Cassandra Jenkins
An Overview on Phenomenal Nature

Release Date: 2021 | Tracklist

Between the shimmery, somewhat over-the-top beauty of the artwork and the beyond grandiose album title, An Overview On Phenomenal Nature has a high bar to clear. Despite a handful of missteps, Cassandra Jenkins delivers in her sophomore LP, crafting a lush, often-magical sonic experience. The album treads similar ground to her 2017 debut full-length, although any residual Americana influences have largely disappeared in favor of even heavier ambient/dreamy vibes, and the songwriting has notably improved.

The album can be characterized as placid, ambient-leaning singer-songwriter folk and pop. However, no review would be complete without mentioning the album’s tragic backstory, given that Jenkins had been scheduled to open for Silver Jews/Purple Mountains frontman David Berman, with the tour set to begin literally days after Berman’s death by his own hand. Unsurprisingly, this sad sequence of events left an impact on Jenkins’ life and songwriting. The end result is an atmospheric album which lyrically references Berman’s death several times, but more broadly focuses its attention on the grieving and healing process, and on the connection between human psychology and the natural world.

Jenkins kept this album fairly short, with seven tracks comprising a runtime under thirty-two minutes. This decision produces a consistently great album, with a few sleepier sections but nothing which undermines the remarkable beauty of the album’s atmosphere and sound. Bouncy opener “Michelangelo” is one of the album’s more high-energy numbers, featuring a rock underbelly and an enjoyable guitar solo, but it lays the groundwork for the rest of the album with its airy feel. The third tune, “Hard Drive”, illustrates the potential excesses of the album, such as multiple spoken word sections and philosophical topics easily construed (perhaps fairly) as pretentious, but ultimately strikes songwriting gold more than it misses, becoming a clear highlight. Closer “The Ramble” moves into a seven minute instrumental soundscape brilliantly, closing an album frequently focused on Jenkins’ beautiful vocals in a positive manner despite their absence.

Jenkins’ languid, exceptionally pretty voice can make anything sound good, but the lyrics here do deserve mention. An Overview On Phenomenal Nature is an “album” in the most artistic sense of the term, not just a collection of songs but an entity whose constituent parts are fused together by common threads and themes. Jenkins veers here-and-there towards New Age-ish spiritualism which may be derided by some listeners (just hear the references to “chakras” and “the astral plane” in highlight track “Hard Drive”), but overall it just works: her repeated statement “the water cures everything” in “New Bikini” feels wise when set to the context of its transcendent musical surroundings. The periodic sad mentions of David Berman also stand out, notably the longing “farewell purple mountains” in “Ambiguous Norway”. Taken as whole, the album feels like a powerful snapshot of a difficult, but ultimately life-affirming, period in the artist’s life.

An Overview On Phenomenal Nature is an ambitious project which doesn’t always work out, but does succeed on many levels. At the very least, this album features some of the prettiest music you’ll hear in 2021, even if Cassandra Jenkins’ philosophical and spiritual musings don’t strike your fancy. This is a record which can be recommended for all who enjoy indie/folk/dreamy/ambient music, and additionally for any fans of David Berman (despite sounding very little like his own works).

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