I Loved The Gauntlet And There Was No Other Way is an explosive debut for Jæd

Irish-Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Jennifer Evans has been active for the best part of a decade, but her first LP under a new sobriquet presents both evolution and revolution. She retains the freewheeling jazzy influences of her earlier work, but adds a whole lot more dynamic variety to the mix. These are tunes that sizzle and burst, bristling with nervous energy, both in terms of the instrumentation and – especially – Jæd’s charismatic, livewire performance.

That sense of rediscovery is apparent from the off. Opener “Vessel List” lurches wildly out of the gates, as though Jæd is learning to walk again. Over foghorn-like blasts of guitar, her voice seesaws high and low, cracking into the red to make the track more unsteady still. The song steadies out into a cleaner swingtime section, but the seas soon become choppy again, with drum fill after tumbling drum fill, the vocals piling up in half-panic, half-euphoria.

Jæd’s captivating and multifaceted presence is front and centre. The production and presentation of her voice allows her to try on a multitude of masks. Lengthy centrepiece “The Gentle Work” pitches her as a crooner wading through treacle, dragging single syllable words across entire bars. The track is a bluesy shuffle that a mid-period Tom Waits would be proud to snarl over, and Jæd is every part as gnomic as the veteran troubadour at his best. She’s a woman equal parts overcome and revolted by desire: “It’s the gentle work I’m worst at these late nights / Now I’m in the boyhood pen pulling little legs off.”

Album highlight “Sight Gas Went Uh” boasts the finest character study of all. It’s a song about a regrettable relationship, with the narrator trying her level best to play things cool. Over the most swaggering guitar part you’re likely to hear in art pop this year, Jæd undercuts the vulnerability of her lyrics – “Every swollen kiss stolen voice box a lump / I’d rather feel parts not be loose tooth you touch” – by sticking to single notes for lengthy periods, as though the slightest melodic variance would leave her too exposed to cope. It doesn’t last; our subject is subsumed by the chaos as we whip through rhythmic changes. Finally she loses control of language altogether, the verbose lyric sheet discarded in favour of a stream of staccato sounds.

That’s not to say I Loved The Gauntlet is an exclusively heady or theatrical experience, though – by no means. Jæd has spoken about music’s ability to spirit away the performer (or listener) in moments of duress, and you can hear that in spades when she chooses to thrash out. “Very Frond” is a complex, labyrinthine composition for most of its runtime; suddenly, the proggy, layered guitars are chucked to one side, stomp boxes are stomped and we get a full minute of heavy catharsis. That attack continues into “To Cool”, a mostly laid back affair that carries an undercurrent of menace. When that comes out in the twin roar of guitar and vocals, it’s a hell of a release. If you had to identify the peak half-second of soul unburdening, though, it’s got to be the sudden death growl that emerges midway through the frenetic “Bakkos”. She’s overwhelmed, she gets it out, she carries on.

Jæd brings together a veritable grab bag of influences, collaborators, sounds, and styles, but remains unmistakably in focus throughout. If it’s not quite correct to describe this record as her debut, it’s certainly a star making turn.