FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
Part Forty-Two: Jehnny Beth
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THERE are a few reasons why…
this part of Modern Heroines features Jehnny Beth. The French songwriter, born Camille Berthomier, is one of my favourite artists right now. She used to be in the band, Savages. Their final studio album, Adore Life, turned five earlier in the year. I loved Savages, though I can understand why they went their separates ways. One only needs to listen to Savages to realise that Jehnny Beth is a force of nature! I also wanted to include Jehnny Beth as her debut studio album, TO LOVE IS TO LIVE, was released last year. I think it is quite underrated, despite the fact that it got some great reviews. I am going to bring in some interviews and a bit of information about her book, C.A.L.M.: Crimes Against Love Memories, that she produced with Johnny Hostile. If you have not heard Jehnny Beth’s debut solo album, then check out TO LOVE IS TO LIVE. It is a magnificent album that has that blend of power and sensitivity. This is what CLASH wrote in their review:
“You might think that after being nominated for two Mercury Prizes, you would feel accomplished. But Savages’ Jehnny Beth said, f*ck that and has sculpted what could possibly be the album of the year by leaps and bounds, ‘To Love Is To Live’.
‘To Love Is To Live’ is Beth’s debut solo album, a cathartic tour de force founded upon a marriage of vulnerability and power reflecting upon her own emotional pilgrimage. “I am naked all the time” — the opening line of ‘I Am’, symbolic of fragility, is voiced in a low-pitched grumble coupled with sinister and ghoulish waves that could have been plucked straight out of the Stranger Things soundtrack. It all feels rather spooky until the track seamlessly melts into a desperate and poignant torrent of tenderness and emotion.
Again Beth uses the bent, low-pitch of ‘I Am’, mimicking the assertive, congenital dominance presented by the male species. Grappling with the notions of power and inequality, ‘Innocent’ is Beth’s middle finger to the patriarchy. Crafted of dense bass and brisk drum attacks, the track emits unapologetic confidence. This is further emphasised when the album reaches its most chaotic with the anarchic and face-melting sixth track, ‘I’m The Man’. This fan favourite is a frenzied discourse of masculinity.
And it soon becomes a common theme placing the delicate amongst the brazen. This is most prominent in ‘Flowers’, a treasured BBC Radio 6 pick. Beth’s semi-whispered vocals get swept under a thick rug of jugular bass, frantic keys and a half-shouted chorus.
As the result of self-scrutiny and discovery, the songwriter frequents Catholic imagery in her lyrics with tracks such as ‘Innocence’ and ‘We Will Sin Together’, but is referenced in some way in each track. It seems as though Jehnny Beth is breaking free with ‘To Love Is To Live’ as her own echo chamber, which is briefly shared with a cameo from Idles’ Joe Talbot.
Nearing its close, ‘The French Countryside’ takes the album onto a gentler path. Hearing Jehnny Beth actually sing almost sounds strange, but oddly comforting with the addition of a melancholy piano and mellow strings into the bargain. Creating a cyclic structure, the ultimate track ‘Human’ is dark and poetic, hearing those strings as a horror movie instead of a drama.
‘To Love Is To Live’ is a sonic poltergeist with sentiment to boot”.
I normally end these features with a career-spanning collection of songs from that artist. As Jehnny Beth has only one solo album to her name, I am including songs form her Savages days (she also performed in the duo, John & Jehn, alongside Johnny Hostile). I think that we are going to see a lot of compelling and challenging albums from the remarkable artist. She is not only one of the most interesting songwriters of today; her live performances are so sensational! Before I come to the C.A.L.M. book, I think it is worth introducing an interview Jehnny Beth conducted to promote TO LOVE IS TO LIVE. NME spoke with Jehnny Beth about a stunning solo introduction:
“And what better exercise in self-analysis and discovery than putting together your debut solo album? On Friday, Beth arrives with ‘TO LOVE IS TO LIVE’, an assured collection of pummelling industrial rock and soaring cinematic sounds, which back the French punk provocateur’s most raw and personal lyrics to date. The last Savages’ record, 2016’s ‘Adore Life’, was adorned on its sleeve by a fist; a symbol of the defiant spirit of the record within – tackling sex, power, fluidity and freedom. ‘TO LOVE IS TO LIVE’ feels like a much more open gesture, inviting you to get to know who Jehnny Beth really is. The sleeve this time is a naked statue of the singer, exposed yet primed to face the world.
Savages soon gained a reputation worldwide for their rabid and confrontational live shows, with Beth often drawing comparisons to the intensity of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis as a performer. You might have also witnessed this when she went on tour with Gorillaz a couple of years back after singing on ‘We Got The Power’ from 2017’s ‘Humanz’ alongside Noel Gallagher. Pained by being unable to step on stage for a while due to COVID, she’s found another outlet for her fighting spirit.
“The stage for me is where I can push the physical boundaries, be in the present and be absorbed by this total energy,” she says. “I do miss it a lot since I stopped touring with Gorillaz to work on the record. However, I’ve found the energy again at home through boxing. The boxing ring shares a lot of aspects with the stage. There’s an attitude you need to get. It makes you mentally as well as physically strong.”
Beth first had the epiphany to step away from Savages and touring to focus on her own music in 2016. Like many of us, she awoke in the early hours of January 10, opened her phone and was struck down by the news that David Bowie had died. As well as spending the day poring over his final album and parting gift ‘Blackstar’, she felt the pang that something was missing in her own life. “I realised that one day I’m gonna be gone, so in my core I felt that there was something that I hadn’t done yet,” she admits, “and that was this record.”
Asked if there was anything restrictive about Savages that drove her to go solo, she blurts out a playful “ha!” followed by a very pensive pause. “You know what? It’s all down to a life and death situation. I know it sounds quite dramatic, alright, but hear me out.”
With the album written before the onset of COVID-19, and this interview taking place before the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent worldwide protests for racial equality, little did Beth know that reality in 2020 would continue to escalate.
Still, Beth admits that many aspects of ‘TO LOVE IS TO LIVE’ became “quite magic and premonitory” – not least for its title calling for connection and togetherness. “I used to be a human being, now I live on the web… take what’s left of me and my free time,” she sings on ‘Human’, seemingly predicting our days lost to Zoom calls, as well as our desensitization through an endless algorithm of shocking headlines. ‘Innocence’ meanwhile, takes us to a vast city where everyone feels disconnected, alone and riddled with self-doubt despite being surrounded.
“There’s rage piling up on these songs as you wonder where humanity has been and where it has gone,” Beth tells NME. “Those ideas felt quite scandalous and frightening, but then a song felt like the right place for them to exist.”
Another fiction she tackles is love, and how desires don’t always fit the shapes that love songs present you with. “She loves me and I love her, I’m not sure how to please her,” she pines on ‘Flower’, written for a dancer she fell for at Jumbo’s Clown Room, the raucous landmark Hollywood burlesque bar, frequented by the stars and where Courtney Love used to dance in the early ‘90s.
“That song is shouting about the unknown,” says Beth. “When you’re in love and not sure if you’re going to be loved back, that sensation is quite tender and exciting. It definitely makes you feel alive”.
I think that Jehnny Beth is already one of the finest artists in the world. I know that she has the promise and talent to be an icon of the future! TO LOVE IS TO LIVE is an album that I keep returning to, as there are so many songs that have stuck in my mind and I need to revisit. If you can get a copy of C.A.L.M.: Crimes Against Love Memories, then do so. This is how Rough Trade describe the book:
“This is the uncompromising vision of Jehnny Beth and Johnny Hostile. Fearless and highly erotic, these stories delight in ideas of sexual transgression and liberation, offering a window onto a world where anything is permitted, and everything is safe. As each of Jehnny Beth and Johnny Hostile's characters break from the bonds of acceptability and enter a darkness of desire, submission and sex, they discover their own humanity, a place where they can truly be free.
A manifesto in the form of erotic photography, monologues and dialogues, Johnny Hostile's stimulating photography punctuates Jehnny Beth's seductive prose. Collapsing the barriers between sex an art while examining the universal values of human existence and consciousness through uninhibited desire, C.A.L.M. established Jehnny Beth and Johnny Hostile as two of the bravest and most provocative voices in fiction and erotic art today.
The full collection of Johnny Hostile's photography is featured in a hardcover limited-edition photographic art book of C.A.L.M.”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Andrew Benge/Redferns
I wrote about C.A.L.M.: Crimes Against Love Memories when it was released. I compared it to Madonna’s Sex book of 1992. She released that alongside Eroitca, so that we got this sort of companion book to a sensational album. Madonna received a lot of flack from the press because of the explicit nature of the book and album. Forward to 2020 and we have this modern-day equivalent. Whilst Madonna and Jehnny Beth are very different artists, it is impossible not to draw comparisons. Jehnny Beth spoke with The Quietus about the book:
“Not that either of us abide by a gendering of gallantry, as she tells me of her image: "I don't really think of myself as a man when I'm doing this." Yet a tough pomp trusses Jehnny Beth's new album, To Love Is To Live and her forthcoming book of erotic stories with photography by Johnny Hostile, C.A.L.M. She is a practiced interviewer and interviewee – but her polish doesn't evade difficulty. Rather, as she continues our conversation from Paris, it allows her to civilly lock horns as we discuss artists who dare not to please. As she sings in 'Innocence', "Not my duty to give you shelter/Not my duty to give you hope."
C.A.L.M. (Crimes Against Love Memories, released via White Rabbit books this July) presents adventures in gore, piss and abject passion with a forensic detachment that recalls Bataille, De Sade, Anais Nin and Patrick Suskind. On the other hand, the surreal, menacing soundscape of 'To Love Is To Live' is a dark pop drama. Throughout, adrenaline-fuelled drum machine, siren synth, amorous brass, street voices, and a ticking clock underpin Jehnny Beth's gripping vocals. Soaring from sorrowful whisper to Enya-like harmonies, creeping from cold proclamation to crepuscular beast, she's never sounded better. Melding electronica, punk, jazz and noise, she skulks through these songs of doubt – of romantic love, of the self – with a rent-boy glamour. And just when the gleaming production feels perhaps a little too controlled, she slashes its compression with a vomit of emotion in the cyberpunk thrash of 'How Could You'. She's equally piercing as we discuss her struggle to create a space, in book and album, free of social conditioning.
For me, a recurring theme unites your album and new book, C.A.L.M. You seem to suggest that by being 'sinful', we reclaim innocence. Your opening song, 'I Am' and the narrator in the story 'Bitching', both speak of "burning inside" – and this burning is far from 'wrong'. Rather, the dogging, the group sex in the story, is an act of love. 'Burning' feels like a metaphor for purification. And burning turns up again in the song, 'We Will Sin Together'. Elsewhere in the album, you sing, "I'm done with trying to fix what's wrong" and "your safe is my danger". So, I must ask, what is 'sin', for you?
Jehnny Beth: [Laughing] That is probably the best introduction to an interview I've had. You've really brought together the book and the album. When I wrote those lyrics in 2016 and 2017, they were about survival. I felt bereft of my own self. A lot of reasons behind that were to do with extensive touring. Also, the first time I came to London, I was 15. I never really looked back. I accomplished a lot with Savages, in terms of finding an artistic identity. But I found that what was burning inside, from being a teenager, was that question, "Who am I?"
I grew up as a bisexual although, despite my experiences, it took me a long time to name it. It created the anxiety of feeling I was living a lie. As a bisexual, whether you're with a man or a woman, you're always excluding the other part of yourself. In my younger life, I even desired to kill myself because the pain was too strong. Music saved me – and my relationship with Johnny Hostile, which was very open-minded. There was never anything we couldn't talk about.
Sin, as it's been told to me… My grandma is very religious but my parents were not. My sister and I are the only ones in our family not baptized. This caused quite a stir with my grandma. She bought me a Bible and cross and took me to church. I would pray every night through the Virgin Mary. I loved the discipline and the rituals. But I think the conditioning that was imposed on me is that what happens in your mind, whether or not concretized, is a sin. They [the Catholics] go deeply into your brain and are already closing doors, there. Through my art, I was trying to open those doors.
I wanted to write a book of erotic fiction because I feel fantasies should be free of sin. They shouldn't be attached to any social or political stigmas or be constrained, because they are between you and your mind”.
I am interested to see where Jehnny Beth heads next. After an accomplished and incredible debut solo album, there is going to be a lot of interest regarding a follow-up. TO LOVE IS TO LIVE is proof that, whether solo or with The Savages, she is one of the greatest modern-day songwriters and performers. There is no doubt that Jehnny Beth is going to be an iconic artist of the future. I love everything she puts out so, looking ahead, I am definitely going to…
KEEP my eyes and ears peeled.