The 20-year-old underground star, Jane Remover, shocks her fans with a complete 180 degree turn with an electronic twist on shoegaze music on her new full-length album “Census Designated”.
After a two year hiatus, Remover is back with her sophomore LP “Census Designated”, which is a direct follow-up from her 2021 critically-acclaimed debut record “Frailty”. Jane takes a new path with this album, experimenting more with the shoegaze and rock genre instead of her glitchy, electronic and chronically “online” sound that made her previous album so special. While this album isn’t as versatile as her debut because of the instrumentals and overall sounds, she still did an outstanding job with creating a unique and emotional array of songs that feature tumultuous buildups, cathartic ballads and energetic climaxes.
Throughout 2022, Remover began the rollout for her upcoming album, starting with the demo versions of the opening and closing tracks “Cage Girl” and “Contingency Song”. In the third quarter of 2023 she began releasing the lead singles for the album, starting with “Lips” in August and the title track “Census Designated” in September, all of which led to the highly anticipated official release of the full album on October 20, 2023.
“I used to fantasize about getting in my car and driving somewhere off-grid, never to be seen again,” Remover stated in a post on Instagram following the release of the album, “I was so afraid of my mind and what it was turning into.”
This was Remover’s driving passion behind the album, which also influenced the name “Census Designated.” The album focuses on themes such as confronting an uncomfortable reality, abusive and manipulative relationships, alcoholism, jealousy and self-harm.
The album has 10 songs and spans to a total length of 62 minutes, with the most notable songs being “Idling Somewhere”, “Video” and “Contingency Song”. All songs on the album were fully produced by Remover, once again displaying the incredible talent she has.
“Idling Somewhere” is a seven minute song that falls in the second half of the album. The song talks about jealousy from unrequited love. Remover finds herself becoming more and more jealous of her friends’ relationships and how much love people receive. The song has a lot of references to one of her songs “Your Clothes” on her previous album, which talks about the same topics. Because of the song length, the song undergoes a lot of change in sound and structure, making it one of the most grandiose songs on the record.
The most cathartic song on the album, “Contingency Song”, is a great closer that presents us with an ambient sounding ballad which discusses the realization that she is changing herself to be more appealing to her lover, which ultimately makes her disappointed in herself. It’s a good change of pace and really ends the album off questioning what you just listened to. I can’t think of a better track to end such an amazing album off with. It’s one of my favorite songs on the album and maybe ever.
While her previous album is extremely special to me, I do think she made a better album which leads me to give this album a 9.4/10. This is, in my opinion, the best album to come out so far this year. I really liked the direction Remover took with this album and I’m extremely excited to see her next music endeavors.
