A bit of therapy would probably do us all good: questioning our behavioural patterns, examining childhood trauma, learning to know and love ourselves better — it can offer healing, guidance and solace. For her third solo album as Flock of Dimes, Jenn Wasner, singer of Wye Oak, has chosen (more intuitively than consciously) an art-therapeutic approach to confront deeply personal themes such as addiction and co-dependency. The Life You Save is disarmingly honest, deeply intimate and, thankfully, not overanalysed. After all, this music was born as a direct path into the subconscious — written amid a period of crisis and during Wasner’s search for peace within herself.
Along the way there are setbacks (»Defeat«), but also moments of clarity — like the realisation that »Pride will be my downfall every time«, or that a saviour complex can all too easily grow into a god complex. In the aptly titled closer »I Think I’m God«, the thought »Only I can save this fragile, beloved person« transforms into the hard truth that no one can be saved except oneself.
Over understated, fluid folk-rock arrangements, Wasner sings with quiet urgency, heartbreak and deep sorrow — yet her intent is always to comfort rather than to be comforted. And throughout, a glimmer of hope remains: that the longing for love and acceptance might, somehow, one day be fulfilled.
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