STACK #195 Jan 2021

MUSIC FEATURE

visit stack.com.au

– but also, just within my own consciousness, I think I’ve kind of trained myself over the years. I’ve had jobs in the past where I did night shifts a lot. You prepare yourself throughout the day, and when the sun goes down it’s like, ‘Okay, cool, let’s do it.’” PM was produced by Clams Casino, Malay Ho, Francesgotheat, and Joel Little – the New Zealand wunderkind whose career exploded with his co-writing/producing/mixing partnership with Lorde, and continued with Taylor Swift, Sam Smith, Khalid and many more – with whom Jarryd is “pretty tight”. (It was Little who organised the Nicaraguan writing trip.) The record is a smooth duckdive down into the alt-R’n’B-soul for which James has become renowned, complete with eerily astute lyrics, such as the line “We’re running out of problems” – alluding to the way the privileged may invent a problem, for want of actually experiencing a real one – on single Problems. James describes the day he created the song, along with a field recording he captured as he was commuting to the Lower East Side studio. “I recorded that string instrument you hear, with my phone, in the subway,” he says. “It was this dude playing a Chinese instrument. It only has one string on it – you don’t see them a lot. It was really beautiful." The track’s breakbeat-inspired drums – full of grace notes and crushed snare details – were played by James himself that day. He chuckles when we draw a comparison to the way fellow indie-soul artist Matt Corby plays the instrument. “I’m at [Matt’s] house right now,” he reveals. “I’m teed up to this little wi-fi dongle thing, otherwise you wouldn’t get hold of me!” One of the most fascinating figures involved in PM is AndrewWyatt, AKA Miike Snow, who co-created the delicious bassline- led Don’t Forget . Wyatt's Instagram is littered with studio hang-out snaps of Miley Cyrus, Killer Mike and Liam Gallagher. “He’s part of this kind of elite music group in LA and NewYork, ‘cos he’s old school,” James explains. “Everything’s done on computers these days,

PM by Jarryd James is out Jan 22 via Universal.

INTERVIEW

JARRYD JAMES From the (literal) primeval jungle to the most elite studio of LA, Jarryd James traipsed many landscapes to end up writing one of the most captivatingly intimate records of the summer. Words Zoë Radas

O f all the worldly places Jarryd James found himself while writing his new album – and there are a few, including LA, Auckland, NewYork, and Brisbane – the one that sticks out is the Nicaraguan jungle. Most of us simply can’t pretend to know what an environment like that is like, but Jarryd’s pretty good at explaining. “Just getting there in the first place was a bit of a mission,” he says, detailing the trip from LA to Miami and then on a tiny plane down to the Central American nation, arriving at an airport which was “more like a club house for a golf course." A man turned up in a flatbed truck and everyone piled in with their gear, and then… into the tropical forest. “It was like Jurassic Park , when the [doors open]...

He came swooping in... you

but if you’re going to work with anyone that’s going to do things the realest way possible, it’s going to be that dude. It was really quite cool working with him. I’ll never forget the moment he came in. He [appeared] in one of

The humidity hits you straight away. There were a lot of monkeys that we’d hear, but

feel like you’re hanging out with John Lennon or something

you couldn’t see. They sound really terrifying. They sound ferocious, like dinosaurs. They kick off when the sun goes down – and it gets really dark out there.” How fitting then that James’ album

those big dusters – I think it was even a Driza-Bone, you know, that cattle dudes wear? He came swooping in in one of those. You feel like you’re hanging out with John Lennon or something – he’s old school, he’s a cool guy..." ZKR

is titled PM , as it was during nightfall hours that most of its material was penned. “I definitely feel a lot more creative and at peace in my head when it’s night time,” he says. “There are less distractions – no street noise

Continue to read the full interview online at stack.com.au

44 JANUARY 2021

jbhifi.com.au