While it’s still an album I’m pretty fond of, it’s still a little strange to me that Cassandra Jenkins’ An Overview on Phenomenal Nature ended up being my number 1 album of 2021. Not only because it was also Sean’s number 1 album, which was a rarity despite us having a lot of new music overlap, but also because it just doesn’t reek of Album of Year status for me. But, chalk it up to 2021 being a pretty weird year, full of stops and starts and unwanted meditation, which matched the vibe of that album pretty nicely. Three years later, Jenkins returned this year with My Light, My Destroyer, an album that retains the peculiar, phenomenal nature of that album while building on the disparate sounds that Jenkins is bent on pulling together into one collection of songs.
My Light, My Destroyer begins fittingly enough, with a quiet, acoustic exploration of the idea that bears the song’s name, “Devotion”. But after that, the album seems to skip from genre to genre with each song, most notably with a more forceful, electric sound on wonderfully-named songs like “Clams Casino”, which ponders the contents of mentioned seafood dish, or “Petco”, about trying to feel less alone while wandering through a pet store. Despite the expanded nature of the sonics of these songs, their lyrics retain how good Cassandra Jenkins is at conveying whatever thoughts and feelings seem to wash over her as she makes her way through the world.
This ability of Jenkins to casually throw whatever interests her into her songs manifests itself in the types of spoken interludes that bring to mind the masterful “Hard Drive” from her last album. Here, you’ve got a “song” like “Betelgeuse” that sees Jenkins interviewing her friend (I assume?) about the constellations. And while it hasn’t gotten the most repeated plays of any of the songs on the album, its weirdness feels of apiece with Jenkins’s constant curiosity for anything and everything the universe has to offer. And when you pair these moments with Jenkins occasionally leaning into her synthier, sax-laden side, you’ve got another album that feels disjointed and seamless at the same time, like the thoughts that go through a person’s head over the course of a day.