Music Spotlight: joan
We first discovered indie pop duo joan playing over the speakers at Dance Yourself Clean in LA a couple years back, and we’ve been hooked on their refreshing, yet retro sound ever since. Their latest single brokenhearted—released last week—off their new EP cloudy is no exception. As the name indicates, brokenhearted is the sorrowful breakup song of the EP, which the duo says depicts the ups and downs of the relationship. The track, accompanied by a nostalgia-inducing music video, follows the prereleased feel-good dancey jam want u back + affectional singles magnetic + love me better. All four tracks feature joan’s signature dream-pop sound inspired by the 80s + 90s. We chatted with the masterminds behind joan Alan Thomas + Steven Rutherford about brokenhearted, cloudy, the making of the music video + what they’ve been up to in quarantine. Plus, be sure to snag a ticket to their online live EP release show August 8th.
Asymmetric Magazine: Congrats on your recent release! Can you tell us the story behind brokenhearted + your new EP cloudy?
Alan Thomas: If the mood of cloudy was represented visually on a graph, it would be a sine wave—ebbing and flowing, like the very nature of our human relationships. brokenhearted immediately felt like the bottom of the wave, where you are in the valley and very in tune with your feelings. It’s about heartbreak. It’s about sitting in your sadness. And that’s an important place to rest for a bit. Sometimes you have to sit and soak it in to truly appreciate the growth when you reach the top of the next wave.
Steven Rutherford: This song ends our new EP, cloudy. The whole EP is about the ups and downs of the relationship, and [brokenhearted] is the breakup song. It still feels hopeful, though, which is what I love about it so much. Just because it’s over for now doesn’t mean it’s over forever. Love is tough to figure out. This song still makes me feel like love is worth it, no matter how tough it is. I remember brokenhearted being the quickest song to come together when we were writing for this EP. We rarely have a song that feels like it just falls in our laps, but I remember us having the chorus of this song written in like 15 minutes—that’s the stuff that keeps you coming back to songwriting.
It’s about sitting in your sadness. And that’s an important place to rest for a bit.
AM: And we’re loving the new video, too! What was the experience of making it like?
AT: Filming the music video for brokenhearted was such an amazing experience. It is our first proper narrative music video. We’ve done a bunch of vids, mainly visuals, and this was really the first story-driven video. The beautiful boys at Twang Pictures, Brandon and Jake, are so talented and kind and professional. They helped us capture the emotion of the song so perfectly and so tastefully. It’s a wonderfully odd feeling to see yourself ‘act’ for the first time in like a Hollywood-level video. It felt a bit surreal. Like hating the sound of your own voice upon watching an old home movie, I was afraid I would feel the same watching myself in it. But they made us feel so comfortable in our skin that by the time the final cut came through, I was able to just be proud of the art we had created together.
SR: The video was really tough to get right. I had a completely different concept and treatment planned for a few months that just never felt right for the song. I remember the treatment that we landed on for the final video coming to me randomly the morning it was needed to turn into the label. We wanted to go all out for this video, and we ended up reaching out through connections from some friends to these new guys in Tulsa called Twang Pictures. They turned out to be an absolute match made in heaven. The few days creating this video was above and beyond what I was hoping for in a collaborator for the visual side of this video.
AM: We still have the first two releases off cloudy on repeat. Can you tell us about magnetic + love me better?
SR: magnetic is a sentimental one we started writing together when we were in separate bands. I heard Alan working on magnetic for his band and loved it. We joked for a little while about making it a joan song, but when we started writing this collection of songs, it just made sense. love me better is a song about demanding to be treated fairly in a relationship, giving more than getting, loving more than being loved. We had to exercise a good bit of patience on this one. It’s had several different versions as a song, but it was worth the wait. It’s one of our favorite releases.
AM: How do you think this new EP compares to your previous EP portra?
SR: portra wasn’t meant to be an EP actually—we started just writing a bunch of songs and releasing them as we went. When we were about four songs in, though, we realized it just made sense to be compiled as an EP. Our sound has evolved since then but still heavily inspired by the 80s/90s sounds and movies. It’s still very ‘joan’.
AM: Are there any consistent themes you typically pursue through your music?
SR: Some of it comes from personal experience—even if it’s from our past way back to when we were kids. We also love storytelling in songs, so we sometimes will create concepts from friend’s or family’s experience. It always ends up being personal, though. That’s our goal: to make every song to where everyone can personally relate in some way.
AM: We love your style and all of your cover art! How do you think it parallels your sound?
SR: Thank you! I do the visuals for the band. We’ve known from the beginning what we want our music to look like in a visual way, so it’s always been super important to match up with the music. When we write music, there is always an immediately visual feeling we see it going.
AM: For first time listeners, how do you like to describe your sound?
SR: Fun and sad and happy and nostalgic and fresh.
AM: What other musicians are you currently listening to? Any top tracks you're into right now?
SR: We’ve been listening to a lot of Jeremy Zucker; he’s an angel. We always keep Sure Sure on rotation. This new girl named Ryann just released an insane song called Andrew, and we’ve been loving the new Dua Lipa album.
AM: Where is one place that you feel completely in touch with your creative self and your music?
SR: Definitely on stage. Playing shows live always seems to give a new life to the songs we wrote two or three years ago. It’s so interesting and different from anything else.
AT: I thrive working by myself in my little bedroom studio. In that place, I feel the most free to try new things and explore ideas I’ve had in my head or on a voice memo without fear or judgment or ego. It’s just me and my ideas, exploring sounds and melodies, constantly chasing that adrenaline feeling when you hear something that gives you goose bumps.
AM: Are there any new hobbies that you’ve picked up during this time of quarantine?
SR: The main thing we’ve been doing during this time has been writing a lot. We also started releasing new music during this time, and we’ve been lucky enough to make videos. It’s been an interesting and fun challenge to think of visual concepts around having to be de socially distant from people while making those.
AM: What is something that inspires you outside of music?
SR: Like I said, I do visual stuff a lot. I love to mess around with graphic design, textures, etc. I’ve also been really inspired by acting and script writing for TV lately.
AT: It’s not outside of music, but I like to produce and write for things outside of joan, as well. But most importantly, I’ve been mastering cooking a perf burger on a cast iron skillet.
// listen to brokenhearted:
photos courtesy of joan
Listen to more joan on Spotify.
