JANE INC. - Number One

"Who is Jane Inc.? She is CEO and pencil pusher; she is a blank, unknowable Jane Doe, and she is the singular solo project of Carlyn Bezic. Also known as one half of weird-pop duo Ice Cream, one fifth of rock and roll fever dream Darlene Shrugg, and touring member of US Girls band, Bezic has been building a body of work on merging a pop sensibility with off-kilter influences. Jane Inc's debut album, Number One, out on Telephone Explosion in March 2021, is an exciting progression of that body of work: a meditation on the self that marries pop songwriting with swirling sonic experiments. The eight songs on Number One act as pieces of a collage, forming a face that's both familiar and strange, direct and oblique. Synths sneer and shimmer, fuzzed-out guitars play against Bezic's soothing and hypnotic voice, and a constant and confident bass grounds each track. She brings us into flowing, dreamlike reflections, creating an expansive world that stretches beyond the album's limits. Number One began with Bezic layering bass, guitar, synth, and vocals on top of drum breaks and samples. She later recruited Toronto recording engineer and stalwart Steve Chahley (Badge Epoque, US Girls, Ben Stevenson, et al) to co-produce. They then recorded live drums performed by Evan J. Cartwright (U.S Girls, Tasseomancy), saxophone by Nick Dourado (BUDi Band, Aquakultre, Fiver) and Wurlitzer by Scott Harwood (Scott Hardware), expanding a bedroom project to blown out depths and glittering heights. The album's thoughtful production and lush layering of futuristic synths push the quick satisfaction of pop song structure into a hypnotizing work that reveals more of itself with each listen. Know thyself. Number One is a testament to the endurance and the shortcomings of that familiar maxim in our current climate. How do we make sense of the world and our place in it when we feel both complicit in its ills and victimized by them? How do we navigate being more connected than ever, when that connection twists reality and disconnects us from ourselves? How do we understand our mental health, our relationships, the structures that surround us? We look inward to find glimmers of truth, watching the fragments come together to form a distorted reflection, our own eyes atop a stranger's grinning, Colgate smile." - Telephone Explosion .