Sophomore album Anak Ko out August 23rd
Jay Som – a.k.a. Melina Duterte – recently announced her highly anticipated sophomore album Anak Ko, and today she shares the record’s second single. Following “Superbike,” “Tenderness” is a slow-burning highlight off the forthcoming LP. Duterte calls it “a feel-good, funky, kind of sexy song” in part about “the curse of social media” and how it complicates relationships. “That’s definitely about scrolling on your phone and seeing a person and it just haunts you, you can’t escape it,” Duterte explains. “I have a weird relationship to social media and how people perceive me—as this person that has a platform, as a solo artist, and this marginalized person. That was really getting to me. I wanted to express those emotions, but I felt stifled. I feel like a lot of the themes of the songs stemmed from bottled up emotions, frustration with yourself, and acceptance.” Watch the lush Weird Life-directed video HERE.
Jay Som will play Pitchfork Festival next week and take Anak Ko on the road this Fall for a massive international tour. All dates are on-sale now – see below to find a show near you and get tickets HERE.
Anak Ko is the follow-up to Jay Som’s breakout debut album Everybody Works, which received countless year-end list accolades in 2017. Pronounced Ah-nuhk Koh, and meaning “my child” in Tagalog, one of the native dialects in the Philippines, this album was completed during a week-long solo retreat to Joshua Tree. While much has changed both sonically and personally for Jay Som, now 25 years-old, in the two whirlwind years since her break debut Everybody Works, Duterte still recorded, produced, engineered and mixed this album herself at home. However, for the first time, Duterte invited some friends —including Vagabon’s Laetitia Tamko, Chastity Belt’s Annie Truscott, Justus Proffit, Boy Scouts’ Taylor Vick, as well as bandmates Zachary Elasser, Oliver Pinnell and Dylan Allard—to collaborate on additional vocals, drums, guitars, strings, and pedal steel.
In November of 2017, seeking a new environment, Duterte left her home of the Bay Area for Los Angeles. There, she demoed new songs, while also embracing opportunities to do session work and produce, engineer, and mix for other artists (like Sasami, Chastity Belt). Reckoning with the relative instability of musicianhood, Duterte turned inward, tuning ever deeper into her own emotions and desires as a way of staying centered through huge changes. She found a community; she fell in love. And for an artist whose career began after releasing her earliest collection of demos—2015’s hazy but exquisitely crafted Turn Into—in a fit of drunken confidence on Thanksgiving night, she finally quit drinking for good. “I feel like a completely different person,” she reflects.
The striking clarity of Jay Som’s new music reflects that shift. “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.”
Anak Ko will be released on August 23rd via Polyvinyl (N.A), Pod/Inertia Music (AUS/NZ/Asia), and Lucky Number (ROW). Pre-order and pre-save the album HERE.
For complete info on Jay Som including upcoming tour dates go to:
https://instagram.com/jaysomband