With Glutton for Punishment, Heartworms release her full-length debut and follow-up to 2023’s EP, A Comforting Notion. If Notion evoked end-of-the world raves and speedball textures, Glutton For Punishment spotlights Jojo Orme as she expands her playbook, mining canonic rock elements as much as outsider collages and dystopian overtones. She alternately plays the cyberpunk priestess, the shambolic diva, and the pop provocateur.
“Just to Ask a Dance”, with its ethereal opening synths and chugging guitar riff, recalls a 70s or 80s arena scene, Bic lighters held high. While Notion showed Orme committed to a romantic cum rebellious MO, she’s now flirting with Pop Top 500 compatibility. Her chorus is pop-compliant… with a druggy sneer; earnestly hooky… with a tinge of anti-commercialistic sarcasm. The opening guitar refrain on “Jacked”, meanwhile, could’ve been plucked from White Zombie’s Astro-Creep: 2000 or Pantera’s Far Beyond Driven, though the sonics quickly veer in a more avant-garde direction, bringing to mind St. Vincent doing her homework for the Strange Mercy sessions.
Heartworms’ most ostensible counterpart, though, is Mandy, Indiana. While the London-based Heartworms and her British-French cohorts launched with similar aesthetics, releasing industrial-leaning EPs, Mandy, Indiana delved deeper into the party-gone-wrong, Y2K/apocalyptic vibe with their debut full-length, I’ve Seen a Way, whereas Heartworms uses Glutton For Punishment to forge broader musical connections. If Mandy, Indiana could survive on a diet of NIN and Ministry records, John Wick films, and news-fueled paranoia, Heartworms will need access to a variety of sounds, including the 80s Cure releases, in addition to a supply of ecstasy and comfortable clothing. Also, she’ll want her rooms to be at least half-lit. We don’t have to turn on the overheads, but they’re opening the goddamn curtains (and maybe a window for some fresh air). If there’s a rave, it’s fine if it lasts until dawn, but it’ll start at 9pm, 10pm at the latest, to accommodate those folks who need to leave early and get a good night’s sleep.
With that in mind, “Mad Catch” is a wiry, upbeat, semi-new-wave, semi-dancey take. Orme navigates a breathy sprechgesang, conjuring a cross between Rakel Mjöll and Florence Shaw. That said, she moves fluidly from a whisper to a more volatile delivery, displaying tonal and technical versatility. “Extraordinary” flirts throughout with melodic hooks, Orme’s voice drenched in atmospherics. “Your intentions are a bird I fear,” Orme moans, though she actually sounds pretty capable of handling whatever comes down the pike.
“Warplane” is the album’s highpoint, merging busy percussion, throbbing bass, and Orme’s chameleonic presence. It’s the chorus, specifically, that lands the track in best-of territory. The transition into the hook is seamless; melody and delivery are over-the-top infectious, a magical crescendo, full-body catharsis, Broadway meets The Bowery Electric. The track unfolds as celebration, protest, collective affirmation, a sublime blend of snark and one for all/all for one. Going forward, some political candidate should use this song during their campaign.
The longest track on the album, “Smugglers” features compelling minor-key arpeggios and psychedelic accents. It also highlights that while Orme moves from low to high notes with relative ease, there’s often a thinness to her higher register and, at times, a blandness that kicks in as she turns up the volume or drifts too far into a pop zone. The closing title track is a diaristic take on navigating the day, yearning for things to be different than they are, and clinging to a lover who neither commits nor exits stage left. Orme concludes with the line “All I want to do is dance” – though it’s pretty clear that she wants more than that.
For the most part, Glutton for Punishment’s eclecticism pays off, though at times it dilutes Heartworms’ essential sound. Then again, what is their essential sound? Certainly she emerged from and has ties to the industrial, art-punk, and rave scenes, but this debut album suggests that she also aspires to forging a gestalt that will land her squarely in the mainstream a la Halsey or Caroline Polachek. Could Glutton For Punishment have been more strategically curated? Perhaps, but this is an ambitious act. And sometimes you need to be commended for what you attempt as much as for what you achieve.
