Album Review: Jehnny Beth - To Love Is To Live

Since Savages' 2016 album, Adore Life, the band's mercurial lead vocalist Jehnny Beth has ventured out – even recording with Gorillaz. Now, with the quartet's status in limbo, the French musician is presenting her inevitable solo debut. With To Love Is To Live, she disturbs Savages' post-punk paradigm. The soundscapes are experimental, electronic and occasionally industrial, though Beth careers into nouvelle chanson on French Countryside. Still, in declaring an existential dread, Beth's intensity remains, as does her soaring voice.

Beth has approached To Love Is To Live collaboratively, seeking input from not only her old John & Jehn partner Johnny Hostile, but also producer Flood and The xx's Romy Madley Croft. Irish actor Cillian Murphy provides spoken word. 

Following Savages' metaphysical song Adore, Beth contemplates nocturnal terrors with a preternatural resilience – the spectral overture, I Am, summoning Siouxsie Sioux's sorcery. Yet her lyrics are sharp, angular and erotic. Indeed, the early single I'm The Man – which, like a '90s Speedy J rave track, vacillates between hardcore techno and ambient – isn't about gender so much as the destructive contradictions of desire. The sensuous Flower, with a semi-whispered delivery, recalls Tricky, while Innocence has a throbbing trap beat switch. The Rooms is Blackstar-mode jazz. To Love Is To Live is challenging, but compelling.