Jennifer Westwood & The Handsome Devils

Doors 7 | Music 7:30

Jennifer Westwood makes a loud, liberated version of American roots music. It's a modern sound influenced by the singer's old-school favorites, blending Stax-sized soul with gospel grit and dive-bar rock & roll. A sound built for Rust Belt roadhouses, Texas honky-tonks, and Memphis pool halls. A sound that's purely — and proudly — her own.

Madman's World is an album for those isolated listeners. It's a battle cry. A soundtrack for reclamation and resilience, delivered by a survivor whose experienced plenty about both.

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Westwood's gospel roots run beneath the entire record. On the slow-burning soul song "Bulletproof," she leans into the grit of gospel, removing the genre's religious framework and worshipping at the altar of the blues instead. "Gospel is a feeling you get inside yourself," she says. "Gospel is all about overcoming adversity and the hope of a better day, and that's what Madmans World is all about, too." The album's title track explores similar territory, with lyrics that turn The Garden of Eden — where Eve allegedly encouraged Adam to eat the forbidden fruit — into a metaphor for the unjust gender politics that have existed throughout time.

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"I'm kind of reclaiming gospel music for myself," she explains. "I'm reclaiming my independence.

I'm reclaiming everything — how I'm allowed to feel love, who I'm allowed to love, how I'm allowed to express myself, and what's allowed to thrill me. I'm reclaiming myself."

Madman's World speaks to a larger audience, though. These songs are bigger than one woman's experience, and they resonate outside of religion. "There's a compound layer of cultural ideas that parallel my religious experience" Westwood explains, "including an often unreasonable and dehumanizing expectation of what a woman should be, how they should act, and how they should not react to adverse experiences. These songs are my response. Sometimes, I’ve felt so alone with my feelings, but there are hundreds of thousands of people

like me, feeling isolated in their journey to break free."🎶

✨ Have a listen!! ✨