For the uninitiated, Cassandra Jenkins is a New York-based singer-songwriter with a pristine voice, precise enunciation and a tone that at times recalls St. Vincent (although you’d rarely confuse the two). Her star began rising quickly with her 2021 hushed, downcast sophomore album “An Overview on Phenomenal Nature,” which paired personal, finely honed lyrics with subtle acoustic instruments and atmospherics.
But her new album, “My Light, My Destroyer,” is such a leap forward that it vaults her into a whole different league. While her previous albums were more solo and low-key, this one finds her working with a cast of strong musicians — notably producer-guitarist Andrew Lappin — and expanding her musical palette exponentially, from classic indie rock to electronics-infused ballads, with splashes of string sections and even jazz in the musical backing, and her songwriting has advanced just as dramatically.
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The album starts gently with the quiet “Devotion,” but then the electric guitars come crunching in on “Clams Casino” and it seems like we’re off into indie-rock heaven — but then there’s another pivot on “Delphinium Blue,” a gentle, atmospheric track with a nearly all-electronic backing and a distant, sung counter-melody. The album’s 10 songs (and three interludes) continue in that manner, shifting smoothly between styles in a remarkably diverse but cohesive set that’s united by her unmistakable voice.
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There’s plenty of ear candy for indie-rock fans, from the aforementioned “Clams Casino” to the single “Petco,” a musing on humanity’s increasing distance from nature as she looks in a pet-store window at “two doves wrapped up in filthy and true love” and the “sideways gaze of a lizard” as the electric guitars build the song’s intensity on each verse (and even slip in a very “OK Computer” solo toward the end). Throughout, there are shades of everyone from Liz Phair, the Breeders and PJ Harvey to Sharon Van Etten and Phoebe Bridgers (please note, the last-named two artists are reference points and not influences), but the album is musically multi-dimensional and features intriguing arrangements, including one segment that seems to feature a sax, trombone and violin.
It all adds up to one of the best albums of the year so far and what feels like Jenkins’ true arrival.