Jack River

ON THE COMEDOWN FROM HER SUGAR RUSH, POP QUEEN JACK RIVER TAPS INTO A DEEPER, DARKER AND MORE PERSONAL CORNER OF HER ARTISTRY WITH THE STRANGERHEART EP.

In case its Valentine’s Day release didn’t make it obvious enough, the title of Jack River’s new record should let you know enough about its subject matter. The seven-track StrangerHeart EP is another release jam-packed with ooey, gooey love songs that’ll make you feel like you’re 15 and falling head over heels for that one girl in your English class all over again. Except this time, you won’t be savagely rejected and embarrassed in front of all your mates, and Holly Rankin is upping the stakes by adding a piquant dose of peculiarity to the mix.

Following on from the bright and buoyant debut LP

SugarMountain – a proper sequel to which is already on the cards – Rankin has ditched the bubblegum sweetness, instead toying with seven uniquely potent and provoking reappropriations of the concept of love.

After the twinkly synth-based opener “Lonely Hunter” hints at a trippy, kaleidoscopic journey ahead, Rankin jumps straight into the sonic black hole with the gauzy and droning “Later Flight”, its crunchy

‘90s pop riffs digging like daggers into the slits that her honeyed quips open up. With an immediate dip in tone, the acoustic “Night Song” hits especially hard in its drunken melancholy. Rankin takes full advantage of the emotional ebb and flow that her loud-soft contrasts imbue – “Dark Star” is another dancefloor-ready pop anthem, followed instantly by another lowkey lighter-swayer in “Closer”. Production shines on the double dose of downbeat dreariness in “Infinity Roses” and “80sHD”, leaving us sated and feeling sappy in love, but certainly hungry for more.

With the EP now making hearts flutter all over the world, we got down to business with Rankin to find out what makes this StrangerHeart beat.

So my first impression of this EP was that it feels a bit darker and a bit more personal than SugarMountain. Was the intention to sort of take the listener a little deeper down the rabbithole and get a little weirder after establishing a connection on LP1?

Yeah, definitely. I guess I felt I needed to after SugarMountain, which was kind of big and bold, and lyrically quite aspirational. That record was about always pushing forward and striving for something better, but this record’s very here-and-now and personal, and I wanted to explore a few specific feelings that I’ve been experiencing. And just make sure that that layer of realness is at the foundation of Jack River, and what I write next time as well.

I know that on top of this EP, you’re hard at work on a second full-length for 2021… How far along into that adventure are you?

I’ve got the bones down and I know what it’ll sound like – a lot of that is still in my head, but I’ve got the name and the sound, and the kind of reasoning I have for all of that, and that’s kind of how I start something. It makes it really easy to colour in the lines with songs, or identify the right songs to kind of fit into that mold.

So do you see this EP as a bridge between

SugarMountain and LP2, or did you go into this with the intention of it being a distinct standalone chapter in your discography?

I guess they’re all kind of standalone works. I actually kind of had the ideas for all three of these records before SugarMountain came out, and kind of foresaw the path that I wanted my music and writing to take. It’s not a trilogy in the way that they relate – they’re not all linked together like the Lord

OfTheRings series or something. It’s more just that these are three phases of things that I know I need to explore to feel accomplished as a writer.

What guitars did you have with you for the recording of StrangeHeart?

A broad range, really. I have a little baby Taylor that I take everywhere – it fits on the plane and you can take it wherever you want, so for that reason I end up writing a lot on it. I bought that one when I was in New York, and it was like the one trip where I was like, “I don’t need to take a guitar! It’s all good. I’ll survive without writing.” And I just felt so thirsty without a guitar, like, I needed to just have something beside me. So yeah, that Taylor is a special one that I don’t go anywhere without. And then in the studio, I mainly use a Fender Strat and I write a lot of things down on that. I’m not sure actually what bass we used because my co-producer Xavier [Dunn] pulled out his own bass for that. But really, within the tracks, we layer so many guitars down that there likely isn’t any sound that comes from one single guitar.

That off-pink Strat has become pretty synonymous with your live show. What’s your connection with it?

I actually stole it off my old guitarist, Alex Bennison – he was playing it in the band for about two years, and I just couldn’t stop staring at it. He plays it far better than me, but when you find a guitar that feels like home – the colour and the design, and the feel of it, and then the sound and the tone… I don’t know, it’s just my favourite little guitar, and onstage it’s totally my safety blanket.

Speaking of the live show, what do you have planned for this EP’s touring cycle?

It’s actually quite a sneaky little release without too much touring attached. We’re planning to do a few interesting little things, but we’re not really going to properly tour this EP. I’m heading over to the US to play South by Southwest, and then new music is going to follow not too long after. So there will be some shows, just a little latter in the year, maybe.

I saw you put the call out on Facebook that you’re keen to play a bunch of weddings...

That is correct! Because this EP is all about love and the heart, it felt like a cool idea to put a call out and say, “I will come to your wedding or party and sing for you.” And we got a really f***ing overwhelming response to that – we received, like, close to 1,000 entries! The entries are absolutely wild: there was someone’s parents’ 60th, there’s a boatwarming party in there, a bunch dog parties, and of course weddings – so many weddings! So it’s going to be a very fun little adventure for us.