Photo courtesy of the artist.
Jordyn Blakely is the beating heart of, and drummer for, some of your favs of the fifth wave emo and shoegaze persuasion, like Night Manager, Butter The Children, Jackal Onasis, Stove, and the touring band of Bartees Strange. She now has a new project called Smile Machine, and she dropped her first EP Bye for Now under the name last Friday.
Smile Machine is technically Jordyn's solo project and revolves around an exploration of her search for romance, identity, and connection in this weird, anxious, hellhole we call modernity. Work on Bye For Now actually started well before the pandemic but it was the lockdown that gave her reprieve from the grind of daily life that she needed to finish it.
The buzz around Bye for Now wasn't something that immediately grabbed me. There were a bunch of name drops that gestured towards it being a kind of Dinosuar Jr revival for Gen Zers who grew up with old siblings who mythologized the '90s for them. It's a pretty worn-out appeal, and an inaccurate one at that. Rather, Bye for Now is an album that is firmly planted in the music of today. That music may be backwards looking to a degree, with debts to acts as diverse as Sloan and Sunny Day Realestate, but today's emo bands understand these sounds primary as they were interpreted by groups live Ovlov and Pity Sex, and is, therefore, music that could only make sense with the context of our modern milieu.
For instance, the hairy scrape and gauzy, bruised production of "Bone to Pick" is too raw for even the more hardcore leaning Dino Jr albums like You're Living All Over Me to be a sensible comparison. "Pretty Today" sounds like a Tiger Jaw demo slowly melting atop a pile of keepstake that have been lit ablaze in order to cleanse the emotional power they have over their former owner, while tracks like "Stars" sounds a little like a swan song from Modern Baseball performed by Retirement Party as they sink into a boiling tarpit.
Have I sold you on this yet? Because I really like it. I think it's really fresh and hope you'll check it out.
And in case you needed another reason to like Jordyn and her new album, I also have an interview with her that you can read below. We talked about how the production of the release both suffered and survived due to COVID, the stylistic choices she made for the release, and all of the happy accidents that happened along the way. Check it out below!
Interview conducted over email on July 16, 2021.
Why did now feel like the right time to release a solo record?
I was hoping to put out an EP once I had enough songs completed, and had planned to release it way earlier but got delayed by quarantine and my own procrastination. I think I work more efficiently with deadlines! Dan (Francia) and I had planned to just record it really quickly, in a few weeks or so, not overthink it too much and just get it done. One Saturday in early January 2020 we tracked drums, then I wrote the bass parts to be ready to track the following weekend. After that we did the guitars and vocals, and still had some loose ends like guitar leads, solos, extra vocals and keys, but once we were in quarantine everything moved so slowly. Sometimes it was hard to feel motivated to work on my own music when wegles and were undergoing this stressful crisis and so many people were dying. My identity and relationship to music sometimes felt frivolous, like an aspect of an old life I had lived, and we had entered into this new dimension where every day was just focused around survival and uncertainty. Other times it was awesome to have something to escape into and feel hopeful about and I'm grateful to have had music to help me. I think now ended up being the perfect time to release this after all though, and I feel lucky that it's out when we can play live and play with other people.
I'm charmed by the title of your solo release, Bye for Now. It amuses me that you would name your first album after a parting salutation. How did you come to settle on this title?
Thank you, I'm glad someone else found that funny too! I just like the way it sounds phonetically, it feels and sounds nice; a little bit sad but also hopeful. It was sort of inspired by this one afternoon in the winter during quarantine, when we were only able to spend time with a very limited handful of people. Someone said it to me as I was leaving their house to run some errands only to come back later the same day, and it was a sweet and amusing moment. That was such a strange, specific time in everyone's lives, I think, and the expression reminds me of how it felt to be in lockdown, to just leave everything and everyone behind temporarily, not knowing if or when we'll meet again.
How does your search for, and understanding of identity, info the themes of this album?
It was over the span of a few years that I wrote everything that's on the EP, in my late twenties, and a lot changed during that time. The butterfly on the cover is emblematic of coming out of your cocoon and striving for inner growth, yet still having a long way to go with the ocean and mountains in the distance. I was at a really different place in my life when the earlier songs were written compared to when I finally finished it. I ended a relationship that was detrimental to my mental and emotional health and was struggling with a lot of depression, isolation and anxiety. I went from being a pretty social, outgoing person to spending a lot of time alone, and songwriting gave me a safe space to process everything instead of just trying to escape myself through partying or drinking or whatever I would have done when I was younger. I was determined to work on my unhealthy behaviors and patterns, and working on music seemed a lot healthier than what I usually did to cope.
It interests me that you would stay in the realm of shoegaze and emo for your solo record as drummers in these lanes don't typically get their due. Was there ever any thought of going in a completely different direction with Bye for Now?
These songs are just what ended up happening, and what I was capable of doing and playing at the time. I'm definitely influenced by the people I play music with, but as far as songwriting goes I was always really moved by bands like Sebadoh, Thursday, Autolux, The Microphones, Deftones, Elliott Smith; anything that sounds super sad or angry I've always felt very drawn to. I always respected and felt inspired by how vulnerable those people allowed themselves to be and hoped to be able to do the same at some point. Drumming always just came easier to me and I was scared to be that exposed and in the spotlight so it wasn't until a few years ago that I tried writing. Transitioning from drums to guitar is a new way of communicating for me so sometimes I feel limited by my vocabulary, but it feels new and expansive at the same time. It's exciting to see where things go and to be able to express myself in a deeper way.
From what I've read about the way Bye for Now was recorded, it definitely was a community effort, and the product of a series of happy (and not so happy) accidents. Would you mind elaborating on some of the triumphs and challenges you experience while making this record informed how it eventually all came together?
He will probably not want to take any credit but I just really appreciate how supportive Dan (Francia) was throughout everything. I figured once quarantine started, everything would be too stressful and chaotic for us to keep working on the EP, and like it didn't matter now that it felt like the world was ending. Plus it would be more complicated doing everything remotely with us being in different states, but he called me on the phone and said he was determined to finish the album with me and edit the remote takes. Even before that, though, just being down and being patient with me and my process which we kept referring to as "the craziness", haha. Giving direction and making all of the decisions was new for me and sometimes overwhelming, as I'm used to being in a band setting where almost everything is collaborative and I'm not responsible for any huge final decisions. Between Dan, Nick Dooley who mixed the tracks and Amar Lal who did the final masters, the sound and feel of everything changed a lot over time and wasn't easy to finish once we were remote, especially because all of us lived in different states. There was a lot of back and forth; it can be difficult to explain and communicate exactly what you want something to sound like via emails and phone calls, whereas in person you can execute something almost right away. Each person who spent time working on the EP added a bit of themselves into it, and it turned out sounding even better than I could have imagined.
Is there a chance we'll get to hear these tracks live anytime soon?
Yeah! We have a few shows this summer; Sunday 7/18 with Youbet and Slight Of for the EP release show, Thursday July 29 with Dolly Spartans at Bar Freda, Friday August 13 at the Windjammer with Scarlet and OOF, Saturday August 28 at Rippers, and hopefully some out of town shows at the end of August too. I'm just trying to say yes to as many shows as possible after a long year and a half of no shows. It's weird and exciting because not everything is as we left it; there are new and different bands, and there's this openness where everyone is just down to play no matter what, and people want to come see shows more than ever, it seems like.
Any shoutouts or final mentions you'd like to add?
Yeah, I'm really grateful to the entire EIS family and happy that Dan and Alec wanted to put the EP out, and to everyone who helped me work on it and finish tracking. To all roommates, friends, exes, bandmates, and family members who ever endured listening to me practice any instrument, came to a show, or encouraged me to keep going.
