Critics and commentators across musical lines all agree, and it’s certainly hard to dispute: the internet has made it easier to seek out obscure music. And yet there are still some artists whose music is difficult to uncover, precisely because their name defies easy Googling. Case in point: Jenn Ghetto. Best known for her membership in the beloved, soon-to-reunite Seattle band Carissa’s Wierd, Ghetto records under a solo project called S, making for a nice outsider touch, the 21st-century version of eighth-page ads in the back of MRR or HeartattaCk. While such an alias makes the music made by Ghetto harder to find on the internet, it’s certainly worth the extra steps.
Sadstyle was recorded from 1997 to 1999, during a time when Carissa’s Wierd was still an active band, and it has somewhat of a side-project feel. Listen for long enough and you’ll hear found-sound collages (as on “Iterlude”), tape manipulation (“Lemonade Sweetheart”), and unexpected covers (an abbreviated take on Metallica’s “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”). This album is indeed a four-track project from the 90s, but it’s also a reminder of exactly why the home-recordings aesthetic works. These songs can feel messy at times, but that mirrors the messiness of the lives documented in them, something Ghetto’s lyrics and (especially) her vocal delivery makes clear.
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While S’s subsequent albums have adopted a fuller and more distinctive sound — see the incorporation of programmed beats on 2004’s Puking and Crying or the cleaner approach of 2010’s im not as good at it as you — parts of Sadstyle overlap stylistically with the emotionally raw sweep of Carissa’s Wierd. Both the rapid, rhythmic “Everyone Else” and the stream-of-consciousness delivery of “Up & Down” would seem equally effective played by a full band as they would in the stark, solitary versions heard here.
Elsewhere, the intimacy of home recordings feels essential. Ghetto’s voice can turn sharp, but here it’s mainly a whisper, imparting a sense of isolation as it sketches minute portraits of fractured relationships. What endures about Sadstyle is the way emotionally raw sentiments rise, bristle, and sting. On “Another X-Mas W/Out You,” Ghetto sings, “We can just be friends/ Guess it’s my turn now/ Let me buy you a drink/ I’m glad we figured this all out,” the last word elongated to show the stress. Another fragment that drifts into rapid focus comes in “I Love You Too…”: “Can’t even breathe in here/ Can’t even look at you/ Tell me how it feels when they all start to laugh at you.” It isn’t the lyrics, per se, but Ghetto’s delivery that’s hard to shake. The same could be said for this album; over the course of its hour-long running time, it establishes a mood that stays with the listener for much longer.