Get Lost in Jordana’s ‘Lively Premonition’
Kamryn Bouyett
Jordana serves an experimental collection of alternative sounds in her new album, Lively Premonition. Throughout 2023 with producer and multi-instrumentalist Emmett Kai, they explored crumbling relationships, newfound sobriety, and self-discovery, over and over again.
Photo by Kasey Makal
“I can’t thank Emmett enough for basically being my therapist through all of it,” she said.
Previously releasing albums spanning from lo-fi to pop, indie rock, and folk, Lively Premonition is a mixed album of equal parts Laurel Canyon folk and shimmering yacht rock. Her current iteration owes a debt to her deep love for artists like The Mamas & The Papas, Carole King, Donald Fegan, and Walter Becker.
“I don’t think I’ll ever settle on a specific sound,” she says. “I’m just a chameleon.”
The album starts with “We Get By,” a light harmonious love song about sticking with someone through life’s imperfect times.
“Heart You Hold,” perceives the same pain as gleefully prancing in poison ivy. The slow guitar strum and peaceful beat of the drum continue as Jordana reflects on growing into a person she’s never seen before while carrying the heart she still holds. Paying no mind to the world around her, she sings about having the time to figure everything out, even if it means losing friends or blaming others.
The folk influences are heavy in the “Heart You Hold.” It sounds like morning dew, forestry air, and windy roads. The violin at the end ties the song together like a red ribbon, and prepares us for the next track, “This is How I Know.”
“The whole record is this mixed bag of tricks with plenty of cheeky lyrical and instrumental decisions,” she says. “We’re taking tons of risks here.”
Jordana’s writing blossoms in each song influenced by her life experiences and other thematic situations stemming from real and imagined stories.
“Raver Girl,” is a song about a one-sided attraction between Jordana and some unknown girl. Unable to find the words to describe what she’s feeling, she sings about wasting time and falling under a spell. Similar tunes of 70’s disco swell as Jordana loses sight of her singing - “It was over just as soon as it started baby.”
“I was actually ushered into a new process of writing I didn’t think I was capable of,” she says. “Making shit up!”
In 2020, Jordana popped into the music scene with Classical Notions of Happiness, an album of lo-fi pop and hushed folk songs recorded in Maryland and Kansas. At the end of that same year, she released Something To Say To You, a compilation of indie rock and brokenhearted acoustic fare, all recorded with friends in New York City apartment studios.
“It makes me wonder what I’ll do next. Country? Folk? Go back to my Lindsey Stirling Dubstep violin obsession?” she says. “Hell why not, I’m learning more and more about myself through each one.”
Starting the new year right, Jordana will begin touring across 20 different cities in the U.S. Tickets are already on sale.
Listen to Lively Premonition here!
