Jehnny Beth
You Heartbreaker, You
Release Date: Aug 29, 2025
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock
Record label: Fiction
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Album Review: You Heartbreaker, You by Jehnny Beth
Great, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 4
Ex-Savages singer’s second solo album is coal black in tone and delivery and extends the legacy of her former band Going solo is a tricky business, especially when in order to go solo, you have to leave a beloved band behind. Savages (RIP) were the progenitors of the second post-punk revival that grew to include bands like Fontaines DC, Idles, Dry Cleaning and so many more, and they were led by the ferocious Jehnny Beth. Her tigerish vocals, with their thick Gallic intonation, combined with her vicious, scalpel-sharp lyrics, put Jehnny Beth head and shoulders above any of her contemporaries, but her bandmates in Savages – Gemma Thompson (guitars), Ayse Hassan (bass), and Fay Milton (drums) – provided her with the perfect backdrop to showcase her individual style, and together they represent the very best of the genre.
Based on rating 7/10
From Savages to her solo work the painful intensity she wrings out of her music marries trauma and survival with a stark, artistic clarity. Seeking answers through reinvention. Beth sets the visceral tone here again beginning with a scream. A declaration announcing she's back, and clearly she's not here to offer comfort.
Opinion: Excellent
On pressing the play button on this second album from Jehnny Beth, two key elements are immediately evident: a bassline evocative of Nine Inch Nails' 'The Fragile', and the juxtaposition between an aggressively human, blood-curdling scream, and a mechanised composition. The former won't come as any surprise to anyone familiar with her time as frontwoman of Savages. The latter, however, marks a full foray into the industrial, her needle pointed closer to Ministry than Coil on the stylistic spectrum.
Opinion: Very Good
Jehnny Beth returns with her second solo album, ‘You Heartbreaker, You’, out via Fiction Records. The new album follows on from 2021's ‘Utopian Ashes’ with Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie, which took listeners through the slow parting of a married couple, as they revel in the loneliness of a failing love. ‘You Heartbreaker, You’ is starkly different.
'You Heartbreaker, You'
is available now