Photos by Delilah Jesinkey
Having already earned recognition as a notable photographer and published poet, multidisciplinary creative talent Jenna Putnam prepares to make her mark as a singer-songwriter with the release of her debut single, a smoky slowburn of a track that showcases her established talents through the lens of a different form of expression.
“I’ve been writing songs/lyrics/poems my whole life and for the past couple years I’ve felt this demanding need to get something out of me. And photography and writing alone didn’t feel like enough of an outlet,” says Putnam of her latest creative venture. “I think music is the most powerful form of expression and there’s something about being able to feel something and put it into melody, to just fucking sing, that’s so invigorating.”
Under her own careful direction and the claustrophobic camerawork of Cameron Holland, Make War casts Putnam as a detached chanteuse headlining for eternity at a backwater Black Lodge, faded red curtain backdrop and all. Alongside her is a cast of similarly damned characters born from the darkest depths of a Lynchian 20th-century American fever dream. Each of these play a role in underscoring Putnam’s ruminations on the dismal state of the world, twisting these lyrical themes within the framework of a romantic relationship built upon mutual self-destruction. Sex, violence, privacy (or lack thereof), religion, and death swirl and meld together as the visuals divide and fragment into compartmentalized split-screens and disorienting double exposures.
Putnam’s background as a poet comes through in her writing style and the cadence with which she delivers her lines. Not quite read, not quite sung, each syllable thick and sticky and suggestive as if Kim Gordon were doing beat poetry at an after-hours open mic night. The apocalyptic come-ons may seem like an invitation to make love, but what’s really happening is a declaration to Make War. Words are wielded like a blunt instrument, plain spoken but impactful with plenty of space in between for the instrumentation to coalesce like a purple bruise. Bone dry percussion underneath a filthy bassline, tinkling piano keys packing more menace than magic, a reverbed guitar riff that is wanted for petty crimes in multiple states. You can almost smell the decades of cigarette smoke and stale beer permeating the track itself like an all but abandoned truck stop bar deep in the desert outside of LA.
In relation to her contemporaries, Make War draws a parallel line to Orville Peck’s groundbreaking noir-country but without the masked theatricality. The track exists in a similar space as Alexandra Savior’s smoky and subversive 2017 album Belladonna Of Sadness, but free from the lyrical acrobatics choreographed by that album’s co-author, Alex Turner. Putnam’s straightforward approach serves the track well, exhibiting the same type of raw truth that is implicitly evident in her earlier visual and written works to the point where Make War feels like an organic extension of her artistic oeuvre, beautifully complementary and just as substantial.
Make War is available now via Rebel Union Recordings. Explore Jenna Putnam’s portfolio and follow her work on Instagram.
