Cat
3) The Decemberists – July, July!
4) Spoon – The Way We Get By
5) The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Part 1
6) The Mountain Goats – The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton
7) The Libertines – Time For Heroes
8) Mclusky – To Hell With Good Intentions
9) Pavement – Baptiss Blacktick
10) Sleater-Kinney – One Beat
11) The Mountain Goats – No Children
12) Okkervil River – Westfall
13) Thee More Shallows – Where Are You Now?
14) Julie Doiron – All Their Broken Hearts
15) Múm – Green Grass of Tunnel
16) Iron & Wine – Faded From Winter
17) Carissa’s Wierd – So You Wanna Be A Superhero
18) Wilco – Radio Cure
19) Songs:Ohia – Didn’t It Rain
20) Sigur Ros – Untitled I

What did we miss from 2002? Let us know via the usual channels! Be sure to check out our posts on 2000 and 2001, and come back next month when we’ll be turning our attention to… 2003.

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Jenn Champion – Famous

Millennium Mix: 2002