In the modern alternative landscape, there are few artists these days embracing true darkness – not just of the furious, half-spoken-half-ranted political kind, but of the sort that comes from somewhere deeper within, armed with an arsenal of industrial and gothic references and insisting that their press shots be universally monochrome because, frankly, it would be insane to print a picture of a woman locked inside a torture device in brilliant colour.
On the cover of her debut album, however, Heartworms can be found wearing the Brutal Bridle: a specially-commissioned iron wrangling of the scold’s bridle, “a medieval instrument of punishment intended to publicly humiliate and silence women”. Its title, ‘Glutton For Punishment’, you could imagine in cutesier hands lending itself to a record about horrible exes; suffice to say, in the steely mitts of Jojo Orme, this is not the case. Instead, Orme’s first full-length assignment as Heartworms is one riddled with the horrors of war, of internal battles fought over a lifetime and played out in parallel to the spectre of military history that has been a constant fascination for her. It’s a debut that stands not just separate from the crowd but isolated. As Orme has previously stated: “I’ve been chastised my whole life; made to feel as if I didn’t belong, punished for not fitting into a perfect image of how a growing woman should be. When you’re told something enough times you start to believe it.”
The opening moments of the record – a bleak, 40-second soundscape of howling winds – immediately uproot the listener from the frenetic pace of reality and into somewhere far more spartan. People might associate ‘apocalyptic’ with fire and brimstone, but after the apocalypse maybe it just sounds like nothing. Then, with the escalating, stalking clarion call that opens ‘Just To Ask A Dance’, the battle cries begin. A track that twists between icy, brittle drums, splashes of white noise and Orme’s vocals – at time low and hushed, at others reaching and pained – its sonic extremity belies the sad, sweetness of its story: of being simply too shy to tell someone you like them.
There is this sense throughout of giving weight to these feelings that are so often brushed under the carpet: loneliness, emptiness, displacement. Back in the days of the ancient myths, the Greeks would unleash plagues and eternal damnation if they were spurned. For Orme, her experiences sound like the propulsive claustrophobia of ‘Jacked’ – a perversely danceable highlight that’s like a fleshed out Bauhaus gone big – or ‘Smuggler’s Adventure’, a nod to her fractured relationship with her mother, set to spidery drums and howling vocal catharsis. Even in the album’s more clipped moments such as ‘Mad Catch’, with its staccato delivery and Joy Division-esque guitars, there is a tension to the way Orme professes her lyrical riddles (“You’ll complain about that / Match made in a hat / Where’s the magic in that?”) that feels discomfiting and loaded. ‘Warplane’, meanwhile, is almost certainly the catchiest song about deceased Spitfire pilot William Gibson Gordon you’re likely to hear.
It’s this illicit hookiness that makes ‘Glutton For Punishment’ and Orme really soar. Whilst it seems somewhat perverse to call ‘Jacked’ – a track whose video begins with the musician, sat at an interrogation table, declaring “As long as I can remember, I’ve been alone” – a banger, it undeniably is. If you picture the viral video of the upside down bats looking like they’re at a goth disco, ‘Jacked’ is the song they should be dancing to. Stripped to its barest form, the album’s titular closing track, meanwhile, is played out simply on an acoustic: the classic way to tell if a song has good bones. Undoubtedly, it does.
You could listen to ‘Glutton For Punishment’ with no knowledge of its author and enjoy it as a natural successor to the ‘80s goth/post-punk axis put through a more fulsome production filter. Or you really dig in and make Jojo Orme, with her niche references and rich world-building, your new obsession. Both entry points would be valid, but whichever way you choose, don’t sleep on Heartworms.
