- 2023-09-28
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MUSIC
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JP Saxe Releases New Album “A Grey Area”
Canadian singer-songwriter JP Saxe released his sophomore album “A Grey Area” on September 22, 2023.
It is his first album in two years since the 2021 debut album “Dangerous Levels of Introspection”.
The album comprises 13-track, in which he worked with collaborators including Camilo, Lizzy McAlpine, Tiny Habits, Yesika Salgado, and John Mayer.
Produced by Benjamin Rice, Malay and Ryan Marrone.
The album invites personal reflection. JP Saxe shared on social media, “This album feels like a diary of becoming myself over the last couple years. It's an encapsulation of my nuance obsession, my fascination with ambivalence, and many fights I've had with myself and lost. I wrote it between LA and Medellin and it's full of the kind of stories I would only tell the closest people in my life, because that's who I made it with. I had to stare at a lot of parts of myself that scare me to make this album, and I hope listening to it will bring you closer to those parts of yourself as well, maybe in a way that will make them just a little less scary. A Grey Area is yours now, I'm so deeply excited to be in it with you.”- JP Saxe told Apple Music, “It's always felt like a magic trick to me that these songs that come from often very lonely, very private parts of my life end up being the thing that makes me feel the most connected to people I've never met all over the world,”
He explained about some tracks for the album via Apple Music. -
“Old Times Sake (Epigraph by Yesika Salgado)”
“I've always loved the epigraphs at the beginning of books. I've always loved the process of reading that, wondering why an author picked it, maybe liking the poem, but not having the context, getting to the end of the book, going back, reading the poem again and thinking, 'Oh shit, that's why they picked this.' Yesika and I have been friends for about 10 years now. We met through the poetry community in Los Angeles. She and I edited one of her poems into a singable form, and it became the introduction, the epigraph of my album. I hope when people listen to it the first time, it'll set the tone for listening to the rest of the album and the story and the emotional space that they'll be experiencing.”
“I Don't Miss You”
“I'd been working on that song for a long time, and I couldn't quite find the right first lyric for the chorus. And finally I thought it would be worth calling in some reinforcements, so I texted John Mayer and I asked him if he may know what that lyric was supposed to be. And he said, 'Well, why don't you come to the studio and I'll play some guitars on the record, and we'll see if we can figure out that lyric.' And that's exactly what we did.”
“Anywhere”
“Why are the most loving things we say to comfort each other always about things we can't possibly know for sure? a dying parent telling you everything will be okay. a friend joins the military and says they'll be back before you know it. It's loving - it feels honest, even if it ends up not being true. I wrote this song thinking about the sincerity in how we can tell someone we'll always be there, and the humanness in how we can't always mean it.”
“Caught Up on You”
“When you write a lot of songs about the more heartbreaking, painful elements of what it feels like to be human, it's nice to take a moment to write about what joy can feel like, especially trying to learn how to let joy be bigger than your ability to come up with what it should be. And that's what that song means to me. It's just that. That song feels like the parts of my life where I'm allowing myself to be surprised by where my happiness comes from.
I completely turned off my filter and wrote nine of the weirdest verses I've ever written and picked my favorite four. It was a way to clear the pipes creatively, but I ended up being obsessed with the song. It was genuinely fun. It's still my favourite song on the record. When you're used to talking about heavy and emotional shit and you write a song about kinks and communism, it's a nice little break.”
“Everything Ends” featuring Lizzy McAlpine and Tiny Habits
“It's a song about nostalgia and cute dogs and trauma bonding. It's about moments you wish you could put on loop. that's not how moments work sadly, it is how songs do though.
My memory is one of my deepest insecurities. I'll joke about it, refer to myself as a goldfish, say it makes me compulsively sincere cause if I lie I'll forget and inevitably make a fool of myself (that is true). But what really scares me about it is how quickly it feels like I lose what I let go of. How quickly something can go from reality to memory to hardly there at all. Like what I don't hold on to I never had. It's probably why sometimes I hold on tighter than is good for me, and its why the lyric in this song 'Maybe if my memory was better I'd be less afraid of losing what I can't remember' is one of the realest on the album. I'm grateful this song exists as a little time capsule. It's an homage to whatever you'd call the feeling opposite to regret. And I'm grateful Lizzy McAlpine and Tiny Habits said yes to singing it with me.”
“Fear & Intuition”
“That song started as my response to people telling me to trust my gut. That's always been confusing advice to me, because my gut says a lot of different things. It's not very articulate, and it's usually very, very hard to decipher. But for now, like I say in the lyrics, what I'm drawn to and away from because of some sort of subconscious understanding of what's meant for me versus what I'm drawn to and away from because of my internalized subconscious trauma are very hard to distinguish.”
“Moderación (Con Camilo)” featuring Camilo
JP Saxe: “Camilo is one of my favorite artists on earth and my brother. Making this song together is a dream and I'm grateful to be able to sing a song that I love with a person that I love. It's been a family affair with Evaluna and Ricky Montaner, Camilo's wife and brother-in-law, directing the video. I will be very happy to be able to perform this song with Camilo for the rest of my life.”
Camilo said: “When I had the opportunity to meet JP Saxe I doubted very much that I could manage to love him more than I admire him, because he has been one of my favorite singer-songwriters in the whole world for a long time.”
He added, “I learn from him, I study what he does, I fantasize thinking that I am the one who wrote some of his songs hahahaha. One magical day we sat down to write and sing together, and something came out that I am very excited to share.One thing JP and I have in common is that we don't like the people he loves in moderation.”
“All My Shit Is in My Car”
“That song's about how all my shit was in my car. And I think, more broadly, it's about navigating when what you want and what you want to want are no longer the same thing. And figuring out what the fuck to do about it. For someone who does a lot of whispering about how he feels, it is occasionally lovely to scream about it, too.”
“The Good Parts”
“This song is about trying to find the healthy recognition that there can be beautiful parts in a relationship that ends. You can heal without having to destroy it, and you can also heal without over-romanticizing it.”
“When You Think Of Me”
“It's been almost a year since the last new song I put out. all I've ever wanted my music to be is honest (also nuanced and musical and tear inducing.. but mainly honest). you having this song is really important to me. In awe of Paloma, her vision and the incredible team that brought this video to life. 'When you think of me' video, Filmed in Medellin, Colombia, where the song was written.”
“If Love Ends”
“Ending the album on a question felt like an important recognition of the central theme. I wanted to call the album A Grey Area because I think there are so many different feelings on this album. And maybe at first glance some of those feelings seem to contradict one another, but I feel the most human when I allow multiple emotions to exist at the same time, and recognize that they don't count each other out. If anything, the more emotions we allow to exist in our body at the same time, probably the more human we are going to feel.” - source : Apple Music
