The enigmatic yet introspective creative Deena Lynch is back as Jaguar Jonze with her latest release ‘Kill Me With Your Love’, the follow up to ethereal-pop track ‘Beijing Baby’. ‘Kill Me With Your Love’, laments the downsides to love while using rock sensibilities infused with soaring vocals and dance rhythms that are staples of Jonze's aesthetic.
“’Kill Me With Your Love’ is a song about a toxic relationship addiction. It’s the process of trying to find a fix to the addiction but continuing to stay around for the emotional payoffs. Like any toxic relationship it’s about the way we tell ourselves that the relationship will at some point, be perfect and everything we’ve ever dreamed of. So, you balance your odds and make bets you can’t afford to lose, but consistently lose anyway as the relationship continues to fall deeper into toxicity. For a long time, toxic love was where I felt most safe, because it was all I ever knew,” says Jonze.
Jaguar Jonze made her performance debut on “Like A Version,” the weekly live segment on Australia’s ubiquitous radio station Triple J. Jonze joined labelmates Hermitude in the studio to cover Nirvana’s ‘Heart-Shaped Box’.
Jaguar Jonze and its adjacent projects, the narrative illustration project Spectator Jonze and the gender-subverting photography project Dusky Jonze, are powerful ways in which Deena processes her most intimate vulnerabilities, while empowering others to do the same.
Through Spectator Jonze, Deena uses bold pop art that dabbles in surrealism to destigmatize mental-health issues by interviewing her subjects before drawing them. Deena’s 50th portrait, a year into the project, confronted her own PTSD stemming from her unstable, unsafe childhood. “I realized when I stepped out of hiding, I could actually move forward, feel less isolated. I want other people to unburden themselves from the wasted extra energy spent pretending and hiding.”
Dusky Jonze, Deena’s most recent endeavor, compiles her photo work. “We don’t talk about toxic masculinity enough. So, I thought it’d be funny to just shoot male photographers,” she says of the evocative nude portraits. “And they were open to it. They’d say, ’You know what? This makes me a better photographer.’” Consequently, the photo project has become a more fluid effort to undo insecurities and taboos of both the male and female body, within the engendered eye of the photographer.
Each project has its unique identities, but a common thread of confronting shame and taboos by diving deep into the human psyche. Explains Deena: “Everything I do stems from the need for dialogue - Jaguar being an internal dialogue with my subconscious, Spectator being an external dialogue with others on mental health and the mind and Dusky being a dialogue with the body.”
'Kill Me With Your Love' and debut track 'Beijing Baby' will both appear on a forthcoming debut EP.
