'The Window Is the Dream' by Jana Horn
Jana Horn’s 2020 debut album, Optimism, was not meant to make a big noise, literally or culturally—it was a collection of indie-folk songs crafted with the literary intricacy and musical delicacy one might expect from a singer-songwriter who is both a student and teacher of creative writing.
Yet after Horn self-released Optimism, the Philadelphia label No Quarter gave it a wider issue that brought it greater acclaim, and Horn’s second album, The Window Is the Dream, finds her gently expanding her sonic palette even as her muse turns further inward.
Expansion and introspection pull against each other to create a low hum of tension: instruments like Sarah La Puerta Gautier’s vibraphone, Jonathan Horne’s classical guitar and Nino Saberon’s cello make a rich bed where Horn can rest the plaintive and often just plain body of her willowy voice.
This tension brings the listener in much closer to hear Horn, not unlike the ear-tilting encouragement of Beth Orton’s fragile voice against lush arrangements on her 2022 album Weather Alive. But also not too much like Orton, because Horn is still discovering how much attention she can get without raising her volume.
Horn’s careful quiet extends to how she indicates her influences, which could include Orton, latter-day Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams (they share Texas roots), Laura Marling, and so on … except that one song, “Days Go By,” has the flat affect of Cat Power, and another, “The Way It Is,” has the childlike sentimentality of Maureen Tucker’s occasional lead turns for the Velvet Underground.
Her musicianship—on guitar, bass, and piano—is deliberately uncomplex, allowing lyrics like “I live in between ‘is’ and ‘isn’t’,” in the song “In Between,” to embed themselves in the imagination. Horn continues to make a small noise on The Window Is the Dream; it’s a small noise, however, that contains multitudes of large thoughts and feelings.
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