After more than a decade exploring psychedelic pop, jazz, and electronic textures through her project Sis—most recently as Sis and the Lower Wisdom—Jenny Gillespie Mason returns to the folk music she first began writing and recording as a teenager. Her debut solo album, In the Safety of the Light (out 6/12/26 on Native Cat Recordings), was produced by Noah Georgeson (Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart) and recorded in spring and fall 2026 at a private studio in Los Angeles.
Mason and Georgeson had hoped to work together for several years; in 2024, they finally made a plan to do so. Long inspired by Georgeson’s production work with folk visionaries Bert Jansch and Vashti Bunyan, Mason turned back toward the acoustic guitar of her youth. Within a few months, she had written a cycle of songs shaped in part by the spirit of these undersung artists. A year later, she convened with Georgeson in Los Angeles to record them.
The album moves through questions of how to live a spiritual life while remaining fully human. The singles “Rungs of Love” and “Medicine of Light” trace the fragile ladder between earthly love and higher devotion. “Wonder of the Circle” unfolds like a dream-prayer; during a long sleepless night in a New York City hotel room, the narrator imagines the Divine Mother answering her plea to heal a traumatized world. “Perseus” explores a past life in the ancient mysteries of Eleusis, while in “Woman from Nottingham,” Mason recalls a college professor who implored her students to remember the beauty of the Earth just hours after the events of 9/11.
Sonically, In the Safety of the Light draws on the pastoral glow of 1970s British folk, with echoes of Catherine Howe and Fairport Convention, while sailing at times into atmospheric sounds inspired by the ambient music of Hiroshi Yoshimura and the more cosmic folk ballads of Beck. Most of the songs were recorded live as an ensemble, allowing the arrangements to breathe and shimmer around performances by Mason on acoustic guitar, Wurlitzer, and vocals, with Josh Miner Adams on percussion, Todd Dahlhoff on bass, Benny Bock on synthesizers, Gabe Noel on cello, and Alex Budman on woodwinds.
RECORD RELEASE SHOW:
6/11/26 @ University of California Botanical Gardens - Berkeley, CA
5:30 pm - with the Saxophones
More about "Rungs of Love":
"'Rungs of Love' was inspired by my guru Mother Mirra Alfassa's descriptions of the rungs of love in a relationship--from selfish love that cares a lot about what you get back, to a love that gives without wanting anything back, to a divine love that serves only God. The song moves between the verses and the chorus from depicting a romantic human relationship, its successes and bumps, to meditating on the relationship I want to have with God."
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