Pain Will Polish Me – Album Review

Sinister synth-pop with more than one eye on classic 70s art-house movies: that’s the latest project from Jess Weiss, also active in Brighton-based band Fear Of Men. Her glacial Teutonic vibe evokes the frozen wasteland of the Cold War soul while staying relevant for these newly chilly times. Wrap up warm, says Robert Plummer.

Werner Herzog, Volker Schlöndorff, Rainer Werner Fassbinder; Klaus Kinski, Hanna Schygulla, Romy Schneider. All legendary figures, but what have they done for us lately? There was a time when (West) German film-making captured the imagination of the world, yet all that now lies in the past: Schnee von gestern, as they say in Berlin.

All that is by way of saying that any band calling itself New German Cinema is recalling a fruitful artistic past. Not that there’s anything wrong with going backwards to go forwards. And anyway, why should The Passions be the only ones in love with a German film star?

As it happens, Jess Weiss succeeds in rendering her nostalgic ache for a bygone era in thoroughly 21^st Century terms. After the brief, beatless wallow of Sub Rosa, the soundstage is set for Swirling Pain, with its footsteps-in-the-dark ambience that agreeably raises hairs on the back of the neck. “The world outside is fading out,” sings Weiss softly as her dream-pop edges into nightmare.

More ethereal ghost songs follow, with Weiss sounding as though she’s not quite there. “People smile when you hold my hand/It gives you light in your dark head/You know the feeling of being dead,” she tells us. Has fear eaten her soul? Or is love colder than death? Only Fassbinder would know.

I Become Heavy is another exploration of love’s dark side. “Leave you to drown in the pleasure that has no ending/’Til you make no sense at all,” Weiss promises her lover over an insistent, brooding synthetic pulse. “I take a bite of temptation that knows no boundary/Sweat and skin and something more,” she adds.

As the album progresses, the music glides serenely through the frozen emotional landscape, while Weiss’s thoughts become increasingly disturbed. “I’ll break him with one hand,” she says of her brother on Eyes. “I set fire to who I was,” she declares on Water Drops, with keening siren synths accompanying her pledge to “wrap my words around your destruction”.

My Mistake, a duet with fellow tortured soul Carson Cox, takes the theme of self-destructive passion to new heights – or maybe depths. “You call my name like it’s your destiny,” he says. But she has other ideas: “I’ll fill you with desire/Destroy you in my own time,” she croons amid the booming beats.

After all that torment, All That Heaven Allows brings a celestial lightness of being and a possibility of redemption. “I love you when you’re down/I want to save you,” Weiss sings like a choirgirl against a backdrop of uplifting electronica. But the darkness closes in again on the title track: “Severed all my lifelines now that we’re through,” she declaims reproachfully as a wash of digital gloom overwhelms her.

Perfect Secret brings the album to a tranquil close with a resolution of sorts. Soothing cello notes and sweeps of synthetic sound exert a calming influence on Weiss and guide her to a decision. “I’m looking to lose my sense of self/To build something new,” she tells her lover, asking him to take her to bed.

For all the froideur of the musical setting, Weiss’s lyrics are as highly wrought an exposition of inner turmoil as anything found in the 1970s German films that she admires. Beneath the placid electronic surface lies a seething emotional cauldron – the sound pictures may be pretty, but the words often contain ugly truths. This is soul music in its way, but not the kind that offers a panacea: it’s a brave, warts-and-all depiction of the side of ourselves we don’t always like to see.

~

You can buy New German Cinema’s album on Bandcamp here. The band can also be found on Instagram.

All words by Robert Plummer. More writing by Robert can be found at his author’s archive. He is also on X as @robertp926.