Blueprint Playlist: Jenny Haniver

Continuing on in this new content vertical for I Enjoy Music, it's a brand new Blueprint Playlist—where I ask artists with new music out to share five-ish songs that have inspired or informed the songs in some way or another.

Last time, Perpetual Stu shared a great playlist featuring Bilmuri, 100 gecs, Samia and more...

Now we have Jenny Haniver! Jenny Haniver is a musical duo out of Portland, Oregon: Randall Taylor, who does cassette tape loop magic as Amulets, and Eric Nyffeler, who plays in Bus Gas and is the art director for effects pedal makers Chase Bliss Audio. Both members of Jenny Haniver have hefty experimental / noise / drone resumes, and they've now officially come together for their debut LP, Haunt Your Own House.

Man, how to describe this album...it has the muscle of post-hardcore, the drama of metal, the sustained catharsis of noise rock...like if Thursday wrote an Explosions in the Sky song? There's so much delicious texture to be found on these instrumental tracks: crunchy percussion, gnarly energy oscillating from the many layers of guitar. The music is heavy but never a slog—it always feels like Nyffeler and Taylor are actively driving toward a promising conclusion, even if the tones they employ lean toward Gloom and/or Doom. Kick-ass record, cool album art (by Zach Hobbs) too.

Jenny Haniver's Blueprint Playlist

The Chameleons - "Swamp Thing"
There is a near infinite amount of amazing and inspirational post punk out there, but both of us in Jenny Haniver would fight to put The Chameleons at the top of our list. They are easily one of the most underrated bands of all time. Narrowing it down to one song is difficult, but "Swamp Thing" from their 1986 album Strange Times has everything you could want out of a Chameleons song. Gauzy, ghostly guitars? Plodding, vaguely industrial drums? Warm synth pads? Catchy-as-all-hell vocals? Check, check, check, and check!

Skinny Puppy - "Worlock"
Skinny Puppy is almost single handedly the reason we use a drum machine instead of a real drummer (also because a drum machine can't get drunk and show up an hour late to every single practice and then ask for a ride home). "Worlock" is such a perfect example of how the simplest drum pattern can be made infinitely cooler by making it sound distorted and trashy as hell. Our song "Gravedancer" wears this influence proudly.

Massive Attack - "Angel"
There isn't much we could say about this song that hasn't been said a thousand times before by better writers. It has to be the coolest song ever (in every version of the word "cool"). The reason that we're including this song in our list is that there is one track on Haunt Your Own House that owes a pretty hefty debt to the bassline in "Angel." It doesn't exactly take a detective to figure out which song, but I think we took it to a slightly noisier, darker place.

The Smiths - "Ask"
I can't say that this song directly influenced anything on our record, but the fact that we listened to it literally every day on our album release tour means that it must be pretty deeply embedded in our DNA in some way.

When in Rome - "The Promise"
I remember when we put this song on our "mix inspiration" playlist, our engineer asked if it was a joke. Hell no it wasn't a joke! We would murder to write a song that is half as catchy and propulsive and lush as this song! Our songs "Afterlives" and "Potions" are our attempt to capture a similar sense of movement, albeit about 1000% more vampire-y.

BONUS SONG: Genghis Tron - "Laser Bitch"
This song has nothing to do with our new album, but we both recently realized that we both separately used to troll people by playing this song at college parties and I think that's pretty special. More people should listen to Genghis Tron.

Thank you Jenny Haniver! Go listen to Haunt Your Own House now, it's got a cool limited edition vinyl release through their label Landland Colportage, or you can listen digital-style of course.