Stream: Jenny O, ‘People’

Daiana Feuer on July 26th, 2017

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“These aren’t necessarily the songs I wanted to write, but they were the ones I had to write,” Jenny O says of “Peace & Information,” her second full-length, coming out Aug. 4 on Holy Trinity Records, the follow up to 2016’s “Work” EP. “It’s about equality,” she adds. “I was trying to write about racism, authority—how can anyone feel superior to anyone else? I was also singing ‘power to the people,’ celebrating dissent as a healthy component of democracy.” The song “People” reflects these concerns, with her sweet voice floating over upbeat instrumentation. O wants to convey which side she is on: “When people are protesting for their lives, listen to them. Change is a long game but it begins with dissent and compassion.” To write this record, the singer-songwriter spent eight months in a Nashville cabin that once belonged to Jimmy Buffett (which was bulldozed afterward to make room for condos), then returned to Los Angeles to record with Jonathan Wilson.

“Peace & Information” splits its attention between human rights and Jenny’s personal life, relationships gone wrong, depression, trauma and PTSD. The cabin was the perfect place to reflect on these matters. She says, “It was the most beautiful, the cheapest, and the most necessary place I’ve ever lived.”

“I declare it rock ’n’ roll, but this time we used more synthesizers and grunge guitar, and there’s a depression bossa nova on there too,” she said.

||| Stream: “People”