So going into the record it was important that it tells a story. It’s about the avoidance of painful truths and embracing that duality - it may make it more difficult to protect yourself from pain, but in the end it is a path towards growth and healing. This record is about having your heart broken and breaking someone else’s heart at the same time. It’s impossible to get into that without getting into the essential themes of the record, so I’ll give you my elevator pitch for that just to start us off. I pared it down to the 10 tracks that it is, but “2 Heads” still made the cut. I had this song, like you said, for quite some time, and I had accumulated quite a bit of material that could have gone on Head Of Roses. I think the opening line, “How can I explain myself?” - it’s a lyrical throat-clearing moment or something. There’s something that can intuitively happen in writing where you know instantly that it’s either an opener or a closer, just based on the quality that it has. JENN WASNER: That’s a question I actually had to ask myself in the making of this record. Why was this a piece of music you knew, even six years ago, you wanted to hang on to as the opening track for the next Flock Of Dimes album? You actually wrote it back in 2015 before the first Flock Of Dimes album had even come out. To me this song is this sort of disembodied hymn, a slow intro to the album. Now that you can hear the whole thing for yourself for the first time, dig in and read along below for Wasner’s stories behind how Head Of Roses came to be. It’s a rich, complex album that unfolds more with each listen. She’s writing about the quieter ways storms can visit our lives, and all the destruction and renewal that comes with that.Īhead of the album’s arrival, we caught up with Wasner, who walked us through the inspirations and themes of each song on Head Of Roses. But what makes it so powerful in the context of Wasner’s work is how she is now grappling with elemental, eternal human struggles through music that is emotionally raw but aesthetically subtler than some of the great cathartic Wye Oak moments of the past. The album is - as you might expect - strikingly beautiful throughout. Head Of Roses presents a slightly older, ever so slightly wiser Wasner, a woman exiting a strange and tumultuous time with a completely altered idea of herself. But along the way she does lean into a comparatively stripped-down approach, singing over guitar or piano with only a few accompaniments or embellishments. In tracing the arc and decline of a relationship as well as stages of grief, it makes room for seething yet matured rock songs like “Price Of Blue” alongside strange yet infectious pop songs like “Two.” There are moments of transportive, dreamlike melodies. That is not to say Head Of Roses is all one mood. In an effort to speak more openly, Wasner’s come out with perhaps the most direct set of music she’s yet released. But something about Head Of Roses feels different. Wasner’s music has never shied away from delving into the deepest and most mysterious corners of human emotion. Wasner’s new album Head Of Roses arose from great heartbreak, processing that loss within the isolation of the pandemic, and the resulting seismic shifts she felt in her own perception and identity. In that sense, Like So Much Desire was a fitting introduction to this new era of Flock Of Dimes. Like So Much Desire suggested we were in for a very different Flock Of Dimes - it was an intimate, reflective, spare collection of songs. In the years since, Wasner’s proved that both of her projects are malleable, that neither is about certain stylistic constraints. Once upon a time, Flock Of Dimes was viewed as a synthier, poppier counterpart to Wye Oak but then, that wasn’t all that removed from Wye Oak’s own turn in that direction with Shriek. Last year, Jenn Wasner announced the revival of her solo project Flock Of Dimes in exciting fashion: Newly signed to Sub Pop, she reappeared with a surprise EP called Like So Much Desire amidst details that she was already in the studio recording a new Flock Of Dimes album.
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