For more than 15 years Janet Bean considered making a solo record, but her insecurities kept her from taking the plunge. She’s always been more comfortable as part of a group, playing integral roles in two of Chicago’s finest–Eleventh Dream Day (as a singer and drummer) and Freakwater (as a singer and guitarist). “I’m so lucky that everyone in those bands is so great,” she says. “In a way that’s almost what was so daunting about making a record of my own, because then it might be revealed that I was the weak link. I was afraid that everyone would find out that I was a fraud.”
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Bean’s first solo disc, Dragging Wonder Lake (Thrill Jockey, released April 8), proves those fears unfounded. Elements of her other bands can be heard here–there are traces of Freakwater’s rural gloom, as well as some extended solos and textural explorations a la EDD–and the influences she cites (Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis) make their presence felt too. But Bean’s album reveals a personal vision, and it expands the horizons of American roots music with an assurance and craftsmanship on par with the best of her groups’ work.
There’s a darkness to some of the tracks that makes for uneasy listening, as Bean’s lyrics investigate the destructive patterns that recur in unhealthy relationships; many of her characters struggle to move on, but more often than not they repeat painful mistakes. The band translates these difficult decisions into music with counterintuitive harmonic choices and bumpy resolutions.
