There are time in an artist’s career when they hit a purple patch; where their writing, touring and life experience mean they arrive at the perfect moment. From the opening bars of ‘Perfect Storm’ I started to realise that Jane Weaver had hit that moment. Like a great chef working ‘off-recipe’, Love In Constant Spectacle presents a musician who seems to be working instinctively to create an album of perfectly crafted songs. By perfect I do not mean clinically produced, these are tracks that allow grit and hiss, warp and weft to enhance the mix.
Love In Constant Spectacle is Weaver’s first full album release since 2021’s Flock and draws on “themes of mortality and fragility, of how we ground and prepare ourselves for loss”. If albums had an equivalent BBFC rating then it might say ‘contains wistful elements, dark themes and slices of lament’ but overall there’s an abiding sense of optimism. Jane Weaver says “A lot of the album’s themes stem from interpretation and translation, observations and emotional cues” along with “searching for joy, wanting to love and feel loved, then uncovering it in unusual places and in the smallest, hidden things in life”. There’s a line in ‘Motif’ that resonates for me “…for the change in the mood when the magnets have moved”, a wonderful allusion of the polarity shifting in relationships (romantic or and friendship) so that pull suddenly becomes push.
What really stands out for me are the arrangements on the album. Returning to the cooking metaphor Weaver, with producer John Parish, placed all the instruments perfectly. Nothing is overdone, this is masterful pop-Feng Shui. There are bubbling synths that open ‘Perfect Storm’ and the hypnotic repeated Carole Kay-like bassline on ‘The Axis and The Seed’. Drums can float like mist over one track then bring crisp syncopation to others, and the sheer ethereal beauty of Jane Weaver’s voice can withstand lavish helpings of FX which sometimes elongate phrases or pick up the ends of lines with echoes that are sent out into space. The guitar playing is sublime with juddering chords, perfect picked-phrases that hold songs together and some great fuzzed solos on the title track and ‘Emotional Components’.
Love In Constant Spectacle is constantly in motion; kaleidoscopic and floating and it’s a perfect record for listening to on the move. The sound of it is dreamlike and nourishing, and its lyrical beauty is like a Haines manual but written by a poet.
Jane Weaver’s tour start this week with tickets available here.
18 April: Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, UK
19 April: Trinity Centre, Bristol, UK
20 April: Arts Club, Liverpool, UK
21 April: Castle & Falcon, Birmingham, UK
23 April: Oran Mor, Glasgow, UK
24 April: The Glasshouse, Gateshead, UK
26 April: New Century, Manchester, UK
28 April: Rescue Rooms, Nottingham, UK
29 April: Junction, Cambridge, UK
30 April: Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth, UK
01 May: Concorde 2, Brighton, UK
02 May: Scala, London, UK
09 May: Whelan’s, Dublin, Ireland
10 May: Róisín Dubh, Galway, Ireland
11 May: Dolans, Limerick, Ireland
12 May: Ulster Sports Bar, Belfast, UK
23-26 May: Bearded Theory, Derbyshire, UK
Jane Weaver socials: Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram | X (Twitter) | YouTube
Review by Paul F Cook
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