Rock/Review Jessi Robertson - Dark Matter

Jessi Robertson is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter known for her powerhouse vocals and emotionally raw, genre-bending songs. Blending confessional fire with otherworldly imagination, her work draws comparisons to art-rock visionary Kate Bush, pop-rock icon Stevie Nicks, and indie iconoclast PJ Harvey. Robertson commands a room with songs that are as intimate as confessions and as cathartic as confrontations, her voice shifting from lullaby crooning to a wild rock and roll wail.

“Dark Matter” is more than an album — it’s an act of reclamation. Jessi Robertson’s latest project emerges from a profound period of self-discovery following her Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis, a moment that sparked a deep re-evaluation of identity, creativity, and the countless masks she learned to wear throughout her life. The record becomes both a document of unmasking and a sonic excavation of truths long buried under the pressure to appear “normal.”

These songs, written mostly in 2017 and once set aside for being “too weird,” now form the emotional and conceptual backbone of “Dark Matter.” Revisited with compassion and clarity, they explore themes like black holes, information decay, quantum entanglement, and the gravitational pull of being misunderstood. The result is an album that weaves together astrophysics and emotion with a rare, poetic coherence. Space becomes a metaphor for both isolation and interconnectedness — the cosmos as mirror to the self.

Robertson performs every instrument herself — guitar, bass, drums — not out of perfectionism, but necessity. These songs needed to exist free from external shaping, preserving the rawness of the parts she once hid. That DIY intimacy, with all its beautiful imperfection, gives “Dark Matter” its magnetic authenticity.

Sonically, the album leans into moody indie rock, atmospheric folk, and minimalist textures, allowing her voice and lyrical honesty to take center stage. It’s vulnerable, experimental, and unabashedly idiosyncratic — all the qualities she once feared revealing.

In embracing her “too muchness,” Jessi Robertson has created her truest work yet. “Dark Matter” is a brave, luminous reminder that what we hide often holds our brightest light.