Jay Som on working with boygenius, imposter syndrome, and embracing collaboration for fourth album 'Belong' • Interview • DIY Magazine

The last six years have been a period of much-needed adjustment for Jay Som’s Melina Duterte. After a swift rise through the indie ranks after the release of her debut in 2016, life on the road started to take its toll. Change was needed, and now Melina finds herself known as a producer as much as she is an artist. Since 2019’s ‘Anak Ko’, she’s learnt a lot, and it’s her fourth Jay Som album, ‘Belong’, that sees her embrace a new era of collaboration and her broadest sonic palette to date.

With 2020 bringing enforced alone time to the world, Melina unexpectedly found herself able to take a breather, and it was this period that sparked a series of shifts in her life. “In indie touring you have to do the hard shit. Lots of sleeping on floors, asking for favours from friends, being broke and that is emotionally taxing. As you get older, you’re like ‘maybe I do want privacy and my own room’,” she says today.

Rest was needed and she found herself spending money on new musical equipment, while poring over countless online tutorials - all with an aim to improve as an engineer and producer. This approach soon paid off, with credits on tracks for boygenius’ ‘The Record’, as well as on records by Illuminati Hotties, Lucy Dacus and the upcoming Hatchie album ‘Liquorice’. Her work with boygenius also saw her joining the trio on tour across the world, which Melina describes as “the best experience of my life.” It also turned out to be an opportunity to see the flip-side of the tours which had ground her down - as well as a chance to be surrounded by “the best people ever”.

She equally learnt a lot about collaboration. For ‘Anak Ko’, she had invited friends in to become collaborators, providing instrumentation and vocals. This time around, though, she went even further, working closely with Joao Gonzalez (of Soft Glas) and Mal Hauser (regular collaborator to Mk.gee) to relinquish more control. “I needed someone there to keep me accountable and have a different perspective on ideas and choices. I don’t like being in an echo chamber of my own design. If you work by yourself you might get to the finishing line but with someone else they’ll get you there faster,” she notes.

“I don’t like being in an echo chamber of my own design.”

Imposter syndrome has been a repeat presence for Melina. In 2017, around the release of her second record ‘Everybody Works’, she felt as though the early praise and increasing attention she’d garnered wasn’t deserved. And it still affects her today, as she questions whether people are going to listen to her music. One reprieve from that mindset has been the greater sense of community and collaboration in her life. “It’s easy to get out of my funk because I love working with people. I still get the call [to produce] and that’s enough for me to think ‘hey, people still fuck with me’.”

Another big way to kick any creeping doubts to the curb is to have Hayley Williams asking to sing with you. During a moment of apprehension, Melina received texts from the Paramore frontwoman, asking to harmonise on the new Jay Som record, which soon resulted in the deeply reflective ‘Past Lives’, on which their voices meld together perfectly alongside its nostalgic melody. Another “huge catalyst” for ‘Belong’ came from another emo hero of hers; Jim Adkins of Jimmy Eat World. “Getting Jim on a song was so cool, I was like ‘I’ve got the emo greats on record’. That was enough for me to sit down and take things seriously.”

‘Belong’ boasts the broadest range of sounds on a Jay Som record to date, with quieter acoustic moments (‘Appointments’) and references to the shoegaze sound that featured in her earlier work (‘D.H.’) sitting alongside looks to emo and pop- punk, as well as some of her most untamed riffs yet.

“It’s a really strange time to be a musician and an indie artist. The model, the whole system is just not working and it feels like we’re desperate for change.”

It’s an album that concerns itself with Melina’s place in not only the world but within music. Picking up the Jay Som project again, she was overcome by questions. “I don’t know if I belong in a certain community or if I even want to. Do I feel like I need to belong in these boxes that people put us in?” Add to this the precarious viability of being an indie artist during the streaming era, and it’s understandable how often belonging crosses Melina’s mind. “It’s a really strange time to be a musician and an indie artist,” she admits. “The model, the whole system is just not working and it feels like we’re desperate for change.”

With these questions running through her mind, feeling a sense of security and community is as vital as ever for the musician. Now settled in LA with her partner and dog, she’s found a strong community around her. And when music gets too much, she makes clay miniatures. “My friend Jasmine will come over and we’ll spend six to eight hours furiously making little trinkets, it’s a nice escape.” And having entered her thirties during the making of ‘Belong’, Melina acknowledges that while her late twenties brought difficulties and mental health problems, all these lifestyle changes and outside creative pursuits have changed things for the better.

“I have friends who are like ‘I need to release this album before I’m 30’ and I’m like, ‘why? What’s the deadline? What’s going to happen? You’re going to turn 30 and feel the same, it really is just a number’. I can’t wait to be older, I feel more self aware.” As such, the lyrics on ‘Belong’ emphasise how the richest forms of learning come from the relationships we have with other people, and how - by embracing community both in her art and personal life - Melina Duterte is feeling more herself than ever before.

‘Belong’ is out now via Lucky Number.

#AD