It’s in the nature of Jana Horn’s music to creep up on you. Just when you think you’re dealing with some pretty straightforward singer-songwriter fare, she’ll slip in a reminder that something more complex and more interesting is going on just beneath the surface. When it seems like melodic prettiness is the order of the day, a lyrical barb will lodge itself under your skin, or a brief passage of uncanny avant-pop will blindside you. Perhaps this is why her music is so difficult to pin down: her second album, The Window is a Dream (2023), saw her singing compared to Greta Kline, Nick Drake and Broadcast’s Trish Keenan and her sound described as country, jazz and post-folk. All of that is true, but none of it is quite sufficient, because Horn occupies an in-between world where she works with such restraint and such a keen ear for the space at the centre of a song that it renders genre practically meaningless.
This expert use of space also allows her to concentrate on a song’s lyrical presence, and this is where complexity comes into it. Horn is a gifted lyricist, and her words, which on the page resemble prose poems, range through the heart of a song with lilting cadences and unexpected turns, relishing in their own sound. This, perhaps, is what will first strike you about her self-titled third album. Its lead track, Go On, Move Your Body, seems to call for resilience in the face of some unnamed loss. In semi-spoken verse, somewhere between the emotion of Cat Power and the hush of Bill Callahan, she talks of hearing an apocalypse stir, resisting it in the most human of ways: physical movement. Her core band (a trio, with drummer Adam Jones and bassist Jade Guterman) is joined here by Adelyn Strei on woodwind. Together, they create a melody that exists in the same way that a mist exists in the morning: nebulous, always threatening to break apart.
The album’s lyrics deal mainly with Horn’s relationships with people and place, and specifically with New York. The city is never named explicitly, hinting at its potential for crushing alienation while also lending an uncannily detached feel to the already free-floating words, and at times the Texan desert where recording took place seems to impinge on the songs’ urban settings. Don’t Think has a simple acoustic guitar refrain and some soft DIY-jazz drumming (again, Bill Callahan’s gentler post-Smog work is a handy reference point), the perfect base for a song that is full of still, transparent meaning. Her words at times have the quality of ancient Chinese or Japanese poetry. Come On, in its initial stages, is barely there, just a low-lit clatter of drums and Horn’s voice drifting towards and away from the expected melody. It then coalesces into something warm and hopeful, the song becoming a beacon in an urban wasteland of cold trains and pills and hospitals.
A quiet sense of catharsis pervades these songs. It’s Alright was born in pain but speaks of rejuvenation. There is an almost grungy jangle to the guitar on Designer, PJ Harvey or Kristin Hersh dialled right down, then augmented with a flighty chamber pop arrangement, with Strei’s flute once again playing a role. The enigmatic Without describes a bittersweet ending, and Horn makes us feel like we are listening to one side of a conversation, leaving us guessing at what she hears in the gaps.
Lunar imagery – perhaps symbolic of something mysterious but steadfast – crops up more than once. In the miniature Love, for example, ‘Love doesn’t fall in love, it is always there, like the moon in the middle of the day.’ On Unused, the most rangy and impressionistic of the album’s songs, she compares herself to an owl while a playful bassline bubbles knowingly underneath.
This is much more stripped back than Horn’s previous album, much less reliant on traditional song structures. All In Bet has the surface appeal of something by a traditional guitar-toting troubadour, but it soon wanders to places that other songwriters wouldn’t think of going. Just because she maintains a basic quietness doesn’t mean that Horn’s excursions aren’t exploratory. Nor does the quietness imply submissiveness. There is a hard-won acceptance in Horn’s songs that goes hand in hand with a willingness to take on the world anew. Even when dealing with moments of physical or emotional breakdown, as in the tender closing track Untitled (Cig), she has the gift for breathing life and lived experience into her words, and this muted, wandering album is her best yet.
Jana Horn (January 16th, 2026) No Quarter
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