Recalibrating her singular journey in the British musical landscape with her most open-hearted, direct and intimate collection of material yet. Jane Weaver returns with brand new album Love In Constant Spectacle set for release on 5th April via Fire Records.
Weaver’s new album evokes spectacular imagery and distills the artists’ vision in its purest form, elevating her inimitable sound and poetic vision to new heights. Recapturing the melancholy of her early work whilst propelling it forward, she sketches scenes as we watch new colours, shapes and languages emerge and fill the frame. Love In Constant Spectacle is Weaver’s first album since 2021’s unanimously lauded ‘Flock’ and sees her take measured steps towards a vivid, dreamlike record, that offers resolve in the face of life’s inevitability.
The foundations of Weaver’s sound are still evident – lush motorik drums, pulsating bass, custom modded synths and exotic fuzz pedals – but the stream is awash with scrabble piece poetry and Letraset lullabies leading to lush escapism, the free abandon that you’d associate with free jazz and the avant-garde. But, as determined and visionary as Weaver might be, Love In Constant Spectacle wasn’t executed without assistance. Here we find a long mooted unison with Jane’s first ever producer, John Parish (PJ Harvey, Aldous Harding), who has shared Weaver’s process in the surrounds of Rockfield Studios and Geoff Barrow’s Invada studio. Pouring all her resources, in multiple contexts, has paid-off before the needle drops.
For a musician who has persistently created her own worlds, this new album may be more conceptual in its execution than initially meets the eye. Taking cues from international cinema, it sees Jane experimenting with new writing techniques through randomizing and translating language. More escapist than its predecessor, it draws on themes of mortality and fragility, of how we ground and prepare ourself for loss. This is all framed within its own universe, where themes are articulated through abstract means, where language is cut up and reconfigured to offer new perspectives on the experiences that shape us.
“A lot of the album’s themes stem from interpretation and translation, observations and emotional cues. I love the nuances in translation on foreign film subtitles, sometimes it’s exaggerated or more beautiful, stand-alone statements that don’t make sense but when accompanied by a visual image, we can see the scene play out.”
Originating from an arpeggiated loop, album opener ‘Perfect Storm’ conjures little scenes, vignettes of someone frantic, who can foresee something unfortunate on the horizon. Floating into consciousness with a subliminal and meandering groove, there’s a captivating ambience as we ascend on our journey. While initially a gentle country inspired song, ‘Universe’ transformed into a Heavy Mellow piece under John Parish’s direction, offering a bittersweet take that wasn’t originally intended. The upfront vocal is honest and foreboding, but with resolve and promise. Reflecting on the themes within the song, Weaver explains “Sometimes things go consistently wrong and it seems like there’s no middle ground, but then there’s moments of joy where everything is ultra bright. Living with anticipatory grief for a number of years is hard to articulate, thinking about mortality becomes a constant and some days its bigger than you can deal with, but the resolve of this track is hopeful and bright.”
While touching on darker themes, there is still warmth and spirit throughout the record, ‘Romantic Worlds’ is an elaborate love song where exuberant synths explore brief encounters and our perceptions of modern romance. Title track ‘Love In Constant Spectacle’ sees our protagonist connecting with nature and her surroundings “searching for joy, wanting to love and feel loved, then uncovering it in unusual places and in the smallest, hidden things in life”.
Taking clues from our surroundings, chasing symbolism and fate, ‘Family Of The Sun’ closes on a poignant note drawing inspiration from French Kommune music and the works of protest singer Catherine Ribeiro. Returning to cinema for inspiration, Weaver explains “The song references a film where the lead character doesn’t know what she wants from life, so she’s looking for cues, relying on fate and astrological intervention, chasing symbolism in everything. I think it’s relatable when you’re unhappy and lost and searching for clues from your surroundings, to try and predict your destiny. At the end of the film fate does intervene and is resolved by a natural phenomena, suggesting that her whole life was leading up to this incredible moment”.
Love In Constant Spectacle is otherworldly, it is both intimate yet distant, a surrealist interpretation of the foundations that make us human – the stories and landscapes it paints are habitats of their own. A voyage into undisclosed pastures, it’s a heartfelt manifesto from an artist that continues to boundlessly evolve with each chapter in her career.
