The debut album of New German Cinema, the solo moniker of Fear of Men‘s Jessica Weiss, is mainly preoccupied with one idea: the Self. In the opener “Sub Rosa”, Weiss makes a statement that acts as the axis upon which the record spins: “Looking to lose my sense of self to build something new.” Over pulsive art-pop anthemic tunes, New German Cinema exorcises a latent violence, a suppressed rage that rises yet never explodes, felt more intensely by barely-there vocals. With the record partly set in Berlin, former demarcation lines signify evanescent markers. Shadows fall; memories linger; time dismantles.
What is with the name? New German Cinema. Ironic? Iconic? Whatever. The name of the project is a reference to the movement of young West German directors, who, from 1962 to 1982, directed films such as those of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of the main influences on the record. Yet it is the album’s title that is the most revealing: Pain Will Polish Me. It works as an exploration of the salubrious effects of pain, or, more accurately, when it is repurposed or transfigured. Need evidence? Listen to the LP.
What New German Cinema has achieved with this synth-laden album is to turn pain into beauty and beauty back into pain; there is no difference when the two are speaking the same language, with the same voice, from the same perspective. Put differently, the lithe and laconic record is replete with stark existential and brooding stompers that pose questions: are creation and destruction dependent on one another? How to escape the continuum of the self?
The brief opener, “Sub Rosa”, transitions into reverb-laden “Swirling Pain”, an eddying and claustrophobic atmosphere, complete with electronic oddities and shimmering strings. It is as if you are hearing an oppressive beat coming from a dance floor while waiting in the foyer. The catchy “Being Dead” is a memorable tune that has more life than the title implies (it is about ego death), complete with a springy snare and trebly synth, not to mention the “ahhwoos” in the chorus, echoing the sound of 1960s girl groups.
Pain Will Polish Me is an act of expunging the self(s). What is left of the self when the persona, which once protected it like a carapace, is revealed for what it is: a hollow chamber? What happens when the constructed persona shatters like glass? When the music is as delightful as it is on Pain Will Polish Me, these weighty existential questions appear weightless.
There are two interstitial pieces—”Hera’s Theme I” and “Hera’s Theme II”—in which the former opens with distant and forlorn piano notes (not to mention Weiss’ daughter’s indecipherable chatter), which segues into the bouncy track, “Eyes”. The throbbing “My Mistake”, a collaboration with Carson Cox of the post-punk band Merchandise, aims to be the piece de resistance of the album. Certainly, it foregrounds the theme of ephemerality: “We will be ghosts of the highway.”
In the title track, “Pain Will Polish Me”, Weiss intones, “What I am and what I have been”, which is the summation of the record. With a bowed bass, the somber “Perfect Secret” is less a resolution than a repetition, as if this journey—to understand the self or selves—will undoubtedly take a lifetime, which is to say a paradox; if you reach authenticity, you will not be present.
On Pain Will Polish Me, New German Cinema showcases that pop, when rendered with elegance and depth, can be as weighty as a tome, a language without words, a prelingual entity, interior and frigid. In search of the authentic self, pain is inevitable—though it can be a form of succor.