Jane Inc. began as both a product of lockdowns and a statement of liberation. The pandemic-spawned project has allowed its CEO —Toronto-based artist Carlyn Bezic—to present a more stylistically promiscuous, lyrically provocative identity separate from her collaborative pursuits in the U.S. Girls universe, reinventing this seasoned indie axe-slinger as an all-seeing art-pop auteur equally enamored with electro-disco and bossa nova, like a DIY Madonna who never left the Danceteria. But the euphoric feeling of self-discovery captured on Jane Inc.’s first two albums— 2021’s Number One and 2022’s Faster Than I Can Take—was offset by anxieties over the horrors outside her window and life in their aftermath. “I can’t square the calm/And the eerie feeling of a world on pause,” Bezic sang on the latter album’s title track, “With my heart sprinting in my chest/ Trying to guess what's next.”
Jane Inc.’s third album, A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH, begins in a similar state: “My heart’s beating out of my chest,” she repeats on the opening track, though in this case, the death she’s contemplating is her own. In April 2023, Bezic was on tour with U.S. Girls when her band’s van broke down on a Massachusetts freeway. While they were waiting on the side of the road for a tow truck, a semi crashed into their vehicle. Fortunately, everyone walked away from the accident, but it proved to be the opening chapter to a tumultuous year for Belzic that saw the end of a decade-long relationship and a surgical procedure to remove a cancerous growth from her vocal cord.
It was one of those periods when all the usual fortune-cookie cliches start to feel like holy scripture, and A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH is the resultant gospel according to Bezic. When she says she’s been “reborn on the dancefloor” on the album’s namesake opening track, she’s not just another indie rocker surrendering to the transforming, soul-purifying power of house music; she’s heralding the promotion of Jane Inc. from a fantasy alter-ego to a real-world manifestation, one that’s inspiring her to approach both life and music with the same uninhibited, unfiltered attitude.
Bezic’s previous records were never lacking for synthy, beat-driven escapades, but they still bore the fidgety fingerprints of her former band, the experimental post-punk outfit Ice Cream. On A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH, Bezic—in partnership with U.S. Girls/Martha Wainwright producer Edwin de Goeij—has the confidence to let her latent dance-pop affinities lead the way, making it the first Jane Inc. album you could actually imagine blasting out of a club P.A. The piano-house pleasures of “reborn (on the dancefloor)” are followed by the equally elating Moroder-esque moves of “elastic,” where the experience of cheating death has invested Bezic with an aura of invincibility: “I want you/And your thousands of eyes, making me new,” she declares, framing the relationship between artist and audience as a form of mutual seduction.
Later on, “what if” effectively renders Bezic’s recent upheavals as a seven-minute club opera, imagining the roadside wreck as the moment when the old version of Bezic died and the more free-spirited Jane seized control. What begins as a talky techno track in the Marie Davidson vein eventually builds into a transcendental house thumper, and by the time the piano lines start rolling into the mix, Bezic’s existential self-analysis has given way to an ecstatic new daily affirmation: “I! Want! More!” Even when Bezic tempers the 4/4 pulse, A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH still packs a punch, thanks to her sharpened songcraft and unrestrained vocal performances: “freefall” belongs to the Sophie B. Hawkins/Nelly Furtado/Haim continuum of gently grooving, steering-wheel-tapping alt-pop anthems tailor-made for belting out the window when stuck in a traffic jam on your morning commute; “i’m alive!!!” earns its three exclamation points by setting Bezic’s seize-the-day manifesto to a fashionable 1980s Bowie bounce.
It would be too reductive to characterize A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH as simply a display of I-will-survive bravado—it’s also a candid account of the awkward conversations and difficult decisions that precipitate a personal epiphany. The album reveals its wounded core in the form of the wistful breakup ballad “keeping it with me.” In the lyrics, Bezic is torn between clinging to old disposable-camera photographs of the life she once knew and leaving the past behind, a tension that’s reflected in a musical tug-of-war between nostalgic ’70s soft-rock Wurlitzer tones and an incessantly shuffling drumbeat that’s prodding her to move on. And in contrast to the car-crash flashbacks that animate the record’s blood-pumping bangers, “drumheller” closes out A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH on an uncomfortably numb note, as Bezic embarks on a road-trip rumination on the mysteries of life—and the cruel twists of fate it can hand you—over a downtempo Stereolab beat. But for all its trembling vulnerability, “drumheller” essentially functions as the origin story of Jane Inc.’s superhero myth. After recounting the moment she received her cancer diagnosis, Bezic’s tone shifts. “Take a chance, baby/Come on let’s take a chance,” she repeats as the track fades out, as if to psychologically steel herself for the unpredictable journey ahead, and remind us that the only thing scarier than nearly losing your life is confronting the question of what to do with your new lease on it.
