Jenn Ghetto (formerly of Carissa’s Wierd) is S, and “Cool Choices” is her very sincere, introspective album. She’s got the sort of voice that I can’t help but get hung up on S is Jenn Ghetto, who was in the nineties Seattle slowcore band Carissa’s Wierd. Previously, S was known as something of a “bedroom project”. Cool Choices is her fourth album as S but it’s the first release with a full band, the first on Hardly Art, and the first produced by former Death Cab for Cutie member Chris Walla. Fortunately, this polishing doesn’t come at the expense of intimacy. “Cool Choices” finds a way to murmur agonies to your heart.
These mild strangulations resonate in the control of Ghetto’s voice. It doesn’t matter if the songs appear on the upbeat side like the electronic tracks “Tell Me” and album closer, “Let the Light In”, or the zippy acoustic lines of “Vampire”, Cool Choices is about real heartbreak. “Tell Me” harkens back to her second album, the incredibly titled Puking and Crying. It begins with stark tones that sound like an eighties video game before adding a warm humming synth. “I see in the sunlight / how it feels in the background / it is awfully dark here / and I can’t find my way out,” Ghetto confides, shifting from wistful to vulnerable. S traffics in pain, which is often unsophisticated only in the sense of its simplicity. On “Vampires”, a hopeful riff that conjures the image of a first morning light seen by those nocturnal beings is juxtaposed against the lyrics, “I am crazy and you are fucked up”. The fundamentalism explores this duality of harsh and muted.
The Fat Angel Sings 