Her last solo album, the critically-lauded Head of Roses, took on heartbreak from a dualistic perspective, following a winding thread of intuition into the unknown and into healing. Her new album, The Life You Save, takes that a step further; put simply, it’s the most honest, intimate and personally revealing record of Wasner’s career. As heart-wrenching as they are hopeful, its twelve tracks delve the depths of addiction and codependency, inherited and experienced trauma, and the process of finding peace in the face of others’ suffering. The Life You Save is resonant, unflinchingly exposed – like a missive from the eye of a storm. But while it somehow manages to feel both viscerally raw and vulnerable, above it floats a sense of quiet peace, a sheen of hindsight, or perhaps of acceptance. It is the story of how it feels to be trapped between two worlds—the one you came from, and the one you’ve escaped to; about the belief that somehow, you can take the ones you love with you to this place; about the grief of realizing that the only person you can save is yourself.

‍The Life You Save was produced by Jenn Wasner and recorded at Betty’s in Chapel Hill, NC, and Montrose Recording in Los Angeles, CA, and includes the highlights “Long After Midnight,” “Defeat,” “Afraid,” “Keep Me In The Dark,” and “River In My Arms.” The Life You Save also features additional production from Nick Sanborn (tracks 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 11), is engineered by Adrian Olsen & Alli Rogers, mixed by Adrian Olsen, and mastered by Huntley Miller.

Jenn writes on :

This is a standing room performance. If you require accessiblity accommodations, please email boxoffice@nationalsawdust.org.

“My previous records, generally, have been a summary of things I had already been through— experiences I had observed and reflected upon, reporting back from some amount of distance. But this record is different. It is an attempt to report from inside of a process that is ongoing and unfinished, from which I will likely never fully emerge as long as I am alive: my struggle within the cycles of addiction and co-dependency. 

“I set out trying to make a record about other people.

“Their problems, their struggles, their addictions.

“I struggled for many years to give myself permission to write about this subject–worried that I was telling someone else’s story, a story that was not mine to tell. The work felt hazy and obscured; I was confused, and I struggled. The beauty of songwriting, at its best, is that it puts you in touch with your subconscious–a place where you can only tell the truth. Many of those truths were hard to accept.  Some I don’t, even now, feel fully ready to say. But through this process, I came to understand that I was struggling with this record because I wasn’t being honest with myself. I was so deeply entrenched in the system in which I was raised that I thought I was outside of it, and the ways in which I continued to participate remained invisible to me.

“But slowly, painstakingly, through this work I began to realize—I am not apart from all of this. I have been performing my role from a distance, but I am still engaged, still connected: 

“I’m inside it, after all. 

“As it turns out, this record is not someone else’s story–it is mine, the story of my life. A life spent believing I had escaped, and that I deserved to feel guilty for doing so. A life in which I believed that the right combination of words, actions, effort, and expense could somehow change others’ behavior. And a life in which blindness to my own patterns caused me to hurt others, and prevented me from finding the true love and acceptance I yearned for. 

“The belief that you can rescue others comes from more than one place, internally speaking. The part that is easiest to see and acknowledge is the one that stems from love, good intentions, and a genuine desire to offer care and support. But there’s an uglier side, and that part is harder to look at—the ego, the pridefulness, the belief that you are better, stronger, somehow more deserving than all the rest. That through your attempts to control others’ behavior, you can somehow secure a sense of safety for yourself. 

“I know the rules, but I ignore them, 

I think I’m good enough to pull this off. 

“Or, more simply: 

“I think I’m god; I know I’m not. 

“For me, that was the puzzle piece that finally made it all make sense. But it was also the piece that was the hardest to hold. It took a long time for me to build up enough love—not for others, but for myself—that acknowledging this truth would not break me. I understand now that I’m not the savior, not the hero, not the chosen one. I’m spinning in my own wheel, a bundle of addictions and adaptations and blind spots, just like everybody else. And there is a beauty to that, along with a kind of freedom. 

In the end, it is my hope that this record exists as a testament to the depth of my love for those I cannot save, and that it might provide some comfort for anyone who is still learning how to love and live for themselves.