Draining Love Story Review/Analysis
Before I begin, I feel that I must provide a bit of background for the artist. Sewerslvt, also known as Jvnko or Jvne, was an electronic music artist who started out at 17 with Death Grips mashups and shitposts before moving on to making breakcore, combining lo-fi, ambient sounds with intricate breakbeats. Draining Love Story is her breakthrough album with the song “Mr. KMS” trending on YouTube. As more attention came to her, her past as a shitposting teenager was found, with a lot of controversy over one album using a racial slur. More controversies started to build from it, including harassment from Kiwi Farms for being trans. These would end up affecting people’s views on her newer projects, and she had to deal with all this until she left the project alone due to her ex-girlfriend dying. Now, she’s out there, probably living a more fulfilling life free from the hypocrisy of Twitter.
Even with all the controversies, even the ones I did not mention, I really do enjoy this album, even more when I went beyond the surface. It may seem like it glorifies it’s themes like suicide, depression and self-harm, but I think that comes more from how the album feels than what it’s expressing, as well as the stigma against a lot of content that tries to talk about depression but ends up getting admired by people who end up glorifying it.
This mainly comes from how Sewerslvt’s music, which some label “breakcore” and others label “atmospheric drum ‘n’ bass” is composed, with two layers representing what I believe to be emotion.
The first layer is the low fidelity ambience and samples used to push the message of each song, like in “Ecifircas”, there are clips from the classic Adult Swim show, “Moral Orel”, used to talk about sacrifices we make, trading our happiness for a higher expectation.
The second layer is the heavy breakbeats and drum patterns, which can vary in texture and execution. “Newlove” has breakbeats that feel more danceable and use a well-known hip-hop sample, while “Lexapro Delirium” goes a bit calmer with its drumbeat than the other tracks.
The two tracks that don’t fit this footprint are “Love is a Mighty Big Word” and “This Fleeting Feeling”, the former being the intro track and the latter including an interview with a suicide patient from the 50s over some eerie ambience ending in a clip of what is widely believed to be Jvne crying.
The two parts, I believe, represent two parts of an emotional experience: the inside, what we feel, and the outside, what we experience.
The inside of our feeling is represented by the ambience and sampling. The calming nature of it sounds transcending, almost like we’re flying in our sleep. The low fidelity adds to this by feeling somewhat grimy, as if I am in a place or state that I shouldn’t be in, almost like I am in an abandoned room, or so I think it is.
The outside is represented by the beatbreaking and harsher sounds. It overwhelms the listener, and for me, it is representative of the abuse of people whether we know them or not. Be it verbal, physical, or harsh words said by a stranger, or toxic positivity completely covered by an inauthentic smile.
The samples are a big motivator in the artistic integrity of the album. Some are short like in “Mr. KMS”, where a clip from a Japanese gore film is the only spoken word in this track made after she transitioned. (Apparently, he wanted to used Etika’s last words, too, but it wouldn’t have worked at all.)
“Swinging in His Cell” samples the movie “My Sweet Satan”, a movie about the Kasso case in which teenager Ricky Kasso and a group of teens on hallucinogenics killed his friend. Once he was jailed, he died of suicide by hanging himself in his cell. Sewerslvt’s references to murders, as well as the overall themes of mental health, ties into the manic breakbeats and the odd ambience, making it somewhat like an emotional rollercoaster where we learn about so much of the worst of human experience that we question the things around us.
The album isn’t perfect, as the last two tracks, “Down the Drain” and “Slowdeath”, the longest tracks on the album, don’t feel as engaging despite them both having very good production, especially the latter. Down the Drain has a long pause, which fun fact: when I was on the train listening to this album on the light rail, and the whole silence period lasted the time it took for the train announcer to tell us about our last stop and where to transfer. Slowdeath has a very catchy synth riff that feels as if we are floating…upwards? In such a melancholic album, this is a strangely positive note to end an album on.
However, that is probably the best note to end an album on. After a harsh flight through human emotion and samples representing such emotion, Slowdeath feels like the last breathing moments of your life, almost as if we are looking back on the happier times in our lives before dying. In a way, once we go back to the beginning, it’s like a cycle of life and death, one that fills itself with curiosity, misery, and longing.
In short, Draining Love Story is a very well done album, if not for some parts that leave me disinterested. The use of danceable breakbeats on a backdrop of ambience can grow a bit old, and a lot of aspects of the album feel quite dated, to say the least. I’d recommend this album for anyone who is interested in music with psychological themes, or for people who don’t get easily offended. It may not be breakcore, but whatever people label it, there is no denying that it’s a work of art.
