Jane Doe (album)

''Jane Doe'' is the fourth studio album by American metalcore band Converge, released on September 4, 2001 by Equal Vision Records. The album was produced by Matthew Ellard alongside guitarist Kurt Ballou, and the artwork was designed by lead vocalist Jacob Bannon. It was the band's first album to feature bassist Nate Newton and drummer Ben Koller, and the last to feature guitarist Aaron Dalbec; Converge's line-up has remained stable since.

Although ''Jane Doe'' did not chart, it was a commercial breakthrough for the band and received immediate acclaim, with critics praising its poetic lyrics, dynamics, ferocity and production. It has since been listed as one of the greatest albums of the metalcore genre by various publications, and has developed a cult following, with the cover art becoming an icon of the band. A live version titled ''Jane Live'' was released in 2017.

Writing and recording

Bannon stated in an interview that many of the songs on ''Jane Doe'' came from the side project Supermachiner; the project was claimed to inspire ''Jane Doe'''s experimental side. The title track and "Phoenix in Flight" were initially intended for the Supermachiner album '' Rise of the Great Machine'', but Bannon thought it made sense for Converge to play them. Ballou has stated that Koller "reinvigorated" the band and pushed them in a new direction, and that prior to Newton joining the band, Ballou was the dominant songwriter. Ballou has said with the addition of Newton that the album became more collaborative in terms of songwriting, which was not the case prior.

The band had a greater budget of $11,000 to work with on ''Jane Doe'', and its recording process differed from previous releases as a result. The entire album was recorded on six reels of two inch tape at three studios and mixed in two. It was mostly recorded at Q Division Studios, next door to James Taylor's recording session. Additional recording took place at GodCity Studio and Fort Apache, and took around three years. The band recorded for seven days at Q Division using two rooms dubbed "Studio A" and "Studio B". Studio A was used to record the slower songs because the room was bigger than Studio B, which Ellard stated was more optimal for invoking ambience in their sound than Studio B. Studio B was used to record the more uptempo songs due to its smaller size.

Newton stated in an interview, "I remember all of us wanting to write a hardcore record the kids were going to hate." Matthew Ellard, engineer and producer of ''Jane Doe'', said he saw the album as a "big rock record" rather than a metal record. Ballou has stated that ''Jane Doe'' is the first Converge album that he is "proud of from start to finish".

Musical style and themes

Bannon stated that the album's lyrical themes were born out of a dissolving relationship and the emotional fallout from that experience.

The lyrics found in ''Jane Doe'''s liner notes differ from some of the lyrics on the recorded tracks. The booklet lists the lyrics of the opening track "Concubine" as "For I felt the greatest of winters coming/ And I saw you as seasons shifting from blue to grey/ That's where the coldest of these days await me/And distance lays her heavy head beside me/ There I'll stay gold, forever gold", although the only lyrics said in the song are "You stay gold/I'll stay gold". Scott Butterworth of Noisey said, "It's a somewhat confusing incongruity, but at the same time, it's eerily reminiscent of a moment most of us have experienced. If you've ever planned an eloquent, well-reasoned speech in your head only to feel too overwhelmed, too hurt, too emotional to spit it out when the time came, you can understand the brilliant trick Bannon is pulling here."

Artwork

The artwork for ''Jane Doe'' was designed and created by Jacob Bannon. The booklet features lyrics for each song on the album, which are intentionally scattered and difficult to decipher. Bannon stated, "Visually, I just wanted to capture that disillusionment with relationships and channel the negatives I felt. I did this in hopes of creating some sort of positive out of all the negative I was experiencing." The result was a mystery created from a variety of media, collage, photography, spraypaint, and ink that Bannon then assembled digitally. The cover image has since become their " de facto icon".

Bannon revealed in an interview that he abandoned multiple art projects to work on artwork for ''Jane Doe'':

"Abandoning several other ongoing art projects so he could work on ''Jane Doe'' exclusively for a month, Bannon applied the same meticulous process in creating all of the companion images that appear in the album's 28-page CD booklet. "Once I had the basic images completed, including the cover, I worked on type treatments for the release," he says. "At first I used old Letraset type but later switched to contemporary typography as the project progressed. My goal was to continue the same kinetic feel of the imagery and make them one and the same.""

Bannon first stated the cover image was not based on any original model but on October 5, 2021, French actress and model Audrey Marnay

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