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Jennylee right on! Rough Trade

07.12.15

Confusion continues to reign over the future of Warpaint; when they wrapped up their UK tour they indicated that they’d sporadically release singles as time went on, and that they might not necessarily make another album – the rigid framework had become a little stale for them. Then, more recently, Jenny Lee Lindberg claimed there would be another record, and that they hoped to have it finished by the end of next year. Whatever the situation, we should have plenty to tide us over in the way of solo projects, and it’s Lindberg who’s been quickest out of the blocks with right on!

Anybody hoping for a radical departure from Warpaint’s sound is going to be disappointed. Tracks like blind; the strikingly sparse opener, offer a glimpse of what the band might sound like if they stripped things back; with just Lindberg’s ghostly vocals, an ominously plucked bass guitar and some ambient noise, it sets the tone in terms of sheer atmospherics. If there’s a key difference here from her work with the group, it’s that on a slew of tracks, there are no vocal overlaps. Lindberg even pulls back on the layering, and accordingly, it’s the first time we really hear her voice without it weaving in and out of somebody else’s.

Warpaint’s real strength, though, has always been in their understanding of groove; something that Lindberg – as one-half of the rhythm section – has been at the core of. She has an enthrallingly offbeat grasp of this kind of thing – the shuffling percussion on long lonely winter, the erratic clatter of the drums that run through never and white devil’s wandering bassline are all testaments to this. Her stormy, oblique lyrics don’t reveal a great deal about Lindberg as a person, but right on! as a whole is an intriguing snapshot of exactly where she is as a musician right now.