You may have seen Toronto’s Jane Inc. opening The Foundry for Meg Remy’s U.S. Girls in spring of 2023, a tour that Carlyn Bezic tells me during a recent phone chat proved to be a highlight of the project, allowing her to introduce her solo output to some amazing crowds in some amazing venues. Bezic has also played in U.S. Girls herself over the years, in addition to “supergroup” Darlene Shrugg, which features Remy and Amanda Crist… who serves as Carlyn’s other-half in dance-pop duo Ice Cream… However, Jane Inc. is all Bezic’s, and she’s been officially releasing music under the moniker since 2021 debut album Number One, with her jaunt supporting U.S. Girls coming in support of 2022 sophomore full-length Faster Than I Can Take.
Last October Jane Inc. released follow-up LP A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH, an album inspired by an experience on that very tour that was equally traumatic and transformative: A semi-truck crashed into a broken-down tour van containing Bezic and five other musicians, forcing her to confront notions of both mortality and re-births. Following that tour, Carlyn also faced a vocal cord cancer diagnosis and a serious breakup… However, the album is far from a bummer, embracing synth-driven, beat-forward danceability more wholeheartedly than she ever has before… possibly the only logical approach to confronting such trauma.
“I think there are a lot of really fun moods on the album,” Bezic tells me, going on to explain, “Making this album was difficult, but really satisfying.” I ask if she currently has a favorite track and she tells me that while she’s inclined to say most recent single “what if” (a song which has her pondering if the car crash was a manifestation of a metaphorical collision course her life was on: “Waiting to rupture/ Like a can of Coca-Cola being shaken over and over/ Until someone pulls the tab and she explodes.”), but decides to go with opening track “reborn (on the dancefloor),” a song that she says, “has a lot of the theses of the album,” which was inspired by the catharsis she felt performing onstage after the near-death experience: “There was this really incredible release while I played every night.”
While Jane Inc.’s latest full-length has been noted as a bit of a shift from “art-pop” to a more unabashedly “pop” sonic aesthetic, I’m curious if the process of creating the music has evolved notably since Bezic’s first two solo efforts, to which she replies, “Yes and no. The roots of the majority of the songs on A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH started out with me fucking around on Ableton, which is how most of my songs start out, but I co-wrote and co-produced the album with Edwin de Goeij, and he’s a crazy keys player and a synth master, so I went from purely me to something collaborative.”
All three of Jane Inc.’s albums have dropped on Telephone Explosion Records, a Toronto collective she says she’s very grateful for, but informs me is, sadly, coming to an end: “They’re good guys and a part of the community, and they really helped me out with grant funding and stuff, but the label is shutting down… I’m really on my own at this point [laughs].” I also learn that included in the Telephone Explosion family was Tom McGreevy of Ducks Ltd., who did a 2022 cover of The Cure’s “In Between Days” with Jane Inc. and who will be opening Yumi Zouma’s upcoming North American tour, including their May 1st show at The Church. “They’re really satisfying jangly indie rock… if you’re into any of that stuff, you should definitely check them out,” says Bezic. Apparently, when he wasn’t singing and playing guitar for Ducks Ltd., McGreevy did a lot of PR for the label.
Bezic is currently amidst some live shows of her own, with sporadic dates starting with A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH Toronto release show in December and running through late March, including a headlining date next Sunday (February 22nd) at Silk City. And she tells me that the shows have proven to be quite exciting so far: “It was a bit of a whirlwind, because I was flying between all these cities, and [for one show] I was getting off the plane, and my set was at midnight, and the plane landed at 11:35, and I was onstage at 12:10, and I was at the Airbnb by 1:30, but I made the show and the crowd was great!” She also tells me that she’s gotten a number of notably touching fan responses to the new music.
“I played a show in Edmonton and someone at the merch table said he had seen me play in Vancouver and something happened in his personal life where he had to move from Vancouver back to Edmonton, and he was listening to the album on the trip, and he said ‘freefall’ just kind of spoke to his situation and he was moved by it, and it literally made him cry, and that made me cry… Whenever I have moments like that, it’s like, ‘This literally does make it worth it!’”
“I had been researching venues in Philly and that one did aesthetically speak to me the most,” says Carlyn Bezic of Silk City, only becoming more intrigued when I inform her that it was once featured on an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, in addition to being Neutral Milk Hotel’s regular local stop in the ‘90s. She tells me, “I like making the venue my own… I love performing and I try to bring as exciting of a performance as I can as a single person. I have my own kind of humble but effective production setup with lights, sampler, my guitar, and me!” Apparently Carlyn’s working on getting the show to Europe as well, but she also tells me she’s toying with the idea of an EP of songs that didn’t quite make A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH. She also adds that she’s looking forward to some time to relax, too: “I wanna chill… I wanna teach myself how to sew and make some crazy clothes.”
*Get your tickets here.
**Listen for “reborn (on the dancefloor)” on the next edition of Philthy Radio, 2/20 (9-11pm ET) on Y-Not Radio.
