Jennifer Castle’s Monarch Season Manifests in Physical Form.

Photo by Darryl D.

Stream or Download Jennifer Castle’s Exquisite New Album Monarch Season.

Following last month’s digital release, Jennifer Castle‘s exquisite album Monarch Season manifests in its physical incarnations today, November 20th, alighting in shops worldwide, via Paradise of Bachelors and our friends at Idée Fixe. You can stream or download the whole album now and buy the vinyl LP and/or CD; all preorders have shipped. The limited first-pressing deluxe LP edition includes a songbook of sheet music to every song (see below), inner sleeve with lyrics, and high-res Bandcamp DL code. The songbook is Jennifer’s way of bringing these simple, redolent songs into your home, hands, and hearts in lieu of her live performance. Pick up a copy while supplies last.

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Castle’s sixth full-length record, the moon-suffused Monarch Season—an album as delicate and diaphanous as its namesake butterfly—stands, in a literal sense, as her first proper “solo” album, performed alone in her coastal kitchen, windows open to the insects and the wind and the reflection of the moon on Lake Erie, entirely without human accompaniment (though a chorus of crickets provides rich interstitial support throughout.)

EARLY ACCLAIM FOR MONARCH SEASON

8/10. This homespun suite of piano, harmonica, and finger-picked acoustic guitar is dotted by natural insect and wind sounds wafting through open windows, and her reverb-soaked voice has the effect of a close-quarters conversation. The album, with its Kodachrome warmth and minimalist posture, captures a moment in time, and makes the case for listening as a revolutionary act of intimacy, where headphones and vinyl form a psychic connection between artist and fan. – Uncut An inventive and subtly visceral record [of] exceedingly intimate music. On any given listen, we are invited to travel its distance along with her: to quiet our thoughts, take a deep breath, & linger in the strange, uneasy space between where we started and where we’re going next. – Pitchfork She’s created a folk masterpiece that slowly peels back the layers of the listener with each song. By the time the last song fades away into the colors of the clouds, the listener can feel the grass growing between their veins. It’s such a natural, unfettered vision of folk in 2020 that the record almost feels as if we’re listening across some extra-dimensional echo from the past or a ripple from a future in which the gardens of the Earth are more tended by the caretakers than they are now. – Raven Sings the Blues 8/10. Every album that Jennifer Castle makes feels like a guidebook on how to live… you will find yourself instinctively leaning in to catch every moment… ‘The butterfly days are here,’ and there is beauty to behold. – Exclaim! It finds delicate shadings in the everyday and glory in glimpses of the natural world… The music is simple, but not easy, adorned with intricate picking that cascades over itself like a waterfall. The lyrics feel like really good haiku, pithy, made of small words, but evoking wonderfully precise natural images. It’s a good album for being alone somewhere calm and beautiful, not engaged with the world but not cut off either and enjoying the quiet. – Dusted

Photo by Darryl D.

Jennifer Castle’s musical world is one of sustained, reverberating sound. Here, pianos, guitars, and harmonicas tremble diaphanously on the air, and so does her voice, flittering somewhere between the shadows of Linda Perhacs, Josephine Foster, and Neil Young… Her tales of nature and love often end up sounding super-natural, her lyrics adding to the mix by painting intense images. – MOJO There is so much space left in the mix that she might consider crickets and lapping lake water to be collaborators. But despite its apparent fragility on first listen, Monarch Season contains all of the intensity that Castle refuses to shy away from … – The FADER [Monarch Season] conjures a very specific setting of tranquility, and “Justice” is a spectacular showcase of what the record sounds like as a whole. Castle sings gently yet confidently over crackling guitar plucks, her voice drizzled with just a touch of echo that adds subtle texture to the back of the mix. By the end, the music halts and cuts to chirping crickets, crinkling leaves, and the steady ripple of a lakeshore. It’s beautiful. – Consequence of Sound Amid the crickets, the waves and the moonlight, you can take solace in Monarch Season. – CBC Music, Fall 2020 Albums You Need to Hear The poet Carl Sandburg said the moon was a friend for the lonesome to talk to. Monarch Season, Jennifer Castle’s delicate sixth album, might be one of those conversations. This is a nursing album for the shell-shocked soul. – The Globe and Mail She’s the perfect artist to go to in this age of solitude. Her songs are fully attuned to herself and to nature and the seasons, a cosmic folk that aims for the moon while taking in the butterflies in front of you and the mind that contemplates them. She can’t tour the music, but you can play it live yourself: the album comes with a set of sheet music. – Now Toronto 8/10. Castle understands that quiet can speak volumes. – PopMatters A-. Gentle without faltering into the insubstantial and offering sustained passages of beauty that avoid the ornate, the music’s intimacy is a strong suit. – The Vinyl District