Song You Need: Jane Remover’s soaring shoegaze sadness

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In June, the 19-year-old artist formerly known as dltzk officially changed their name to Jane Remover. The New Jersey-based digicore scene leader’s Prince-like maneuver was cemented with the release of an A/B single — “Royal Blue Walls” b/w “Cage Girl,” the former of which is a certified Song You Need — via the boutique label deadAir. The move came just a month after they put to rest another previous moniker, leroy, which they’d previously used as an alter ego to release their popular Dariacore series.

On Wednesday (November 16), they returned with their third official track as Jane Remover. “Contingency Song” is out now alongside a reissue of their 2021 debut LP, Frailty, under the new name. They also announced the first ever Jane Remover merch capsule, available via the deadAir store.

Under each of their aliases, Jane Remover has always been 10 steps ahead of any post-hoc genre signifier the Music Journalism Industry© has attempted to use on them. But the new track, in yet another twist, can be comfortably categorized within the shoegaze canon.

Of course, Jane’s singular vision obliterates any premature allegations of pastiche, breaking new ground on a path A.R. Kane and My Bloody Valentine began carving almost four decades ago. Those groups — and the vast majority of those that came after — still adhered at least loosely to the structures and strictures of rock ’n’ roll. But “Contingency Song” is its own animal: a drumless and at times demented dirge the reaches the end of any previously plotted map and nose dives into the great nothing.

Fittingly, the song is about the apocalypse (sort of). “I said I’m not enough / Please don’t hurt me,” Jane repeats, dreading the world-eating collapse of a relationship before the track descends into pure staticky chaos. “I chop myself up / And shut myself out / Until my body shuts itself down,” they sing later on.

“Preparing for eventual doomsday. Flirting with death. Finding a difference between being dependent and being selfish,” the artist lists, waxing concisely on the song’s themes in a press release. “Celebration fuels the fire and I don’t have that kind of energy. But I’m not saying I could manage without it. Trying to figure out if everything I do is for the approval of someone else. I’m parked at the house but I stay in my car.”