“La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid,” wrote Pierre de Choderlos de Laclos, in his 1782 classic Les Liaisons Dangereuses. But the English version of the delicious phrase has been uttered in pop culture many times since, by everyone from Dorothy Parker to The Godfather’s Don Vito Corleone: “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
And while the chilling epithet may be true, retribution can come in many forms, and on the ferocious new Revengeseekerz, the electro-indie-digi-punk savant that is Jane Remover comes in hot — as well as relentless, slightly mad, funny and liberated like never before. The third album from Jane [they/them] was a surprise drop last Friday, to the delight of the artist’s faithful, who knew the LP was imminent.
Jane has for half a decade kept us guessing, resisted boxes – musical or otherwise – and often vowed never to repeat themselves, record to record, and Revengeseekerz checks that box. It was presaged by a string of singles last summer intended for another project and which sounded nothing like the new album; then a wry, killer New Year’s Day track, “JRJRJR”; an infectious club banger, “Dancing with your eyes closed”; and the no-fanfare Valentine’s Day drop of Ghostholding, the debut full-length from Jane’s more understated side project, Venturing. But none of it prepared us for the sonic beast that is Revengeseekerz. Crashing, sample-heavy, jagged electronics (“TWICE REMOVED,” “Dreamflasher,” the anything-goes “TURN UP OR DIE”) butt up against frantic dance tracks, including “Psychoboost,” a 150 bpm piledriver with an appropriately unhinged feature from rap wild man Danny Brown, who in a recent post called Revengeseekerz the “album of the year.” And while it’s only just April? It deserves a place in that conversation.
Superficially, the LP’s return to electronics may have more in common with Jane Remover’s 2021 debut Frailty – a smash ‘n grab triumph of queer Gen Z bedroom confessionals, digicore maelstroms – than it does with their acclaimed 2023 turn toward darker, American goth-horror shoegaze, Census Designated. But Revengeseekerz is by no means a step back. There was a manic quality to Frailty as well, but as Jane has pointed out, that record was the product of a 17-year-old, whereas Revengeseekerz not only doubles down on the frenzy but brims with an empowerment and lack of inhibition of an artist who now, at 21, creates at a home studio in their adopted home of Chicago, hundreds of miles from their native New Jersey.
Jane predicted two years ago that “whatever comes next” after Census would offer a marked contrast, and holy moly if that isn’t true. Against a blown-out electronic wall in the chop-and-change “Experimental Skin,” their vocal, just discernible beneath the squall, admits they “might be falling for you” but on the other hand wonders, “I think that I don’t have a soul.” On a lyrically unfiltered “Star people,” (partly inspired by the late George Michael, who had a song of the same name) Jane offers, “I look at him like that cause I’m a fucking perv” and “we should film a sex tape and then leak it.” “Psychoboost” builds to a tornadic finish, and the refrain “don’t get greedy or you might get hurt.”
As the album’s name suggests, scores are settled throughout. Revengeseekerz’ title is loosely connected to Kill Bill, Jane’s favorite movie, a fact which alone should tell you that crossing the artist might not be advisable. Another influence was electro-hardcore act Machine Girl’s unrelenting 2017 releases Because I’m Young Arrogant and Hate Everything About You. Jane’s vivid imagination for retributory violence is familiar to anyone who remembers the harrowing “part two” of their 2021 epic “movies for guys” in which our narrator takes glass shards to an offender and blithely kicks back to watch TV as the chud bleeds out on the sidewalk. Suffice to say, Revengeseekerz serves more of where that came from. “angels in camo” opens with, “Dear God, place a curse on those who wronged me” and later declares, “I can’t let these bitches win.” “TURN UP OR DIE” declares, “Give dead bitches proper sendoff. Explosive bitch, blow his head off.” “And on Experimental Skin”: “I wanna sin, blow the city up.”
Make no mistake: the album is a freewheeling blast, and Jane calls it the “most fun” they have had making music in a long time. Still, while not didactically political, the significance of a record with vengeance on its mind, by a young queer artist – Jane came out as a trans woman in 2022 – dropping at this moment in history, in which marginalized people, none more so than the trans community, are regularly demonized and lied about and hatred against them is weaponized at the highest seats of power, cannot be ignored. Revengeseekez is a rush, but it also matters.
Its brash sonic bad-assery is complemented by a hell of a JR glow-up in the past year. The artist who once sported wire rims and christened the zany, glitchy microgenre they fashioned in their teen come-up as “dariacore” has done a Black Swan move and – ever one to throw a metaphorical match to their past work – set themselves on fire in the dramatic cover photo for Revengeseekerz. An arresting image for a stunner of a record, which has no doubt left jaws dropped, possibly blown a speaker or two and will like leave venue walls and floors shaking when Jane’s TURN UP OR DIE tour launches later this month. PAPER sat down with the self-described “shapeshifter” in their publicists’ Lower East Side office in late March.
JR! What a monster of a record. I want you to know I first heard Revengeseekerz about 48 hours before Playboi Carti’s MUSIC – maybe the most talked about record of the year – dropped – and I was no less blown away by your record than by his.
I love Carti’s album!
I like it too, but to think what you have achieved with this, working all on your own, with just the one feature from Danny Brown, it’s just amazing. So you had some singles out last summer that were not part of this album, when did this record all come together?
Yeah, “Magic I Want U,” “How to Teleport” and “Flash In the Pan,” they were all part of an album that I was working on last summer. And I left it unfinished, but I remember halfway through the [JPEGMAFIA] tour I was like, “This isn’t what I want to do.” But honestly a lot of the ideas from that project ended up seeping into Revengeseekerz. So I know that a lot of my fans were upset like, “Oh why didn’t you just drop that album instead?” But, if you hear that album and Revengeseekerz back-to-back, the ideas are basically the same, melodically, sonically. Even though Revengeseekers is way more mechanical, and cold.
Do you remember what the first songs you did on it were and how they came about?
Yeah, I came home from tour and instantly “JRJRJR” was the first song I made. It was the only one that was finished, for three months!
So that was September-ish?
Yeah I came home the week of my birthday. The day I touched down back at my place was September 25. Then literally three days later I made “JRJRJR.” While I was on tour I basically had a track list done, and it’s not identical to the track list that is here in front of us, but I knew “JRJRJR” was gonna be the last track for sure. And also I thought it would be funny to have the lead single be the last track on the album.
That song and “Dancing with your eyes closed” both dropped earlier in the year, and in a way it feels like you were easing people into this album, because in a sense they are simpler to digest than some of the more chaotic tracks like “Experimental Skin” or “TURN UP OR DIE.” Does that make sense?
Yeah, it’s funny cause those – “Dancing” and “JRJRJR” – are so loaded. But at the same time, they were teasers for the rest of the album. Like appetizers, almost.
If things really started happening in September to me that sounds like you work pretty fast.
I was grinding! Cause, Revengezeekerz and the [side project] Venturing album Ghostholding, I did those at the same time.
Like, back and forth?
Yeah! So the first actual song I made when I came home was “Sister,” off the Venturing album. I wrote that one a long time ago. Then “JRJRJR.”
I suppose if you were gonna be reductive, this album is more like Frailty than it is like Census? I don’t even know if you would agree with that, but I also think it’s different. It’s got a boldness and this feeling of empowerment and fearlessness I would say that could only have come from these last few years. Do you agree?
Yeah, I think so too. Because, production-wise it definitely is closer to Frailty than it is to Census because Frailty was, there was a lot of dance-oriented tracks on there, and half of this album is EDM. But still, I didn’t put down the guitar at all for this album. Out of seven, of the twelve songs on this album I’m still playing guitar on it. I wanted to find a way to – cause I’ve grown more confident in my guitar playing abiliities, so I’m like, why would I not want to put it on the album?
Do you feel like Revengeseekerz could not exist had you not gone through Census Designated?
No. In a way, you know how Census is a product of Frailty, where it was everything that came after Frailty fueled what made Census? So now it’s like, in a way everything that did come after Census is what is fueling Revengeseekerz in a way. And it’s not just that – the second album has to happen in order for the third album to happen. And, whatever I make after this album, this album has to happen in order for me to think about what I want to do next.
Last year it felt like maybe there was a new aesthetic era coming too when you dropped a visualizer for “Flash In the Pan” which was you hanging out the car window, right?
Yeah like smoking out the window.
Which was super cool, and it reminded me, didn’t Leroy [Jane’s ‘dariacore’ 2021 alter ego] have a song called “dyed my hair black”?
“Dyed my hair black” – yeah, was one of my favorites, honestly!
Yeah, dude some of those old titles were so cool, one was like, “not in Pride month”?
Oh yeah, “during Pride month?”
Yeah that’s it. Awesome. So wait, is your hair naturally that dark?
I dyed my hair the last time was probably a month and a half ago. So it’s probably faded by now. But my hair’s naturally brown.
A lighter brown?
Yeah so it’s not that much of a difference, but honestly you’re the first person to point out that I did dye my hair black for that shoot. [Laughs].
Well I thought so but I wasn’t sure. Your fans’ subreddit was talking a lot recently about your “aura farming” – not sure how you feel about that – and it really ramped up with the Jane-on-fire photos. How did that idea come about?
The fire was partially my idea, and partially the photographer Brendon’s idea. [Brendon Burton] I gave him a visually rough idea of, “This is what I’m thinking,” and it was honestly based off of a lot of video game screenshots. And then we scouted a place, and we shot in Oxnard, California. And he was like, “This is how you make a fire.” Essentially. It’s basically just butane, water, and soap. Basically the water doesn’t catch fire, it’s just the bubbles. And since the bubbles are in contact with the water, so the second the fire touches the water it gets put out. So you don’t really get burned. My hair caught fire…
I was wondering about your hair.
Yeah every picture we took the flame lasted probably like three seconds. It was a little science moment. But my hair caught fire probably fifty times! [Laughs] You can see in some of the photos, my hair, burnt to a crisp a little bit. I remember I came home, or we pulled up to some surf n turf spot, and I was just smelling like butane fire.
The title Revengeseekerz and a lot of the lyrics are vengeful in nature, one way or another – for me, there is a lot to unpack there. You know, “angels in camo” lays it all out, right off the top, of “Dear God, place a curse on those who wronged me.” Was there an individual or several people in mind in terms of the target of the revenge mindset?
Yeah, in a way I feel like there are people that I have a right to genuinely be mad at, but Revengeseekerz is a lot like a “blind rage” album, where it’s like, yeah there are people that I am mad at, people that have wronged me. But they are assimilated with everybody else, so it’s like just swinging it at literally everyone, in a sense. So it’s like – I feel like I have a big sword. Imagine if we’re in a Kill Bill scene. Honestly that’s where Revengeseekerz, the title comes from. Cause it used to be – I had an account with the username Revengeseekerz, with the “z” on It, and it was Kill Bill-themed. Cause that’s my favorite movie. It’s like that one scene where they are at the bar, where the Yakuza come in, and she [Uma Thurman, as The Bride] is just swinging her sword at literally everyone, and behind her his head flies off, and in front of her his legs come off and it’s just a bloody mess, she doesn’t even know who she’s hitting. That’s what it feels like, the album, to me. I guess, everybody who has wronged me is in the crowd of everybody else, who I know and love, so it’s like, yeah I’m seeking revenge, I guess, on people who have wronged me, but I’m also hurting people that I love in the process. And sometimes I don’t even know who I’m mad at. That’s also the blind rage part of it, where it’s like, “Yeah, I’m mad, and I feel like I have a right to be mad, but who am I mad at?”
So a line like, “I can’t let these bitches win,” the bitches aren’t necessarily anyone in particular?
Yeah I mean, for all I know, it could mean literally anyone else. Sometimes when you’re mad at one person, you’re mad at everyone.
Also in “angels in camo” you have the “Jesus never had it with a freak bitch” line?
I thought that was hard!
Yeah! I would say!
That shit is hard! I’ve – and honestly, my manager didn’t like this at all – but I was like, I have to have a certain “zestiness” quota, for lack of a better term, on this album. So every song, or most songs, there’s one line where it’s like, “it would be so fucking funny to like hear the fans sing this back to me!” [Chuckles]
“Dreamflasher” is another favorite of mine – and this is saying a lot for this album, but it’s the most bananas, so much going on, just this symphony of sounds and drops and bells and jagged shit. I don’t know if you can say anything about making that song, is it fun creating a track that is kind of crazy?
Yeah. That was so much fun! That’s honestly, like, my two most favorite songs to make on this album were “Dreamflasher” and “TURN UP OR DIE.” I feel like both took, two studios sessions each to fully finish it.
Oh really? You do work fast. Damn.
On a song like “TURN UP OR DIE,” that’s two studio sessions. I started at like 2pm and I ended at like 5am. But it felt so good, to have that, render my song at like 5am, and then be like, “Yeah. It’s done.” [Laughs]
You mentioned Kill Bill and I am sure fans remember some of your more visual songs like on Census or the pretty heavy part two of “movies for guys.” It feels like you have a book in you, like you could write a heavy duty book.
I’m flattered, but I feel like my storytelling capabilities have only worsened, probably.
Really?
Yeah. Cause I used to have Soundcloud accounts where I told, even with Venturing I tried to make it its own little story. I tried to do a bunch of world-building around that, and tried to connect it to this other Soundcloud account, and I feel like my abilities in that just only got worse and worse. So that’s why I just killed the whole thing. I was like, “Let me me have this side account for the vibes. And not for the story.” But I don’t know what happened, honestly. It’s the same thing as – I used to be able to fully imagine pictures in my head. It’s called, “aphantasia” I think. You know that one diagram of the person imagining apples in their head? And it’s like, one being a perfectly clear apple and five being nothing? I think I used to be at a one or two and the past few years, I’m at a four or five now.
Interesting.
But it’s different with music. I feel like music is the other way around, where I can fully imagine songs now. Whereas I used to only be able to imagine pictures, now I can only imagine songs.
Some of these lines, like “I wanna blow the city up” in “Experimental Skin,” or “Explosive bitch blow his head off” in “TURN UP OR DIE”… I don’t want to cross you, I know that much! But it’s interesting to me because you don’t seem like somebody who has this super short temper?
No, I’m not. It’s weird, honestly. I feel like I’m a chill person. But I also have no chill. I feel like I almost never act out of anger, I honestly don’t have a temper. But I also feel like I’ve never really chilled out a day in my life. I feel like there’s always something on my mind that’s bothering me.
You don’t seem, publicly, like an explicitly political person. But there is no getting away from the fact that a queer artist is releasing a record called Revengeseekerz in this very fraught, dark moment in time that we are in. I can’t help but see it in that context too? You know, I personally feel quite vengeful toward these people who are every single day trying to inflict more harm on marginalized and vulnerable people, right?
Yeah, I mean honestly, I see it in my family, I see it in everything.
But is the revenge-seeking that’s through a lot of the record, is it a more personal kind of revenge, or do you see it working in that larger, sociological way?
I can see how it can apply to that. And I like that. Cause there’s the saying about how when the music comes out, it no longer belongs to you. And so, now – it could be revenge on the whole world, if you wanted it to. And that’s also why it’s so accentuated sometimes. You know when I say, “explosive bitch, blow his head off,” or “I wanna blow the city up.” It’s not as in Joker shit! [Laughs]
I was once, long ago, acquaintances, even friends, with George Michael. Interviewed him a bunch. And I bring this up, of course…
Because there are multiple George Michael references on here.
Exactly! And when I first saw you had a song called “Star people” I remembered that George had a song by the same name, which I talked to him about when his Older album came out [1996]. And then I saw your lyrics and heard the song, which actually borrows some phrases from his song, like the “soul turning green,” “maybe momma gave you up,” and then you even say, “I’m on some George Michael Freek” and I just thought that was all so cool, cause I think there are a lot of 21-year-olds who don’t even know who he was
I love George Michael! I can’t remember how I first got into him. I only just recently got Older on CD. But I’ve liked that album for a minute. I always feel like rooting for a gay pop star. I love when a pop star is gay. And also his voice is so beautiful, and a lot of his songs I relate to.
I assume you know the story of how he was outed in a big tabloid incident, an undercover cop was in a public rest room in Beverly Hills…
Yeah and we see that happen time and time again now, and it’s just that now it’s more adjusted to the modern things. We just see the story of how George Michael got outed today but in other ways, with a bunch of people. But I feel like the way that he responded to it, and how he was so chill about it in every interview, I was like, “Damn. That’s so admirable.”
Was there anything you wanted to say with “Star people”? What’s that line about, “My mother told me…”?
Oh yeah, “My mother called me, said ‘don’t let that fame sleep in your bed.’”
And “I blew up fast, grew up faster sleeping with the dead.”
That’s playing with your life. That song is the most all over the place on the album, I think. Cause the first half of it, or actually the whole song is this overarching theme of how being in music, it’s like a dick-swinging contest. That’s what – again with the zestiness quota of this album, “We should film a sex tape and press leak it” – yah! But I feel it’s partially about how fleeting love is, and it’s the feeling that every good thing in your life is going to go. Especially love. All the good things that you have. Fame, money, love. I feel like rather than celebrating it, that I take advantage of it, and I just wait for it to go, at any second. I feel like that’s why it’s the most frantic-sounding on the album, and why lyrically it’s all over the place, and there’s just a random switch-up.
You’ve spoken before about how you, maybe not over-think, but you think a lot about things, and maybe you’ll have internal debates about things. Is that mainly about your art, or is it about other things as well?
Honestly, it’s about everything. But on the bright side, I kinda have more access to things than I did before. I finally have money to buy cool clothes. Earlier in my life I never really thought about getting cool clothes, because I just didn’t really have money. So I was just like, “Let me just wear whatever I have sitting around.” And that’s honestly how my whole fashion sense was until I moved and now that I’m like – now that I can buy more, actual, cool-looking clothes, it’s like, “Hmm, what do I want to look like when I walk out the door? How do I want to go about my day?” Even though I’m not fully there. You know? It’s like, “How do I want my catalog to look in ten years?” You know? “How do I want to brand myself?”
Do you think that far ahead? Or are you just focused on, say, the next project?
I don’t know, because sometimes – cause honestly I have thought about what the fourth album is going to sound like, already. But I feel like maybe next time around, like it’ll be the first time that my ideas – cause I have really big ideas? But never enough money to really make it look like how I can picture it? But I feel like maybe next time around, if this album does well enough, I can fully visualize how I want that album to sound like.
Photography: Parker Corey, Joriel Cura, Athena Merry