"I need you / To know the truth / I need you / To know the truth..."
I have had the pleasure of writing about, learning about J. Graves this past year, enough that I could hear a dramatic distinct difference with their track 'Mad'. The track still possesses the signature sound that feels like a pressure cooker of playing and intense vocals (god I love Jessa's vocal countenance so much) but the tonal shift, musically and emotionally at around 3 minutes in, and after some dramatic down beats is beautifully moving and surprising. Not a daddy yelled at mommy at the dinner table moment or a something ran in front of the car at night moment but a pivotal spiraling walk down a winding unknown set of stairs with a flashlight that keep failing you moment. The sensation is incredibly inward, maybe even awkward. The kind of awkward when someone is emotionally naked and bloodletting.
Jessa Graves (in press notes) is candid about the confessional aspect of 'Mad', "This song is about me, though I would never have admitted it at the time. This song is about my struggle with obsessive thoughts, depression, relationships, loneliness, my mental illness and my sanity crumbling beneath the weight of it all. I was paralyzed with fear that something was wrong with me, that I was losing my mind. This is perhaps the most vulnerable I have ever been in a song. Stylistically, 'Mad' is different from any other song on the record (and from any song I have written to date."
Now part of me feels like 'Mad' exists as two songs in one, an emotional bait and switch but hearing all the J. Graves songs I have prior to 'Mad' I realize that the dramatic tonal shift is the point, that one section could not exist without the other. In any event, an amazing piece of work. At this point, that doesn't surprise me. 'Mad' is my favorite J. Graves song to date.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/jgraves.xyz
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0o6k3hGli4YOXmrwrvGni7
https://www.youtube.com/jgraves
https://www.instagram.com/jgraves.xyz/
J. Graves is setting out to pioneer something different, with bandleader Jessa Graves squeezing together a tightly packed ball of anger, grief, and acceptance in her latest album Fortress of Fun - an outpouring of wild fury and plaintive sadness with a dark, angular sound.
Big new ideas abound, not just musically, but conceptually, too. COVID’s onset in March 2020 forced musicians worldwide to adapt creatively to the impending digital-only era, so it’s rare to see true innovation in an otherwise saturated market, but J. Graves have come up with a captivating idea: a “choose your own adventure” album.
Wanting to do something with a little more depth that would engage audiences creatively while welcoming listeners into their experience, the idea was borne from finding a choose-your-own-adventure book in a sci-fi themed studio during the recording process of previous album Deathbed. Early 2020 was tough for the band; like many artists, their built-up momentum was quickly shuttered by COVID’s insurgence. So, in mid-2020, the band went on a getaway to the coast, and the house they were staying in – lit up at night next to the dark ocean – became known as their “fortress of fun,” a title that seems immediately at odds with the album’s often-dark undertones, but one that nonetheless suits Graves’s fight to stay in the light.
In that sense, the album exists in two states: the first a mournful and mysterious effort that parses waves of difficult emotions; the second a lush, eclectic undertaking that puts listeners and viewers at the forefront of the band’s collective imagination. Each song from the album comes with a video, through which viewer/listeners can make choices that will lead to further interactive videos. Though the songs are, thematically and contextually, fully distinct from their choose-your-own-adventure video counterparts, the emotion remains raw and real, and J. Graves, with the help of mixer/producer Sylvia Massy, has fine-tuned their sound like never before into something simultaneously painful and buoyant.
J. Graves, alt rock, post punk, Portland, Oregon, Jessa Graves, singer songwriter, musician, guitar strikes, 3 piece, jammy, pressure cooker aesthetic, "Mad", “choose-your-own-adventure” album,
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/jgraves.xyz
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0o6k3hGli4YOXmrwrvGni7
https://www.youtube.com/jgraves
https://www.instagram.com/jgraves.xyz/
J. Graves is setting out to pioneer something different, with bandleader Jessa Graves squeezing together a tightly packed ball of anger, grief, and acceptance in her latest album Fortress of Fun - an outpouring of wild fury and plaintive sadness with a dark, angular sound.
Big new ideas abound, not just musically, but conceptually, too. COVID’s onset in March 2020 forced musicians worldwide to adapt creatively to the impending digital-only era, so it’s rare to see true innovation in an otherwise saturated market, but J. Graves have come up with a captivating idea: a “choose your own adventure” album.
Wanting to do something with a little more depth that would engage audiences creatively while welcoming listeners into their experience, the idea was borne from finding a choose-your-own-adventure book in a sci-fi themed studio during the recording process of previous album Deathbed. Early 2020 was tough for the band; like many artists, their built-up momentum was quickly shuttered by COVID’s insurgence. So, in mid-2020, the band went on a getaway to the coast, and the house they were staying in – lit up at night next to the dark ocean – became known as their “fortress of fun,” a title that seems immediately at odds with the album’s often-dark undertones, but one that nonetheless suits Graves’s fight to stay in the light.
In that sense, the album exists in two states: the first a mournful and mysterious effort that parses waves of difficult emotions; the second a lush, eclectic undertaking that puts listeners and viewers at the forefront of the band’s collective imagination. Each song from the album comes with a video, through which viewer/listeners can make choices that will lead to further interactive videos. Though the songs are, thematically and contextually, fully distinct from their choose-your-own-adventure video counterparts, the emotion remains raw and real, and J. Graves, with the help of mixer/producer Sylvia Massy, has fine-tuned their sound like never before into something simultaneously painful and buoyant.
J. Graves, alt rock, post punk, Portland, Oregon, Jessa Graves, singer songwriter, musician, guitar strikes, 3 piece, jammy, pressure cooker aesthetic, "Mad", “choose-your-own-adventure” album,
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