JANE INC - A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH
Telephone Explosion Records
Released on October 17th, 2025
As a bespoke pop girly in the Canadian music scene, I am always attentive to get my hands on any new pop releases — especially when there is some kind of experimental edge in the mix, as in the case of my recent reviews of the latest Debby Friday and Camilla Sparksss. In the past few months, I’ve been fueled by marathons of Madonna, Robyn, and Kylie Minogue that have brought me back into my electropop and dance pop foundations such that, when I found out about Jane Inc.’s latest release, I had to give it a listen immediately.
Again, a huge shout to Jeff Cancade (aka. Devours) for the recommendation, as that’s how I caught wind of Jane Inc., which is the solo project of Toronto-based musician Carlyn Bezic (also known for her work in U.S. Girls, Ice Cream). Since the turn of the decade, Bezic has been releasing alt pop releases under the moniker Jane Inc. with her debut record Number One (2021) and her sophomore release Faster Than I Can Make (2022) leaning into eclectic 80s lush synths, disco grooves on the bass, and enveloping chorus-driven vocals oscillating from conventional bangers over to more deconstructed and tight compositions. The debut is the kind of thing you’d get out of as wide ranging things as Annie Lennox, Blondie, ABBA, or 80s-era Madonna, whereas the sophomore album is more St. Vincent or Björk at times meeting up with the sound pallets of the earlier album.
This is all to say that Jane Inc.’s music is unique and dynamic, covering a wide range of sound design and compositional choices that show off Bezic’s development as a solo artist. So, when I found out about Jane Inc., the single “Elastic” had just come out and it immediately resonated with my aesthetic inclinations around these pop sounds — you can imagine the rabbit hole that followed! So, knowing that a new record was coming out, I was prepared and eager to make my way through Jane Inc.’s A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH.
Now, what I didn’t realize at the time was the emotional and personal weight that the album carried at its core. The theme of discontinuity and continuation alluded to in the title of the album are part of a personal journey that Bezic has undergone since the 2023 U.S. Girls tour where a semi-truck slammed into the broken-down tour van holding Bezic and her bandmates along a Massachusetts highway. No one died, thank god, but the event resonated throughout every fibre of Bezic’s life. The tour went on, not without its internal conflicts or clear cut breaks implied in also moving on with life altogether. Two things marked Bezic’s life after returning back home: she ended her nearly decade long relationship and she was diagnosed with stage one cancer on her left vocal cord. It is not easy to describe Bezic’s life at this point as anything other than liminal — a transitional period, stripping down all pretexts between events and changes around what was taken as a given as well as the anxious uncertainty of a future haunted by how close it was to being foreclosed altogether.
All of this context gives A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH an emotional gravitas and consequentiality that punctuates it perhaps as Jane Inc.’s most significant record to date. Not just as a testament to the life that was, but to the life that is now along with the death that will be next however symbolic or real it may be. With that, the album starts with the appropriately titled “reborn (on the dancefloor),” which heads on hits us with a 2000s inspired electropop instrumental and stripped down vocals that hit at the core of these themes: letting go of a life that feels worn out, the restlessness undoing the artist from inside, and the escape found in the rush of the dancefloor.
This is followed by the single “elastic” which left a lasting impression on me when it was first released, and I’ve come to learn how it came to be shaped by keeping the show going after the 2023 accident with a Nietzschean/Dionysian affirmation of life in spite of its aleatory nature. Notably, the chorus hits hard with Bezic’s vocal performance giving the energy of an instant classic that deserves to be played at the club.
My personal favourite track is “freefall,” as it has these thematic leaning into the freedom and sense of release that such a transformative event had on Bezic while delivering iconic vocals over a catch beat giving me Alannis Morisette’ “You Ought Out of Know” with the drum and bass groove while instrumentally leaning more into the electropop side of things.
Then “keeping it with me” takes the energy down to a more relaxing track driven by Rhodes piano and delicate vocal performances, which has this interesting choice to end the song abruptly mid instrumental groove almost accentuating a formal contrast between the song so far and its thematic place.
With “the braid,” Bezic unravels and distils the life she is used to share with someone else by using a titular metaphor and expanding upon it. The song is minimal, driven by the vocals and an atmospheric synth pad over a pulsating kick with a syncopating percussion block. Although it is the shortest track in the album, it stands out as thematically and compositionally beautiful.
And this leads the album into picking up the energy with “i’m alive!!!” which I think speaks for itself with the title alone. But honestly, the track lives up to how Jane Inc. describes herself as mutant disco with its dissonant instrumental choices and high contrast sidechains making for a lively sound that allow Bezic vocals to cut through the mix. Here, the restlessness that has been announced throughout the album sets a tension between the ways that it leads to emancipatory desire while also containing this volatile self-destructive potential.
In “continents shift,” we get one of the more deconstructed tracks in the album with a disjointed drumbeat and spare instrumental elements spread across as the bass and synth pad take turns jumping in the mix, with the occasional instance of them coming together.
By way of contrast, “levelled” stabilizes the groove into a relaxing bedroom pop beat in spite of its hardest instrumental choices. Interestingly enough, Bezic delivers spoken word vocals given a depth in the mix with the choices of a tight reverb and delay that gives it this funneling accentuation in the mix — not to mention the hard auto tuning used towards the end, which I am just obsessed with. As one of the more eclectic takes in the album, “levelled” stands out as one my favourite tracks. Maybe it is how it gives me the same feeling I get when I listen to something like Broadcast or Yo La Tengo.
Towards the end of the album, the spoken word delivery continues with the DnB reflectiveness of “what if” which is blunt and confrontational from the get go. To begin with, it is the longest take in the album at nearly 8-minutes. Then there is the initial sample of an exaggerated car crash and the ambulance siren subtlety buried in the mix towards the end. And lastly, along with the provocative titular question, the song asks: “what if Carlyn is dead and Jane lives?” Admittedly, with this framing, this is the most challenging yet interesting song in the whole album. Its minimal groove has this catchiness that makes me want to dance to it, while the lyrics and vocal delivery make me experience an existential breakdown at the club (hey, it happens). But in all seriousness, even though at times it may give the impression that this track could get repetitive, you have Bezic change the song in such a dynamic fashion by introducing more instrumental elements and bolstering her vocal performance. Straight up shout out to the dance piano breakdown halfway through, it feels like such a nice homage to old school electronic music. With all of this in consideration, I cannot emphasize more how it is one of my favourite tracks in the album (tied with “freefall”) and one of the best Jane Inc. songs overall.
After the upheaval from the previous track, the album ends with “drumheller.” The instrumental choices here feel so apt, with a tight radio-style EQ on the drums and the soft instruments building on this to give Bezic an opportunity to take all of this in. Descriptive and reflective in its lyricism, Bezic’s songwriting offers a sense of personal perspective that bursts out musically at the moments when the whole range of sound frequencies gets taken over by fuller drums and lush 12-string guitar. As opposed to the open ended contingency that is thematized throughout the album, the song here focuses on a fatalism driven by the whims of genetics and biology that pose the cancer as the ultimate stumbling rock. A classic “unstoppable force meets immovable object” dynamic which nonetheless ends in a faint optimism to still take chances in spite of all of this.
Whereas prior releases have leaned into more 80s sound or more deconstructed angles at alt pop, A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH gives late 90s/early 2000s Madonna — the kind you go to for classics like “Ray of Light,” “Music,” or “Hung Up.” And Jane Inc. absolutely deserves these comparisons to the queen of pop herself, as the caliber of her work in this latest album not only fleshes out on what she has achieved so far, but it gets taken to the next level with a consistency in sound, theme, performance, and artistic development that has made me a fan of Jane Inc. almost immediately. That being said, talking in technical terms for this album almost feels like an injustice to the personal work being done here. This album is made with all the vulnerability that it also attests to in light of all the life-shattering and life-rebuilding events described throughout it. Yes, excellent electropop album, sure. But what is going on here deserves more than just that, the artwork is challenging across the board to the artist in her own growth and to the audience with the thematic subversions over an otherwise bright genre sound. The story behind the album along with the album itself are nothing less than awe-inspiring. The artistic and personal care with which all of this has been handled elevates this album beyond just a cool thing to listen to.
