INTERVIEW: Jack River releases second album 'Endless Summer': "There’s so much possibility in thinking about the future and living in that space where anything is possible."

Jun 16

Jun 16 INTERVIEW: Jack River releases second album 'Endless Summer': "There’s so much possibility in thinking about the future and living in that space where anything is possible."

Image: Jordan Kirk

It’s been five years since Holly Rankin – the singer, songwriter, producer and all-round creative force we know as Jack River – released an album, and this month she launches her second full-length release, Endless Summer. With its balmy, dreamy production, it’s like a fantasy summer getaway – but it wouldn’t be a Jack River album if it didn’t have something more profound to say.

Since 2018’s Sugar Mountain, her debut album as Jack River, Rankin has added an impressive array of activism and music advocacy to her portfolio: co-organising two festivals – Electric Lady (2017–18), and Grow Your Own in her hometown of Forster (2017–19) – plus working on the ground on issues like climate change, abortion access and the rights of First Nations peoples (including for the Uluru Dialogue, part of the campaign for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament). As if that wasn’t enough, she had her first baby last year, and now with a fresh new album she’s about to hit our festival stages.

Endless Summer is, as its name suggests, endlessly summery – singles like the title track, featuring Genesis Owusu, and ‘Lie in the Sun’ are all about escaping the everyday and revelling in a sense of freedom. Strings, delicious slabs of keyboard, expansive reverb and layers of vocal create a unified musical universe across the album, yet there are more serious themes running through, with Rankin’s usually thoughtful lyrics in abundance on tracks like ‘Stranger’s Dream’, ‘Lie to You’ and ‘Paradise’.

Women In Pop sat down with Rankin ahead of the album release to chat all about its creation.

Hi Holly, thank you so much for talking with us today. You’re, like, the busiest person in music …
Oh no, I’m really not that! Thank you – it’s awesome to have coverage of this album.

So: Endless Summer. It’s fantastic! Such a summery vibe, plus a lot of depth in the tracks. Can you tell us about the escapist feel of the album? Was that something you started out with, or did the escapism become clear as you were writing and producing?
I think it’s a theme in the Jack River world that I want to make things seem a little more fantastical, like my version of escape … how can I make the songs the most cinematic to my ears, and close to my dreams of what escapism sounds like?

I guess it’s where I want to go in my head, and it reflects how I’m feeling about the world. I write songs from emotion, and then I bring the production to it. The songs write themselves for me, and then the production around it is where I get to play my part.

The ‘summery’ production across the album is incredibly cohesive, but I know you co-produced this album with different people, including Matt Corby. Was that quite a different experience from making Sugar Mountain?
Yeah, it was quite a different process because of lockdown and all the disconnection in our lives with travel, and not being allowed to be in the same room as other people. Everyone has their own experience of that, but for us as musicians, making this album was very disjointed. You know, working on Zoom. I was like, ‘I don’t want to do that – I don’t want to make songs on Zoom.’ Our lives in music are so online already with streaming and social media. Everything’s online! I thought, ‘Do we really need to take the music-making process online?’

But we did that for a lot of different songs. And then I got to spend most of my real-life studio time with Matt Corby up at his studio at Rainbow Valley. That was really magical to be in the room with him, alone in the forest that he lives in.

But I guess being in an isolated place, like your bedroom, also drives you to feel the world – you still have to connect to this production world you’re making, and make it really strong. But you have to do it literally all in your head, and with your words, when you can’t be in the room.

I’m very much a visual and verbal producer. I’m not on the tools as much as others might be, so it was all just description and Pinterest boards, and weird things like ‘It’s like a cloud dripping!’ So it was really interesting to sit here and have to make an album from my head, with producers who are actually in the room on the tools.

In that case, I don’t know how you managed to get such a cohesive feel – your verbal descriptions must have really captured it …
It’s nice that you think it’s cohesive! It’s a reflection of my inner identity crisis as well. There’s a lot going on, as you said – there’s societal stuff, very personal stuff, youth stuff, break-up stuff. There’s just so much going on. And then I tried to sugarcoat it all with a nice sound.

I don’t feel like it’s sugarcoated at all, especially in the last three tracks: ‘Paradise’, ‘Holy Men’ and ‘Stranger’s Dream’, which are a little darker. They still have that beautiful wash of keyboards and strings, and gorgeous production, but there’s some serious things going on. Did you have to think about how to make these lyrically darker things feel like part of the same album?
Yes. Yeah, I feel like there’s a fair few dark themes lyrically, like in ‘Lie to You’ and ‘Honey’ too. They’re not dark, but they’re deeply questioning things, personal things. So I guess they’re real, and we probably tucked them in at the end of the album. They are three very different songs.

‘Paradise’ really feels like the flipside of the ‘hopes and dreams’ story, but also about the beauty of going home: ‘Take me to my hometown, everything will slow down …’
I wrote ‘Paradise’ in lockdown, feeling quite disconnected and depressed about the music industry, and my career, and our businesses diving by 90 per cent, and bank accounts going to zero, and just thinking, ‘That’s really hard, but I’m living in a beautiful place. I’m really lucky, I’m healthy and my family are healthy. So why do I feel so depressed?’ I was just trying to retain the dream of having a music career.

‘Holy Men’ comes next – it’s a really powerful song, and quite different to the rest of the album, but still sounds like it belongs there.
‘Holy Men’ is very much dealing with the patriarchy. I started writing that when I was seventeen or eighteen, so it’s about twelve years old. And I just wanted to dig it up and give it a life because it’s reflective of everything happening right now in the world. It was really, really enjoyable to realise as a song, because I’ve had it for so long.

And finally ‘Stranger’s Dream’, which is huge and cinematic – such a beautiful closing track. Can you talk us through that one a little: writing it, realising it?
I had a few trails of the lyrics for a really long time – ten years or so. But I wanted to explore what else is in the song and finish writing it with Matt Corby. It’s one of my favourite songs I’ve ever written because it’s just reflective of where I’m at at the moment, which is questioning my entire life after the pandemic. It’s what so many of us went through: do we need to be living this way? What am I doing? Am I in a stranger’s dream? Do I need to find my own kind of thing? So I was toying with that musically and lyrically.

And it has that epic shift about three minutes in, where it changes gear completely into a psychedelic party – but it never loses its melodic core.
Yeah, creating the outro was really fun. We created a hotel scene that Matt and I had in our heads. We started to toy with this idea of a Marvin Gaye hotel lobby party – chandeliers and colourful cocktails, a very hazy, wonderful scene. And we just kept having fun with it. I wanted it to feel like throwing a door open into another world that you hadn’t considered and maybe that could be fun. So that’s what we did in the music.

I think at the time it was federal election time in Australia and there’s a little lyric in there about ‘shaking every hand like Scott’s in the room’, referring to Scott Morrison. Playing with the lyrics was really fun.

Another thing about ‘Stranger’s Dream’ is that it has a forward momentum to it: at the end, you sing ‘Take the time you need’. There are usually people doing things in your songs, and a sense of the future. Is that conscious, or is it just how you write naturally?
Yeah, that’s probably really conscious. I think a lot of what I’m doing all the time is future focused. There’s so much possibility in thinking about the future and living in that space where anything is possible. In songwriting, that is a nice space to play in because the present is very real, and that can be scary and have too many realities and boundaries.

That definitely comes through. Your songs never get stuck anywhere. They’re always on their way somewhere.
Yeah, I get impatient, I’ve noticed! I don’t repeat structures too often because I think, ‘Well, let’s do something else.’

So you’ve got Splendour in the Grass coming up in July. Have you started getting back to live rehearsals?
Yes, and it’s really exciting thinking about the Splendour show – that’ll be a wonderful moment to build to, and to realise the dream in the album.

Are there any tracks you’re particularly looking forward to playing live?
It’ll be fun to bring ‘Endless Summer’ to life, and then there are the ones that are yet to come out. ‘Lucy Sea Queen’ is one of my little heart favourites, and probably ‘Stranger’s Dream’, just to see what happens. I don’t know if people will know the song, but we just put so much fun and energy into it, and there’s so much sadness in it too. So it will be fun to see what happens when we play that live.

Your life has changed a lot lately too, with the birth of your daughter, so I guess preparing for live shows will be slightly different to how it’s been in the past?
Well, I’ve got a really wonderfully easy baby. She kind of just comes along for the ride so far, and that’s what my pregnancy was like too – we did maybe fifteen shows and worked on the election [while I was pregnant]. And it seems like she’s OK to come along for the ride now as well – she likes busyness and people and crowds, it seems. So yeah, she’s fit for the job!

She’s as connected to the world as you are.
Oh, that’s nice. I hope so.

And you’re also doing stuff with the Voice to Parliament education campaign – is that your main non-musical activist work right now?
Yeah, it’s my main extracurricular activity! I’m working as a creative director for the Uluru Dialogue. It’s a Voice to Parliament education campaign, working with First Nations people to platform those voices and get as many people from music, sport, entertainment and culture as possible to support them and share them. So I’ll be doing what I love between entertainment and social impact politics.

It’s all connected. That’s great. Thank you so much, Holly, there are literally a thousand more questions we could have asked you! All the best with the album release, and we look forward to seeing you on stage soon.
Thanks so much. So great to chat.

Endless Summer is out now via I Oh You. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Jack River you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.