As Jackie Lynn, Haley Fohr expands the sound of blue collar music

Once, it was understood that the celebrity was society’s most influential voice, and the entrepreneur the ultimate object of aspiration; yet in the midst of a devastating crisis, the truth has been borne out. The newly christened Key Workers have become the object of our adulation. The nurse feels more powerful than a hedge fund manager, an Ocado delivery man more worthy than any Influencer.

Into all this arrives Jacqueline, the second LP from Haley Fohr - also known by Circuit des Yeux - as Jackie Lynn. Under this name she plays dress-up. In 2016’s Jackie Lynn she sung from the perspective of a cocaine dealer, and now she is Jacqueline, a long-haul truck driver making her way through rust-belt states. Appropriately for these times, Jackie Lynn also expands how blue-collar, working class characters are accompanied in song. Their perspectives were once the reserve of masterful FM songwriters like Springsteen and country icons like Mickey Newbury, but this year alone we have seen them captured in the reggaeton of Bad Bunny and the hispanic-disco of U.S. Girls’ Heavy Light. As people like long-haul truck drivers become national heroes, the time is ripe for their perspectives to be heard through a broader palette.

Fohr and her four-piece band the Bitchin’ Bajas’ expansion is an active one. The familiar Americana of blue-collar storytelling is a reference point for these songs, but along the way there are disco grooves and shoegaze passages which remind as much of Xiu Xiu, Timber Timbre or Sharon Van Etten at her most Twin Peaks. This isn’t Springsteen’s lyrical style either - there are no Johnny 99’s and there is no narrative; rather the songs are simply told through Jacqueline’s perspective, alone with her thoughts or ogling a stranger she christens the “Casino Queen”.

Some songs are pristine, such as the seven-minute synth odyssey “Odessa” and the stomping “Shugar Water”, which juxtaposes Frohl’s shrill singing voice against a group of androgynous voices dryly chanting. What holds the album back however is the underwritten instrumental passages which should have distinguished the album. “Dream St.” lives up to its name: it’s a dreamy ballad which successfully shoots for something hypnotic; the cold and steady drum machine undercut by guitar lines and swaths of violin which make the core of the song feel eerily possessed. Others are less successful. The synth flares which close opener “Casino Queen” match almost entirely the resolution of LCD Soundsystem’s “Get Innocuous”, and “Short Black Dress” is a bit of a mess, Fohr’s voice swallowed whole by a surge of instrumentation which is neither melodic or dissonant, just cluttered.

Several tracks rely on such pivots into oddity but they are often not especially dynamic. The whirling synth at the centre of “Travellers Code of Conduct” has a sinister quality but the tone alone isn’t interesting enough to carry a whole song. Moments like this inspire the unfortunate feeling of recognising the concept of a song without being especially engaged by the execution. After listening, I crave Xiu Xiu’s Plays the Music of Twin Peaks, which masters what it seems Fohr was aiming for here.

It’s true that the concept is the most rewarding aspect of these songs, but the choice of character does chime greatly with the historical moment and makes the album more distinct than it otherwise might have been. There will likely be weaker songs giving voice to characters like Jacqueline, and many more successful ones, but if there’s one thing which has been made apparent as the world is stripped down to it’s most essential parts: it’s that there should just be more.