Jane Inc - Number One

Who is Jane Inc.? She is CEO and pencil pusher; she is a blank, unknowable Jane Doe, and she is the singular solo project of Carlyn Bezic. Also known as one half of weird-pop duo Ice Cream, one fifth of rock and roll fever dream Darlene Shrugg, and touring member of US Girls band, Bezic has been building a body of work on merging a pop sensibility with off-kilter influences. Jane Inc's debut album, Number One, out on Telephone Explosion in March 2021, is an exciting progression of that body of work: a meditation on the self that marries pop songwriting with swirling sonic experiments. The eight songs on Number One act as pieces of a collage, forming a face that's both familiar and strange, direct and oblique. Synths sneer and shimmer, fuzzed-out guitars play against Bezic's soothing and hypnotic voice, and a constant and confident bass grounds each track. She brings us into flowing, dreamlike reflections, creating an expansive world that stretches beyond the album’s limits. LP