Angels Of Death

Among the surviving songs by ancient Greek poet Sappho (630–570 BCE), sometimes known to her contemporaries as the “Tenth Muse,” is a quiet, confdent prayer for immortality through writing: “The Muses have flled my life/With delight/And when I die I shall not be forgotten.” The alternative is this terrible curse of oblivion: “When you lie dead, no one will remember you/For you have no share in the Muses’ roses.” Though often portrayed today as heavy-lidded, passive conduits of creativity, the Muses of Greek mythology were much stranger and more sinister creatures than their iterations in contemporary culture. In his Metamorphoses, Ovid depicts them as a species of weird angels, airborne and arboreal: “The Muse was speaking: wings sounded in the air, and voices came out of the high branches.”

On Jennifer Castle’s new album Angels of Death, her third full-length record under her given name (previous releases were credited to Castlemusic), the Ontario songwriter summons a kindred classical vision of the Muses as domestic familiars intimately in league with death. In “Rose Waterfalls,” which boasts a melody that cascades like its title, muses stage a home invasion, a pestilence of inspiration. “No one said that poetry was easy,” Castle allows at the outset.

Deluxe 140g virgin vinyl LP features heavy-duty high-gloss board jacket, color inner sleeve with lyrics, color LP labels, and high-res Bandcamp download code.