19-year-old hyper-pop sensation Jane Remover continues to impress, and her sophomore album might just cement her budding stardom. Look no further for that truth than in the title track, “Census Designated.” The six-minute song slowly unfurls into its own immersive world; crass and visceral but utterly celestial.
Written and produced entirely by Jane herself, the song blends her typical fuzzy, industrial glitch with gossamer keys and a smoothly robotic vocal performance—one that is comforting, not off putting, to the more terminally online of Jane’s fans (which, in all honesty, is likely most of them). She sings, “I’m young blood, fresh meat, and I like that,” ushering in a tongue-in-cheek awareness to the genre while remaining beholden to no limits in which the sounds her work can subsume.
Songs like “Holding a Leash” and the seven-minute epic “Idling Somewhere” conjure the same feverish, distorted digital footprint.
The world on this record is grand, pixelated and harmonic, industrial yet sublime. On “Census Designated”, Jane Remover knows exactly what she is doing—and she’s doing a damn good job at it.
You won’t hear another album like “Census Designated”, the sophomore effort by Jane Remover, this year, or most years: the singer-producer, who reconfigured her sound (as well as came out as a trans woman) following 2021 debut “Frailty”, has mastered a singular blend of shoegaze, noise rock, pop melodies and indie balladry across these 10 tracks, while also prodding at her personal evolution and identity. Parts of “Census Designated” work best during a late-night headphones listen, while others beg to be blasted from car speakers; conceptually, the album begins at sundown and ends at dawn, but Jane Remover’s latest will affect you in any setting.
The Fat Angel Sings 