Census Designated
Census Designated, released on October 20, 2023, is New Jersey native Jane Remover’s sophomore album, a follow-up to her debut album, Frailty. The record is a massive departure from her earlier works. Her past projects, like Frailty and the EP Teen Week, blend high-energy digicore, drum n’ bass, and just about every other electronic genre that took over SoundCloud post-pandemic. In contrast, Census Designated introduces a grungy, wall-of-sound rock style, one she had been playing with on her side project, “Venturing”, but perfected with this album. While Jane describes Frailty as a coming-of-age album, an LP that reflected a younger, more naive version of herself, Census Designated is a sobering gut-punch to the realities of adulthood; a violent rain that pounds down on every back alley and abandoned building in your dying hometown. This is reflected, not only in the gurgling, granulated textures, and distorted, washed-out guitars that define the production of the record but also in the uncomfortable and disgusting imagery of the lyrics and story told throughout the album.
Census Designated follows an unnamed protagonist through the depths of a nightmarish relationship lasting the course of an excruciatingly long night. Spanning a brisk 10 tracks, Jane tells a story of abuse, alcoholism, and extreme emotional codependency, made more vivid by the imagery pervasive throughout the album. The lyrics are oftentimes rife with vivid horror, cannibalism, and gore. Blood and guts lie everywhere in this album, their foul stench sticking to every strum of the guitar, the muddy rust of the protagonist’s innards seeping into every feedback squeal and hard-clipped drum track, drowning it all in a squishy, low squelch of phlegm and stomach acid.
Throughout the album, body horror is a prevalent metaphor for the codependence exhibited in the relationship. Every song on the album paints an extremely vile image, as the protagonist gives up pieces of themselves to their lover – both in a metaphorical sense and in a very real, grotesque sense. Lyrics on the album often feature extreme depictions of the protagonist dismembering their body (or allowing their partner to do it to them), being violently cannibalized as they relish in their tendons and ligaments, and physically growing into their lover. Songs like Always Have Always Will demonstrate this perfectly, with lyrics like “How filthy can I get before you rip me from your chest/You take the color from my face and I fill your bed with vomit” or the lyrics “Pry my jaw open at the ends” on Idling Somewhere. Jane uses extreme, nauseating imagery in these songs to attach physical effects to the mental anguish the protagonist undergoes in the relationship. This, combined with the album’s erratic song structure and production, creates an overwhelming sense of dread. The protagonist – who the listener so desperately wants to see leave this relationship – only sinks deeper into the depths of attachment, to the point where their body physically rots, like a corpse unable to rest.
Jane’s ability as a producer, although not as central as in her previous works, also shines through on the record. The songs on the album progress like waves in a heaving torrential downfall. Extremely distorted, wall-of-sound style guitars screech like hyenas over trash can snares and crash after crash after crash on songs like Fling and Idling Somewhere, with sections of slow, atmospheric guitars and stretched vocal melodies offering a short respite from the turmoil and angst of previous sections that returns just before the listener can get comfortable. The production of the work creates a very literal manifestation of the protagonist’s mental state of extreme distress, granted only fleeting moments of tranquility. Many songs on the album, like Cage Girl/Camgirl and Contingency Song, stay strictly ambient with long droning tones building tension for the entire track, overlaid with guitars drowning in chorus and flangers and finished with fluttery vocal runs and chopped and screwed vocal samples. These songs contrast with the writhing angst of the former tracks and represent a much less pronounced feeling of unease. The droning tension creates a sense of foreboding tragedy– a guttural feeling of desperation and hopelessness. Although the protagonist understands that there is something wrong with the relationship, there is an inability, or maybe unwillingness, to see that it is the very nature of the relationship itself that is causing their distress.
Census Designated is a particular kind of dread. It's a slow, creeping fear that follows you on your walk home, a disturbance in the still, Alice-blue winter air. It’s one that stays just out of sight, ducking behind park benches and lurking in the midnight shadows whenever you turn around. It’s the kind of dread unique to the graying rot of suburbia - a dread that reminds you that no matter how far you run, your burning legs will never bring you to escape the endless driveways and perfectly manicured lawns and banal repetition that lines every road and alley and crevice of the world manufactured around you. It's a low hunger in the depths of your stomach that will never satiate, no matter how much you eat and chew and tear and gnaw. It's your feet growing roots into the asphalt, tearing your Achilles heel so you can never disobey it and try to run again.
However, Census Designated is also a triumph. It’s the open blue sky, streaked with burnt orange from the setting sun, calling for you to rip your legs from your thick, spider-plant roots, to run, and never look back. Census Designated is learning to live again- finding promise in a decaying world.
Written by Zeeshan Kahn, Design: Ada Packer, Social Media: Clara Valkoun