Seeing in Technicolor: Janine Rainforth Interviewed

Attempts at continuing with a new band were short-lived. For a long time, that was it. Very few people knew that Rainforth’s career had been halted by a violent sexual attack from within her close professional circle. Inevitably it had a huge and lasting impact, and she felt unable to continue in music, either onstage or in the studio.

In 2019, The Guardian published an interview with Rainforth where she bravely spoke publicly for the first time about the assault she suffered. It marked an important milestone in her healing journey, and ultimately led to her being able to create the album we’re discussing today.

“That interview… was very significant for me”, Rainforth explains. “Prior to the lead-up to it, the whole thing was buried. My life went in a very different trajectory soon after it had happened. The reason it was buried was in part the societal pressure on me. There was an unspoken thing that you just didn’t talk about this stuff, and it was never referred to. It’s only very recently that I can even say it was rape, and also near fatal.”

What was the response like, and how did you feel in the time following the interview?

“I can’t quite explain the impact doing the interview had on me… for many years I really didn’t imagine ever being in that position. Didn’t even think about being able to perform or sing again, or talk to anyone about it. [After it was published] I got people telling me that similar things had happened to them. It was good they managed to say that to me.”

Rainforth takes a moment to clarify. “I’m not trying to hurt anyone, I’m just trying to be honest. Before when people would ask me, ‘What happened to Maximum Joy?’, I just wouldn’t know [how to answer]. I’d say, ‘Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll’, which just sounded so naff to me. And I didn’t want to be in that position of lying anymore.”

What happens when you allow yourself to be honest again? “From then on, I knew I had to make a solo album. So that’s what I’ve been working on since, off and on. It’s taken some time.”

Soul Retrieval is the result of that impulse, and that hard work. While Rainforth’s original band was reborn in the 2010s, it’s clear this particular batch of songs had to be released separately under her own name. But though indirectly born out of difficult circumstances, the album is by no means a difficult listen. In fact, quite the opposite – it’s a delightfully moving record about hope and survival (among other things), with Rainforth front and centre on the artwork, striking a sunny, defiant pose with the album title spelled out in blingy gold font that more closely resembles a late ‘90s Pen & Pixel cover.

The album came to life in Rainforth’s small North East London home studio, set up in a “tiny corner” of her bedroom during lockdown. “It’s a tight squeeze, but when I’m in there it’s fine. I’ve got my keyboard and a mic, and big soundproofing panels, and a little window. It’s almost like a safe space for me. An escape. I love being in there. Once you’ve managed to carve out the time to create something and you’re in that space, that’s the best bit.” It’s not hard to draw a link between her studio surroundings and the album’s intimate, nocturnal vibe. “There’s a flat above, and often I find myself working later at night, so I’m quite conscious about not making too much noise.”

The reverberations of dub and reggae are a constant in Rainforth’s output. It’s a musical language that’s obviously very important to her – unsurprisingly, given the Bristol connection. But while keeping one foot in her comfort zone, this album’s more folky approach (“I love songs that tell a story”) also sees other inspirations coming to the fore. In songs like ‘Always with You’, there’s echoes of the music Rainforth influenced and perhaps could have been releasing herself in the late ‘80s and into the ‘90s – bands like This Mortal Coil and the more dubwise end of 4AD. This hybrid of dub, post-punk, bedroom pop and trip hop is a sound that feels remarkably in vogue – although I’m sure this was not at the forefront of Rainforth’s mind.

Then, of course, there’s the soul music alluded to in the album title. Rainforth says that the album is about soul “in all its guises”, and her playlists are full of contemporary acts like SAULT, Olivia Dean, and Moses Sumney. “Soul singers inspire me. I currently love Cleo Sol, her voice is just amazing. It seems so effortless what she does, the way she sings.” She also hips me to the wonderful Cape Verde singer Cesaria Evoria (“She had a really melancholic, incredibly rich voice. A bit like Portuguese fado.”) While there’s a question mark in Rainforth’s mind about who can call themselves a soul singer, her belief is that “we all need soul, and I think we can all impart through our creative endeavours or even our interactions with people through our daily lives.”

It’s a proper headphones album, full of close mic’d vocals and gorgeous sonic flourishes. The guitar licks in the title track. The shimmering keyboard line in ‘Alchemy’ that sounds like golden raindrops descending from heaven. The feint in ‘Beauty’ where the fade-out gives way to deep aqueous bass. The cosmic synth squiggles of ‘Wonderment’. It’s easy for listeners to sink into these lush sounds, but you can’t ignore the emotion suffused throughout for too long. Rainforth’s powerfully unadorned language feels like it wants to be understood, with certain lines repeating almost like mantras. There’s a hard-earned clarity and a generosity to the writing which is really affecting.

It feels like the lyrics are dissolving between different perspectives – sometimes it sounds as though Rainforth is singing to herself, or a younger self, or a loved one. In penultimate track ‘Phoenix Is Rising’, a powerful monument to self-resilience, her double-tracked vocals are duetting with themselves. Rainforth mentions that song is “based upon a poem that I wrote in 1982 [after the assault]. I found it in an old diary that I hadn’t looked at in years.” The significance of a line like, “Left for dead, silence for so long, now the phoenix is risen and is singing her song”, is readily apparent.

The phoenix is one of many striking images that appear – however unconsciously – on an album deeply rooted in the natural world (“I wasn’t aware that my songs were reflecting so much about nature and animals and the weather and the world until finalising it really.”) Even the video for the title track is home to a swan and a reindeer, and by some beautiful kismet, our conversation actually takes place on the eve of the Wolf Moon mentioned in ‘Unrequited’.

This lunar occurrence turns out to have particular significance. “Before and during the making of the album, I’ve experienced some quite significant losses. People very close to me”, Rainforth explains. “There’s one person who’d always refer to the names of the moons, and so that’s how that particular wolf moon moment came to me when I was writing that song, musing on my friend who died.”

That close friend and musical collaborator was Mark Stewart, lead singer of The Pop Group and “godfather” of the Bristol music scene. When Rainforth returned to music after her long absence, her first performances were supporting Stewart. Soul Retrieval is the first music that she’s released since his death in 2023, which “inevitably” fed into the songs. “I was beginning to actually put the ideas down on paper, as it were, when he died. I stopped making at that point, then managed to start again months later. I didn’t change the ideas but… it seeped in, really. He would want to laugh, so I’ve got to remember that. He’d probably be saying, ‘C’mon Jan, get on with it.’”

Looking beyond her bedroom to a wider audience, Rainforth tells me she’s “really excited and relieved to be finally releasing these tracks… you become very tunnel vision with them, once they’re out in the world they become something else entirely in the ears of an hands of the listeners.” When pushed on the possibility of more MXMJoY material in the future, she’s definitely not ruling it out. “I don’t really stop working. Even though the new album is coming out, I’m still working on other material. I’ve got other projects in the pipeline.”