Jennifer Castle - Camelot
Solstice Radio
Released on November 1st, 2024
On the Cups N Cakes master spreadsheet, where the team goes to sign up for reviews and such, Jennifer Castle is listed as a “national treasure”, and I can’t say I disagree. Since witnessing her live a few years ago, (I’m still in disbelief that I got to see her along with The Weather Station in the tiny little Aviary in Edmonton - what a dream!) I've felt that Castle is one of our best - or indeed one of the best anywhere. She’s a remarkable presence, both live and on her beautifully crafted recordings, occupying a rare and inimitable space in music. True to this form, on Camelot, her first full-length since 2020, Castle returns with a graceful reaffirmation of her unique place in the musical landscape.
With a somewhat bigger sound than the stripped-down acoustic tenderness of 2020’s Monarch Season, Camelot offers more instrumentation and production but still maintains a live rawness and intimacy. The record finds Castle’s distinctive voice warbling across varied territories ranging from sweeping piano balladeer to stripped down acoustic naturalist. Indeed, her voice transmutes and guides the songs from easy-on-the-ears indie-folk to something more sublime. The weight and tone of a song can shift multiple times, sometimes even within the span of a single line. For example, on album closer “Fractal Canyon”, the line, “i’m not alone here” is heard both as a question, and as a declaration.
Thematically, Camelot is a winding, multilayered record. There is a lot of grief and longing here, but there is also playfulness, celebration, and joy. Taking the mythical middle-ages city as a titular metaphor, Camelot is on its own mythic quest, with lyrics searching for what you might call the sacred, in everything, from the natural world, to strained relationships, to the mundane, to the esoteric. The record shines a spotlight on the in-between spaces and paradoxes of life; that the truth is both unattainable, because all the questions come back unanswered (such as on “Camelot”), and also right there in front of your eyes, spoken through the entrancing hips of a dancer (“Lucky #8”). Camelot shows Castle making a home in uncertainty. Living with mystery and unanswered questions is uncomfortable for most of us, but something Castle seems to have made her peace with.
And the thing is, Jennifer Castle is a very talented musician, yes, but more than this she is a poet. And like all the truly great poets, she doesn’t tell you how to feel. Instead, she comes at things from the side, whispering questions and holding up a mirror, and somehow inviting you into what needs to be felt.
- Chris Lammiman