THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Who is Jordana Nye? And what is her signature sound? It depends on when you ask.
The 23-year-old, Maryland-raised songwriter arrived on the music scene with 2020’s Classical Notions of Happiness, an album of lo-fi pop and hushed folk songs recorded in her Maryland and Kansas bedrooms. She’d be back by the end of that same year with Something To Say To You, a compilation of two EPs featuring craggy indie rock and brokenhearted acoustic fare recorded in N.Y.C. apartment studios with friends.
By 2022 she was swinging for the fences with the pristine pop of Face The Wall, all while shuttling back and forth between Brooklyn and her soon-to-be home of Eagle Rock, Calif., collaborating on a wide array of projects with a who’s who of Gen Z artists: Magdalena Bay, TV Girl, Yot Club, Paul Cherry, Dent May, Inner Wave. “I don’t think I’ll ever settle on a specific sound,” says Jordana. “I’m just a chameleon.” So her vibrant fourth LP, Lively Premonition, which is equal parts Laurel Canyon folk and shimmering yacht rock, should surprise no one.
“Maybe it’s my L.A. record,” she says of the album she worked on with producer and multi-instrumentalist Emmett Kai for the entirety of 2023. “I can’t pinpoint exactly what affected it, but I do think the sun has its beam on me. Through all of these releases, it’s so cool to see which eras I’ve gone through and what I’ve experimented with,” says Jordana.
Though the concept of eras is exhaustingly omnipresent at the moment, Jordana has earned the right to draw the definitive lines between her releases and musical phases. Her current iteration owes a debt to a deep love for artists like The Mamas & The Papas, Carole King, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker — all New Yorkers who, like Jordana, moved out west and found their sounds flourishing. You can hear that newfound confidence on the blissed-out opening track We Get By, a rollicking folk-rock epic brave enough to detour into a 40-second violin solo.
“I’m fully back on my violin shit and it feels good. I’m so glad I rediscovered the magic of it,” says Jordana of the instrument she studied as a child. “Sometimes you need time away from something to come back to it with open arms. The whole record is this mixed bag of tricks with plenty of cheeky lyrical and instrumental decisions. We’re taking tons of risks here.”
But it’s not just the music that takes risks on Lively Premonition, Jordana’s writing blossoms as well. For the first time ever, the thematic and conceptual preoccupations of her songs stem from stories both real and imagined. “I was actually ushered into a new process of writing I didn’t think I was capable of,” she says. “Making shit up!”
On Like A Dog, a jaunty bassline leads a sunbeam synth and staccato piano stabs under a song about being a dog for someone’s admiration. “I love how theatrical it sounds with the metaphorical humor of being a dog for someone,” says Jordana. “But the breakup songs were straight up for the most part — I don’t fuck around with that.” So ultimately the core of the record comes back to her lived experience: crumbling relationships, a newfound sobriety, finding a place in a new city and people to help build it with her. “It’s about the cycle of love, heartbreak, lust, party-going, self acceptance, connections, and rediscovering yourself over and over again,” says Jordana. “I can’t thank Emmett enough for basically being my therapist through all of it.”
The results of these therapy sessions often exist at two poles: Glitzed-out parties like Raver Girl and Multitudes of Mystery or golden hour ballads like Anything For You and The One I Knew. Two sides from a record that refuses to be content with staying still, much like the artists responsible for it. “It makes me wonder what I’ll do next. Country? Folk? Go back to my Lindsey Stirling dubstep violin obsession? Hell, why not!? I’m learning more and more about myself through each one.” Luckily, listeners are too.”
