Back to black: meet your new favourite goth

Goth is back from the dead again. This time in the form of Jojo Orme, known as Heartworms, who feels like some laboratory creation made from the limbs and hair of Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Siouxsie Sioux and PJ Harvey.

- MARTIN ROBINSON

Her debut album has just come out to breathless reviews, with style editors and 6Music dads losing their minds for music which is a bit like Ethel Cain's, only enjoyable to listen to.

Orme is the kind of star who exists only in mon-ochrome and sparks a whole new teenage style: dead military poet, in this case. And yet, Orme is no mere spooky Wednesday cosplayer. This is a serious poet making sense of a difficult upbringing, including a period of homelessness, and finding an outlet in music.

"I never really asked people for advice," Orme says from her home in south London. "Throughout my childhood I was always scared to ask for any advice because I might get shouted at. I learned to look after myself and be my own person without anyone's influence. But working on this album with Dan, I asked for his advice and went out of my comfort zone."

The Dan in question is Dan Carey - super-pro-ducer of the London indie art-rock scene and Glutton For Punishment is the name of the album, a tight nine-song work which is both accessible and cultish. Jacked was the big lead-off single, a song still bearing the post-punk style that she first showcased on the 2023 EP, A Comforting Notion, but elevated to a new Nine Inch Nails level in its widescreen electro-aggro.

The whole album feels like house music for a reopened 1980s goth club on the edge of town where everyone wears chainmail, and it's cider and black or nothing. To Orme though, it's bigger than such trite observations, a world of her own to enter.