♡ is full of delicious moments that feel like biting into a rich chocolate-covered strawberry: the falsetto runs at the end of “Magic I Want U,” the subtle “rock ya hips” sample littered throughout “Music Baby,” or the impressive use of scratching across the whole EP. Songs about partying with your crush are nothing new, but Jane Remover delivers theirs with a playful juvenility that makes the emotional expression on ♡ feel novel. The EP’s indulgent sound and thoughtful embellishments make you wonder what new spin on radio pop might result from getting Jane Remover in, say, a Tate McRae or KATSEYE writers room.
More than half of the EP’s songs are tweaked versions of older material: In addition to “Dream Sequence,” there’s reworked versions of “Magic I Want U” and “Flash in the Pan,” and a slightly extended version of “How to Teleport.” Across the board, the changes are noticeable but minimal. There’s no major updates to their vocals or production, just a replaced sample here and a tiny coda there. “Nooo I miss when it sounded like shit,” Jane Remover wrote in a since-deleted tweet about the new version of “Magic I Want U.” But even if that were true, it doesn’t feel like the small patch is doing much upheaval. These versions aren’t going to win over any new fans, but the changes aren’t significant enough to dampen the quality of the material, either. (The original versions are still widely available, anyways.) It makes you wonder: Why do this at all?
Thanks to the living nature of digital music, maybe the answer is simply “because they can.” Jane Remover has long been interested in all the various ways music can be released, tinkered with, re-released, or even deleted in the digital era. Earlier this year, for example, they released an entire mixtape of rage rap on SoundCloud, then took it down after a few hours. Jane Remover’s fans have made fun out of hunting down and sharing the old versions of their songs, like a community of digital Deadheads trading Google Drive links and buried YouTube playlists like bootleg tapes. There will be a line where the interesting thought experiment of reinventing old tracks turns into the awkwardness of refusing to let material live out its own lifespan. But until the day Jane Remover deletes a new opus and opts to release the 15th rework of “Magic I Want U” because it still sounds “like shit,” it doesn’t seem like their tinkering with the past will prevent them from living in the present.
