Previously best known for her work with the Die Warzau side Oxygiene 23, Jane Jensen is now setting her sights on a solo career. On her recently released album, “Comic Book Whore,” Jane showcases a very different sound than that of her former band. Oxygiene 23’s music was very ethereal and ambient, but Jane’s solo material has a more traditional pop/rock sound to it. However, listeners attracted to Oxygiene 23 for its experimental nature shouldn’t be disappointed by “Comic Book Whore,” as electronics still play a big role in Jane’s music.
Having parted ways with Oxygiene 23, Jane relocated to New York from Chicago a little over two years ago. She regularly played at a club called The Red Room as she sorted out what she wanted to do.
“I’m not crazy about acoustic music but I just wanted to be playing,” she says. “I wasn’t ready to put a full band together. So I was just playing my 12 string through all kinds of effects and stuff. I was looking for a studio to start recording the stuff I had written for those shows.”
About six months later, she met up with producer Craig Kafton (who’s also worked with Hotheads) and the two started collaborating. Kafton was dealing with Flip Records through Hotheads and played them what he and Jane had been working on, the first track being “More Than I Can.” The song got Flip interested and Jane ended up signing with them. Later, the album was picked up by Interscope.
In putting together “Comic Book Whore,” the duo went through all the material they had been working on so far and picked out the tracks they liked best. They wrote quite a bit of new material after signing with Flip;Jane says the resulting album is about half old, half new.
In addition to doing production and programming work, Kafton plays bass on the album and in the subsequent live shows. Jane’s band was inrounded out by ex-Siouxsie & The Banshees guitarist John Caruthers and drummer Duard.
Caruthers, who has also been a member of Clock DVA, has proven to be a valuable asset when it comes to adapting some of the studio wizardry to the live performance setting. “He’s not only a good guitar player but he can emulate a lot of the sounds that we used in the studio,” says Jane. With Duard playing both acoustic and electronic drum kits, she says “what we’re ending up with is that the show is harder than the record but at the same time we have all the sonic elements.”
In addition to her musical career, Jane is also an actress . She can currently be seen in Troma Picture’s “Tromeo and Juliet.” But at least for the immediate future Jane sees music as her focus.
“It’s more liberating,” she says. “I want to continue doing films, but I don’t want to just do film after film. Just now and again when there’s time and it isn’t time when I can be doing music.”
More about the album
Do you have any favorite songs from the album?
Jane: “‘Highway 90’ is one of my favorites and it’s just about driving back and forth from Chicago to Indiana. It’s about a 3 hour and 15 minute drive so it’s a good amount of time to clear out your head and sort things out. It’s just sort of stream of consciousness lyrically between two places. and ‘Blank Sugar’ I like vocally, I like to sing that song.’”
What’s your approach to songwriting?
Jane: “It differs. With some songs, I’m just writing on guitar and it comes from guitar structure and then I write lyrics. Sometimes Craig with come up with a loop idea and I’ll go into the studio and put headphones on and I’ll just start singing as soon as I hear the track. So what happens is very spontaneous. And sometimes I’ll just bring lyrics over that I’ve already written and structures that I’ve done on my drum machine with guitar chord structures, too. So we kind of work separately and then we come together.”
In terms of style, “Comic Book Whore” is quite varied. Was that something you had planned and made a conscious effort to do going into the project, or did it just happen like that?
Jane: “We definitely wanted to make each song very individual and we figured that the tonal quality of my voice would pull it together. But we definitely wanted each one to stand out as having its own sound. So there wasn’t a structural theme or a style that ran through the whole record.
Why did you decide to record as Jane Jensen rather than form another band?
Jane: “I’ve been in a lot of bands. Only because you can never be sure how dedicated someone is to a project and I figured that if I do a solo thing I can be very sure of how dedicated I am to the music and the live shows. So that’s why.”
Oxygiene 23
“When I met Jim, we kind of merged what I was doing and what he was doing,” says Jane on the Oxygiene 23 project. “I think at the time Die Warzau was on Fiction and they wanted to do a side project so then Oxygiene 23 became my life for a few years. I was really in love with that band. I guess we just decided to go our separate ways. Jim and Van were breaking up Die Warzau and I really wanted to do a solo thing that was a bit more straightforward and with a bit more guitars and a bit harder. So I came to NY and started putting stuff together.”<p> Although her current music is very different, Jane doesn’t rule out the possibility of doing more music like that of Oxygiene 23. But for now, she’s happy with the sound she and producer Craig Kafton have come up with.
“I think Craig and I just got to find our sound with this record, so I want to continue in this direction with the next record for sure,” she says. “And then after that, who knows? But I think we’re just finding our sound and I’m really happy with it.”
