Jackson Phillips Finds A New Way On Crush EP
interview by Alex Free / photo by Daniel Topete
Jackson Phillips has seen a revolution as Day Wave, the indie pop project that Phillips formed in Oakland in 2015. After an interval where Phillips was primarily working on other projects (co-writing and producing)- during which he moved to LA and toured with Pete Yorn- he’s releasing Crush, a four-track EP dedicated to belief in his own voice, and placing a bet that, through differences and fuck-ups, depression and emotional turbulence, we can still find ways of sticking together.
The EP is a more mature take on Phillips’ characteristic style— the voice and the fast-moving, plucky drum and guitar lines are familiar Day Wave, but delivered more clearly, precisely, and with finer articulation. And lyrically Crush deals with a different stage in Phillips’ life: one that saw Phillips struggling with the dual pressures of social perception and comparison, voices telling him that he is who he doesn’t feel himself to be, and striking out to define his own voice in a way that’s true to who he is. Like the chorus on Starting Again, a single off the EP that Phillips dropped in February:
I hate it when you push me out / I hate the way you make it sound
Like I feel alone / like I feel alone now
I’m not gona give in again / I told you the way I am
I don’t feel alone / I don’t feel alone now
It’s a theme that’s repeated throughout the EP, the balance between letting people too close to you, and holding to a concept of yourself that no one can touch. And we get a feel for Day Wave’s own depression on the EP— the desire to separate and keep that from anyone else, those same barriers coming up when the feeling of injury is reversed:
“Ohh, my eyes are empty now / but I don’t want you feeling the same
Just stay away; my soul is empty now / but I don’t want you feeling the same”
Heavy lyrics, though combined with an upbeat melody and a youthful vocal style that bring a sense of possibility and optimism. It’s a fresh perspective where nothing, really, can go wrong, where emotions may run high but that’s part of the beauty of relationships. We get the idea that ultimately, everything will be okay. And a really beautiful title track closes the album, Phillips singing over an old piano with lines that pair together all our mistakes with the chance to move on.
Af: Let’s talk about the new release. It’s called Crush, it’s a four-track EP, and Crush is also the title of the last song on the album, which is really soft and really beautiful. I wanted to ask if you could talk a little bit about where the title is coming from? Obviously that word has multiple meanings.
Jp: To me it’s more feeling the weight of something crushing you, but the word does have multiple meanings and you can take it whichever way you want. Like in the song I say something along the lines of, “I take all these things and crush them,” and I just took that word. I always end up doing that, taking a lyric from a song or a song name and making it the album title, and that one stuck out to me. It felt like it summed up what a lot of the songs were talking about.
The whole album has these themes of you battling your own mind; there’s combatting feelings around importance and isolation, and choosing to take a more upbeat, positivity-centric approach. I like the duality of it, the feeling of this crushing pressure, and then choosing to say ‘I take these feelings and I crush them.’
Yeah, exactly.
Can you tell me about the idea of capturing a feeling in a song? About that process, or what that feels like to you.
I feel like if I don’t capture a feeling in a song, then I’ll never finish the song. It’s a weird thing—you make songs all the time, and then one of them really has something special about it. And you just hold on to that. Sometimes you make a bunch of songs in a row and they all capture a feeling, sometimes you make a song and it’s just flat. But it’s hard to know when you’re going to make something that sticks with you. Usually the initial idea that you’re starting with has some emotional pull that drives you to keep working on that idea. Whether or not the idea dies in the process depends on if you can maintain that feeling or turn it into something else.
Do you know when you’ve got it? When you have a song you want to put out, or that keeps the feeling?
Usually it’s fairly obvious, but sometimes you make something you’re all excited about, and then at the end of the day you go back it and think, ‘oh, no, that’s no good.’ It has to stand the test of time, you have to be able to give it some time away and come back to it, and if it still effects you in that way then you go with it.
Running with the themes of the album, there’s lots of you in dialogue with yourself, but there’s also a strong presence of somebody else. As the listener I feel like I’m being sung to a lot of the time. I was curious, when you were writing this, did you write it more in conversation with yourself, or was there someone you had in mind, or was there an idea of somebody that you made the album for?
There wasn’t any particular person I made it for, it was more so for myself and sort-of in conversation with myself. Lyrically, it could be taken either as you’re struggling with your own identity, or you’re struggling with somebody else who’s making it hard for you. In my mind, I’m more so talking to myself, but I always like to leave it open, kind of ambiguous, so that it can go either way. But there was no one particular person I was directing this toward.
I know that you wrote this EP after taking a break with the Day Wave project- you’d spent a lot of time working on other people’s albums, and you’d done that with the intention of coming back into more of a naive headspace, or point of reinvention with your own project. Can you talk about the effect that focusing on other people’s work had on your own creative process?
Doing my own thing for a few years straight just became a little bit monotonous, and I was really focusing on myself the whole time. It felt like I needed to do something else for a while in order to make my own music feel special again. I was also able to develop other skills musically that I’d kind of stopped working on. When I started Day Wave, I let a lot of things that I used to do go off to the side, and it was nice to pick up some of those things again. And working with people for their projects you really go with their excitement—a lot of the people that I was producing were just getting started, and it’s inspiring to work with people who really have a new vision. And when I was touring with Pete Yorn, that also helped me feel like, ‘oh yeah, playing shows!’ And the excitement around that.
I know that you also moved to Los Angeles not that long ago- do you feel like doing those things, taking time to work on other people’s projects, the move, helped you clear your mind and get back to that free space with songwriting?
Being in Los Angeles has its ups and downs. When I was living in Oakland, I was just getting started with Day Wave and I felt a lot more inspired, like I could stick to my own pace. I didn’t really have a lot of outside influence one way or the other, whereas in LA everybody’s doing the same thing, and it’s hard to escape what other people are doing. It’s nice to have other people around, and there are a lot of good things that come with it. But as far as Day Wave is concerned moving to LA has made it a little more difficult for me. Other people might thrive on the sense of community, but when I’m working on my own music I feel like I’m self-conscious about it, so I feel better when I’m a little more isolated, and have something that I know I like, and I’m less second-guessing myself. I just go with it.
That isolation and introversion has to be really important to your songwriting, then.
Yeah, I think so. And being in a place that’s less industry-driven is better, for me, for getting to the core of what I want to make. Sometimes I feel like when you’re a little less aware, what you make can be a little more pure.
And how do you feel that effected writing Crush?
I think being here just made it harder to focus on doing it. Eventually I got back to it, but I think it was just harder for me to find that space. I had to really work and develop my own routine to make that space for [this album].
Does it prompt different feelings? As opposed to listening to your past releases.
Definitely. When I think about the songs I think about where I recorded them, and where I was at that point in my life. It gives me a totally different feeling.
And what is that for Crush?
A pretty personal vision of where I was when I made those songs. I recorded most of it in Echo Park, when I was still living in Echo Park, so I just have a particular vision of what I was doing at the time—going up and down Echo Park Avenue. Every day, going up and down that street all the time. Working on music, walking.
Anything else you want people you want to say about the release?
It’s a tough time, everything’s so weird right now. Hopefully music in general can be a thing that helps people have some sense of normalcy. It seems for a lot of people that sense of normalcy has come from music, so hopefully I can be adding to that.