Hoping to retain his crown as king of oddball alt-pop earworms, JAWNY is following up his ‘For Abby’ mixtape and ‘The Story of Hugo’ EP by announcing he is set to release his debut album, ‘it’s never fair, always true’, on 3rd March via Interscope Records.
The record features thirteen tracks, including the single ‘strawberry chainsaw’, true’, and Beck collab ‘take it back’.
We dropped JAWNY a line to find out more about the album:
Hi JAWNY. How’s it going? Are you looking forward to a brand new year?
Hey! It’s going well. I’m looking forward to another lap around the sun. Thanks for asking.
We hear you have an album on the way – how’s it coming along? If you had to guess, what percentage of the way through it are you?
I do! It’s 100% done and ready to come out into the world. I worked on it for a really long time, and it’s the album I have always wanted to make, so I’m really happy it’s about to be out into the world. It’s easily the best thing I’ve produced and written to date.
You’ve released themed projects before, will the album be similarly conceptual?
Everything I put out from a project standpoint has to be something you can listen to from track 1 until the very end with a through line. It’s the way I prefer to tackle multiple songs. It feels like adult Legos to me. I’m trying to assemble this structure that individually are tiny pieces, but when assembled correctly and then after taking a few steps back, you can see a whole cohesive _______ (fill in the blank with your Lego desires. plane, train, castle, etc.) in its entirety… so knowing that, if I was a betting man, I’d say: yes.
When did you begin work on the record? Was there a specific starting point?
It’s always hard to answer this question because I’m for the most part always writing music in some way, shape or form. Whether it’s me in my studio, or a melody that comes into my head while I’m in the shower, ideas can come at the weirdest of times and make their way into a song sometimes days, months, weeks later. So an idea I voice noted in a shower 4 years ago could wind up finding its perfect fitting in a song I worked on 8 months ago. Really annoying answer, I know, but I think a better answer I could give is for a time, I really felt like I had good bones for something that could be a body of work, and that was around August 2021.
Have you roped in many friends to help out with the album?
That’s one I’ll leave as a surprise. Maybe yes, maybe no. Could be an album with no features, could be a record with one or 12. I guess we will have to wait and see!
Can you let us in on any of the tracks? Do you have a favourite on there?
There is a song on there that I wrote that is over 10 minutes long, and we had to split it into 2 songs, one being about 3 minutes and the other being over 7 and when you listen to them back to back it’s this huge cohesive beautiful (imo) piece that I’m so proud of.
Do you think the record will surprise people?
Maybe? Idk. I’m not sure. That’s up for people to decide. What I do now and can say is my perspective, and that is that I think it’s a natural step forward for me in my progression as where I see myself going as an artist. I tried to challenge myself in my writing and in my production to sometimes not do what I was just comfortable with and take a leap without seeing a net in sight. At the same time, I do feel like I also gave a healthy amount of songs that sound familiar enough to what somebody may have been a fan of following me for the last few years. I’ll let the world decide their opinion on it, but I surprised myself.
Is there anything else you can tell us?
Yeah, of course. Ummm, let’s see… OK, so a butterfly is a nectar-feeding insect with two pairs of large, typically brightly coloured wings that are covered with microscopic scales. Butterflies are distinguished from moths by having clubbed or dilated antennae, holding their wings erect when at rest, and being active by day.
What albums by other artists are you excited about for 2023?
Portugal. the Man has been sitting on some things for some time that I have been itching to hear again. I can’t say whether or not it’s a body of work because I don’t know, and it’s just not my place to say… but there are some songs that I really want to be able to listen to that were played for me some time ago!
