Jane Remover’s “Contingency Song” has the liminal atmosphere of an airport terminal, full of beeping and whirring, people who never stop moving around you but won’t look directly at your face. Since their 2021 breakout album frailty, the 19-year-old artist has ventured further into shoegaze and drone music to explore dread and stagnation; the gloomy, six-plus-minute “Contingency Song,” the longest of any of their tracks, continues this trend. Incorporated into its grinding hum is what sounds like slowed-down sirens and whistling wind. As its gloomy climate grows in harshness, Jane shuts down over a destructive relationship: “I pour the boiling water on my hand/I still feel enough to touch myself,” they croon, the image of self-harm echoing lines from an old Laura Les song (“I just held a candle to my fingers/Smell it on my clothes ’cause flesh lingers”). The pulverizing noise soon eclipses them, squealing and churning until a sense of resignation begins to close in.
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