FEATURE: Spotlight: Jesse Jo Stark — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Sophia French for The Forty-Five

Jesse Jo Stark

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ONE of the most impressive young artists around…

PHOTO CREDIT: Tom Pallant

Jesse Jo Stark should be on everybody’s minds. The thirty-one-year-old American singer-songwriter, fashion designer and artist bring so much character, beauty, rebellion, personality, and brilliance to her music. On 21st September, her album, DOOMED, is out. It is going to be one of this year’s best albums. I have only recently discovered Jesse Jo Stark, but I have been really struck and mesmerised by her music. She is fascinating to read and see interviewed. There are quite a few interviews available online. I have selected a few that give you a good idea of who Stark is. Her debut E.P., Dandelion, came out in 2018. Vogue spoke with her in 2018. She is someone who could not avoid music and its draw. In return, she has already given the world so much:

“Jesse Jo Stark was born to be a rock'n'roll star. "I believe that it has always been inside of me. I took different steps in order to water that need and experiment with it," she explained to Miss Vogue. Fresh from her first ever NYC gigs supporting The Vaccines, the LA native is hitting her musical stride with a sound and aesthetic entirely her own.

"I think the last four years have been really important in my life and I finally feel like I’m making songs that represent me and that I want to share. They've been really important to me as a musician."

This week marks the launch of a new video, Wish I Was Dead. Set against perfectly seasonal Halloween-inspired backdrop, the video is the signifier of a new era for Jesse Jo's "horrific hillbilly" sound.

It's undeniably sexy, which was a conscious choice mirroring with the way the musician has come to feel about her own body as she enters her late 20s. "I’ve been embracing the body lately and wanted the video to have a sexy element. I was a lot more hidden when I was younger. I didn’t always have so much skin out. I’m embracing my body more now and am getting a bit flirtier with what I wear. It was about recreating small movie-inspired clips of these women dancing." There's also a monster, dramatic eye make-up and a lot of skulls.

Being a young woman in the industry, Jesse Jo feels like she's come up against the challenges that that can bring but she's moving forward, much like the industry itself.

"Now, when I go into the studio I make sure that I’m saying what I want, what I don’t like and not having any fear behind that, but I think all of that comes with being able to voice it. So, the guys that I work with and the women they respect my opinion and they know that I’m not there to really just take theirs, it’s a collaborative effort. We are in a cool time where people are trying. Being on tour with the Vaccines has taught me a lot. They’re super respectful and they have my back and they’re very open”.

Her excellent E.P., A Pretty Place to Fall Apart, came out last year. In a year when the pandemic was getting in the way of promotion, maybe Jesse Jo Stark was a little restricted. For an artist who is so mobile, physical, and expressive, she must have been longing to get onto the stage. She did get to do promotion for the E.P. The Forty-Five spoke with the incredible and truly stunning Stark:

“She lived between grandparents and family friends in the LA area, but often joined her parents on their travels. Growing up in this nomadic tradition, she looked beyond the Malibu bubble from an early age and knew there was so much else to see. “It gave me such an appreciation for the world. And I love touring as a musician. You know, being on the bus, squeezing into the tight spaces,” she shares. “But at the same time, being grounded is so important to me. Even when I’m in a hotel room for a day, I have my blanket, my crystals, my little monster puppet. I’m always telling the boys in my band, ‘We need to go and stick our feet in the grass!’ They tell me I’m so weird for saying that, but I grew up by the beach and just want to feel rooted, no matter where I am.”

How did her early years shape Jesse Jo’s worldview? “There is actually something juvenile about the way I exist,” she admits, grinning at the realisation. “As a kid, I was around adults all the time; it made things feel so serious. Now, play is such a big thing for me. I really have a relationship with my inner child.” Indeed, it can feel like Jesse Jo is playing (and winning) when it comes to the art she makes. Her music dances effortlessly across genres, criss-crossing from the dreamy and ethereal ‘Tangerine’, to the dramatic and gothic ‘Die Young’, to the Bangles-inspired beach hut texture of ‘Breakfast with Lou’. Created around her song by the same name, her ‘Deadly Doll’ clothing line builds vintage comic book imagery and Liechtenstein-esque pop art motifs around a mythical, vampiric femme fatale character of her description. For Chrome Hearts, she has designed fan favourite go-go boots in every colour, from shimmering pink to leopard print. If this is recess, you get the impression that Jesse Jo is playing with every toy in the box.

PHOTO CREDIT: Sophia French for The Forty-Five

Hearkening to old-world balladeering about haunting love and times gone by, her music sounds flung out of space, entirely unplaceable in today’s modern listening context. But Jesse Jo isn’t concerned about keeping to a timeline. “I don’t want to put out songs to catch a moment or a trend. I’ve always taken the long road with everything I do, whether it’s my music or my clothes.” Indeed, the release of Stark’s signature Sugar Jones go-go boots was contingent upon getting it all perfect, from the heel to the silhouette; on her ‘Deadly Doll’ white T-shirts (ostensibly, plain white tees), she agonised for a year over the cut, fit and fabric. She considers the gravity of each micro-interaction with what she shares with the world; how a snippet of a song or the cut of a t-shirt can change a moment, a week, a month, a life. “A young woman approached me at my boyfriend’s show recently,” she recalls. “She told me she had been inspired by a YouTube video of mine from years ago, called ‘Silver Kiss’. I was entirely shocked to hear this, as no one has seen it! But it empowered me so much. It reminded me that our craft is worth it; that spending our lives putting in effort and honing our work is worth it because of who might end up listening to it, and how it could change something for them.”

Jesse Jo keeps her family and friends close. Her relationships are deep, trusting and involved, and that extends to her collaborators. “I wanted to create a family with my band. It really changed my life when I found the right people, put together this band and had them join me on my journey. That was the point at which my music really started to evolve.” To this day, her guitar player Thomas Hunter is one of her closest collaborators. A co-writer, co-producer and co-performer on her recent releases (spanning the ‘Dandelion’ EP (2018), her last pre-quarantine projects ‘Tangerine’ and ‘Die Young’ (2020) and now her newest single ‘A Pretty Place to Fall Apart’), he is as much a part of Jesse Jo Stark’s music as she is, appearing alongside her in music videos and touring the world together”.

I want to finish up with an interview from a week ago. There is a lot of new attention around Jesse Jo Stark because of her new music. The incredible modern love and so bad are signs of an already-wonderful artist growing and producing some of her most confident and brilliant music. CLASH spoke with Stark earlier this month about an artist that everybody needs to follow and be aware of:

“Let’s chat about the latest single - ‘so bad’ is gorgeous! Can you tell me a little bit about why this ended up being selected as a single - what makes it a stand-out to you?

‘so bad’ felt like the perfect introduction to ‘DOOMED’ and the end part is one of my favourite moments on the album. This was also the first song Jesse and I ever worked on together. It felt like the start of something special.

You’re hands on in every aspect - with your own record label and involvement in promo, it’s a shock you ever find time to rest! Again, do you feel like that involvement helps you connect and feel more pride in what you’re creating?

I think everyone should feel proud whether they have a big record label behind them or not but I’m definitely taking a longer, more complex route in my artistry. Nothing I put out is because someone else told me too! I want my art to have longevity and always be an extension of who I really am. There’s just no other option…. and… I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

So, your debut ‘DOOMED’ is around the corner - why now? What made you decide that it was finally time to go all out for a full-length release?

Honey!… it was fucking time x

You’ve mentioned that ‘DOOMED’ feels like your most personal release - how has music allowed you to find yourself? How does the Jesse Jo Stark reading this right now compare to the ‘Dandelion’ Jesse Jo Stark?

Music has always allowed me to say what I haven’t been able to. It’s extremely vulnerable to be that naked when writing songs. She’s proud because she had to exist for me to be where I am right now”.

I am going to wrap up soon. It is clear that Jesse Jo Stark has progressed a lot as an artist since 2018. She was amazing then, but her music has turned into something different since then. With a series of gigs coming up in her native U.S., I hope that she does come to the U.K. and beyond soon enough. There is a fanbase here, so any live dates will sell out pretty quickly. I am looking forward to seeing what DOOMED offers in September. It is going to be a remarkable album from an artist who…