Stream: Jay Som, ‘Superbike’

Kevin Bronson on June 4th, 2019

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“Everybody Works,” the 2017 debut from Melina Duterte (aka Jay Som), stood out for its warm intimacy and its luminous charisma, no matter which indie style the songwriter chose to frame her blunt but softly sung observations. It was a lo-fi tour de force without an ounce of cloying.

The 25-year-old Filipino-American picks up where she left off — well, almost, since she has now shifted her home base from Oakland to Los Angeles — with the new song “Superbike.” It’s the first single from her sophomore album “Anak Ko,” arriving Aug. 23. The title translates to “my child” in Tagalog, a native dialect in the Philippines. Indeed, the upbeat, shoegaze-lite “Superbike” has a cherubic wonder to it.

The album, which Duterte still recorded, produced, engineered and mixed herself, was made during a retreat to Joshua Tree. It features appearances from Vagabon’s Laetitia Tamko, Chastity Belt’s Annie Truscott, Justus Proffit, Boy Scouts’ Taylor Vick, as well as her live mates Zachary Elasser, Oliver Pinnell and Dylan Allard.

She likens the album process to “birthing a child,” adding that in the creation of “Anak Ko” she focused on not getting caught up in the plaudits she received for her first record or the business side of music. “In order to change, you’ve got to make so many mistakes,” Duterte says. “What’s helped me is forcing myself to be even more peaceful and kind with myself and others. You can get so caught up in attention, and the monetary value of being a musician, that you can forget to be humble. You can learn more from humility than the flashy stuff. I want kindness in my life. Kindness is the most important thing for this job, and empathy.”

||| Stream: “Superbike”