Head of Roses

Description

On her second full-length record, Head of Roses, Jenn Wasner follows a winding thread of intuition into the unknown and into healing, led by gut feelings and the near-spiritual experience of visceral songwriting.

The result is a combination of Wasners ability to embrace new levels of vulnerability, honesty and openness, with the self-assuredness that comes with a decade-plus career as a songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and prolific collaborator.

Simply put, Head of Roses is a record about heartbreak, but from a dualistic perspective. Its about the experience of having ones heart broken and breaking someone elses heart at the same time. But beyond that, its about having to reconcile the experience of ones own pain with the understanding that its impossible to go through life without being the source of great pain for someone else.

Part of the journey for me has been learning to take responsibility for the parts of things that are mine, even when Im in a lot of pain through some behavior or action of someone else. If Im expecting to be forgiven for the things Ive done and the choices Ive made and the mistakes that Ive made, it would be incredibly cowardly and hypocritical to not also do the work thats required to forgive others the pain they caused me.

Showcasing the depth of Wasners songwriting capabilities and the complexity of her vision, Head of Roses calls upon her singular ability to create a fully-formed sonic universe via genre-bending amalgamation of songs and her poetic and gut punch lyrics. Its the soundtrack of Wasner letting go of control, of heartbreak, and of hiding who she is: I think Ive finally reached a point in my career where I feel comfortable enough with myself and what I do, that Im able to relax into a certain simplicity or straight forwardness that I wasnt comfortable with before. Head of Roses puts Wasners seismically powerful voice front and center. Those vocals help thread it all together — its a textured musicality, quilted together by intentionality and intuition.

Wasners sophomore LP as Flock of Dimes was mostly written during the isolation of early Covid-19 quarantine and fresh heartbreak. Some songs, like the title track, came to Wasner wholly-formed, like fever dreams. Aside from album opener 2 Heads, which Wasner had been saving for this purpose since she wrote it in 2015, Head of Roses was born from just a few months at her North Carolina home, during a feverish period of productivity spanning from last March through June.

On her 2016 debut album If You See Me, Say Yes, Wasner controlled every element of the production, meticulously crafting her solo debut to be a definitive statement of ability and artistry. Despite having succeeded in assuring herself of her own capabilities as a musician and producer, she felt drained by the demands of working in creative isolation. Instead, for Head of Roses, she felt drawn to a looser, more collaborative processand reached out to friend and co-producer Nick Sanborn (Sylvan Esso) to help her understand what this new process could look like. Recorded with a small group of collaborators in quarantine at Bettys in North Carolina, Head of Roses captures Wasners vision and expands upon it, with input from Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), Matt McCaughan (Bon Iver/Lambchop), and Adam Schatz (Landlady).

Sanborn and Wasner assembled Head of Roses in the same way youd put together a mixtape, painstakingly and carefully melding disparate parts into a whole, transcending genre to weave a story of heartache and healing together. Theres the undulating Two, a tapestry of strange whirring machinery, buried saxophone swimming to the surface, Were all just wearing bodies like a costume til we die. Or Hard Way, hypnotic and trudging forward beneath the slight distortion of Wasners lilting melodies — Couldnt call it off / couldnt make it last / so I took the hard way — recorded in one fell swoop during an afternoon at Bettys. Other tracks, like Lightning, are grounded in sparseness, the warmth of clean electric guitar — When you dressed me in / a different skin / I forgot who I am / I watched it happen / But I cant understand. No Question feels somehow celestial, born from the chasm between organic and electronic textures, and Awake for the Sunrise is a pure and straightforward country ballad, written at 6:30am after a sleepless night. Closer Head of Roses, a slow-burn, is the fitting thesis of the record, including its imagery: a garden absolutely overrun, blooming all over the place, the thorns of the thing fully inseparable from the flowers themselves.

And in the same way a homemade, painstakingly-crafted mixtape plays out, with the makers fingerprints left all over its songs so goes Head of Roses. Carefully curated and culled from the depths of Wasners heartbreak and healing, its deeply, intensely personal.

But just as we change ourselves by embracing the pain of loss and uncertainty, so too are the purpose of these songs changed through the act of creating them. Having succeeded in healing the person who made them, they now exist for those who find them in their own moments of need. Always in motion, the original spirit of creation has already flown from this placebut its left behind a blueprint, a tool for you, to lean on, too.