Tragedy, or near-tragedy, often has a way of clarifying purpose and direction, of delivering a needed circumstantial awareness through the dense fog of our daily lives — such was the case for Jane Inc.‘s Carlyn Bezic on a lonely stretch of Massachusetts highway back in 2023. Her tour van had broken down, and she, along with 5 other musicians, were waiting for a towtruck truck. Suddenly, the van was struck by a semi-truck. Miraculously, no one was killed, and this traumatic experience left her filled with a newfound adrenalized perspective on life. There was plenty of work to do, and she was ready to get to it.
She finished the rest of that tour opening for U.S. Girls and then returned home galvanized in both spirit and body. She broke off a longstanding relationship and sought medical help for a vocal raspiness which she had been dealing with. A year and a day after the crash, she was diagnosed with cancer on her left vocal cord, and after two successful surgeries, Bezic began work on what would become her latest album, A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH, an album marked by the underlying belief that nothing is permanent and we are all in estate of continual transience, every moment a gift which has no obligation to exist.
Produced by Bezic and Edwin de Goeij, the record is a collection of esoteric synth-pop concepts made reality through the sheer force of her will, inspired and directed by past traumas and finding purpose in embracing the impermanence of beautiful things. She finds revelation on the dancefloor, insight in the depth of an insistent beat — this is the world that now surrounds her, vivid and tactile and ever-present. She suggests that losing ourselves wholly to something, to anything, maybe to the music she offers can provide a compass toward our own internal healing.
Through these sonic offerings, she explores the concept of transient mortality while evincing a considerable thirst for life, a desire to experience everything and cling to moments for the brief time she inhabits them. The album is a whirlwind of intimate observations made corporeal through the whims and impulses of her wild creativity. She has kindly offered to give us a tour of the album, to lift the curtain on its inspirations and the specific origins of each song so that we may better understand her connections to this work. And maybe through this shared understanding, we might also find revelations long buried in our own subconscious.
- “reborn (On the Dancefloor)”
This was one of those songs that you write and then rework again and again. It was unwieldy and hard to pin down, but that fits with the spirit of the song, which is about facing a new reality and questioning whether it’s real or right. Everything’s changed, you’re moving in a new direction, and you don’t know if you can trust yourself yet. All that anxiety and excitement. The arrangement we landed on is all Edwin – he really gave it the sauce.
- “elastic”
Lyrically, “Elastic” was written in parts, coming together almost like a cut-up collage from different journal and notes app entries, and it’s sort of hidden inside this pop-y structure. It was inspired by playing shows in the aftermath of a car accident, when I felt incredibly free and energized and sort of unhinged, and the space of the show was this zone where I could be completely in the moment. Because I had experienced this violent scary thing, I felt fearless on stage, like the crowd could do anything they wanted with me, and that gave me an unexpected power. There is something erotic in that exchange, and life giving. I feel this lyric is central to the album: “Michael said the universe doesn’t care, and he’s not wrong, but he’s not right either”. It was inspired by a conversation with someone who also had cancer that was treated through surgery. He came out of it with the sense that the universe was cold and random and unfeeling; I came out of my experience with the opposite – that the universe had given me something powerful and rich and meaningful. This back and forth is throughout the album, and I think it lives in everyone and everything. I think about it a lot still. Is the act of making art just choosing to believe the latter?
- “freefall”
This is another song that drew from different but connected experiences. The chorus was initially written about a breakup, but the verses were finished after I got the results of the biopsy back. In that moment I felt like, please, let me skip this part, let me be free of this thing that’s happening to me, but I also had a deeper understanding that the only way out is through. I was inspired by a line from When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron. She says: “Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.” Hell ya Pema, let’s fucking go, pedal to the metal, Thelma and Louise-style into this big scary massive canyon and see what happens.
I wrote the melody in an attempt to write a song that Miley Cyrus might sing. I like how it turned out. So Miley, if you like it too, hit me up.
- “keep it with me”
I told myself to keep these short but I’m failing so far! So I’ll try with this one: this song is about leaving a relationship and having these new vantage points on who you are, who they were, who you were together. Did they really see who you are, can you ever truly see another person? You changed each other, and then you changed again when you came apart. It’s like photos in a box in a closet, or an old ID, how you see it changes every time you look back.
- “the braid”
When you build a long relationship with someone, it’s like weaving together a braid. So much of your life and who you are is completely enmeshed with them. This song is about pulling apart that braid, but it’s also about how endings are woven into all things; every relationship will end, every person will die, the only guarantee is impermanence.
- “i’m alive”
This song was inspired by the months after I was in the car accident and I was filled with a lust for life. A lot of my decision making hinged on the question: if I die tomorrow, will I regret doing/not doing this? So basically I partied and ate a lot of fancy dinners. You don’t need sleep or money if you’re dead! (Disclaimer: this is unsustainable).
- “continents shift”
This song is about falling in love! And feeling like a person can change the landscape of your life, or that maybe you have changed on a tectonic level, and this person can drive you across this new terrain.
- “levelled”
This song is a reworking of a short story by Nadine Gordimer called Loot (if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it, and it’s easy to find online). I had read it a number of years ago, and reread it and reread it and it lodged itself in my brain. I felt it was an interesting point of view on the themes of death and mortality that are all over the record, and I love the image of objects out of time, strewn across the sea floor, history flattened and death being the great leveller.
- “what if”
This song was born quickly (just like me). It imagines the car crash as the moment I split in two, with Carlyn walking away to live a life where the accident never occurred, leaving Jane (pure, unadulterated, in her final form) to be born, hungry for life. She wants more of everything: the pleasurable, the painful, the frightening. I knew I wanted this song to be long and epic, and I played some early versions live that were 15 minutes long, but I cut it down to make it sharper. It guided a lot of the record and still guides a lot of my life.
- “drumheller”
I named this song after a town in the badlands of Alberta, home to thousands of fossils on display at the Royal Tyrell Museum of Palaeontology. The terrain in the badlands feels Jurassic. There’s hoodoos and buttes, and the layers of rock are a visual representation of eons of time deeper than I can comprehend. Like I sing in the song, the museum really does start with the big bang, and being there made me feel small and insignificant in one way, and kind of overwhelmed by the odds of my own existence in another. That any of this is here is a miracle, that you and I are here is a miracle. That same summer I witnessed a total eclipse–despite the cloudy weather–and then they found cancer on my vocal cord. What are the odds of any of this happening? Slim? It makes my head spin. Trust me: I don’t know a damn thing. But we have one life. You should try it, do it, don’t wait. Take a chance.
A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH is out today on Telephone Explosion Records. You can order the album here. Follow Jane Inc. on X and Instagram.
