INTERVIEW: Jess Day releases debut album 'A Garden of Small Disappointments': "This album was literally a collection of small disappointments in my life that I just had to put into some kind of art."

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Published: 11 October 2024

Australia’s Jess Day today releases her debut album A Garden of Small Disappointments, a brooding 10 track collection of indie, pop, punk and rock.

The album has been two years in the making and contains songs that were written four years ago. Created without any particular concept in mind, it is a collection of songs from the past four years that Day believes are worthy of existing.

If there is one theme to the album, it is the exploration of some of the darker moments of relationships and human psyche. “All of the songs on this album have a very clear concept and you can find that specific brand of darkness creeping its way into even the happier songs on the album,” Day says.

The album is grounded in rock-indie-punk but Day also brings in elements of other genres throughout the album, introducing snatches of unexpected sonics that continuously generate a smile on first listen.

The album opens with ‘Old Wounds’ that is perhaps the showcase for the diverse sounds Day has on the album. Beginning with sparse synth notes, it soon breaks into a frantic guitar rock track, but the synths periodically pop up throughout, making it a glorious crossover between 1980s style synthpop and rock.

Latest single ‘Bad News’ is a more traditional indie-rock song with an addictive chant style chorus, as Day sings of a relationship that she can’t leave and hating herself for it. ‘Ripped out my spine for you / I don’t have a backbone to cling to…my bones are begging for you’. Its broody beat, melodies and dark lyrics make it a thrilling listen.

Recent single ‘London’ is a more upbeat, almost perky indiepop track with swinging beats and distorted guitar with lyrics contrary to the happiness in the music with Day looking back at a relationship and realising how bad it was. ‘Every now and then I flick through photos / My breath leaves, I shudder’. ‘Lilith’ is a dark, moody rock song that mixes religious imagery with the realisation Day doesn't need anyone to get through life: ‘Tender hands never heal me / Fine alone, I'm fine alone.’

‘Scientist’ mixes acoustic guitar with driving heavy guitar choruses and explores the need for ‘potions’ - from caffeine to drugs - to get through the day, while ‘Heavy Heart’ is probably the gentlest song on the album. Stripped back with little more than a guitar and Day dialling her vocal back to a softer, more emotive tone as she sings about social anxiety and depression. ‘I never knew that sadness was boring / I always feel like I’m dead / I thought maybe I’d feel something, feel anything.’ The song gradually builds up as Day repeatedly sings ‘a heavy heart’ with growing distress that beautifully mirrors the sensations and thought processes that the song explores.

The album ends with ‘The Portal’ which Day has said closely connects to ‘Lilith’ in terms of its lyrical content. It is again a darkly brooding guitar song that powerfully explores the subjugation women endure in relationships, whilst also reclaiming self: ‘I have more in me than any other man’.

Since attracting attention in 2019 with the release of the singles ‘Why Is She So Beautiful?’ and ‘Rabbit Hole’ Day has been a shining light in the Australian indie-pop-rock arena, with over 1 million combined streams to her name. The release of her debut album has been greatly anticipated and it doesn’t disappoint, being one of those rare albums that intrigues on multiple levels. The diverse sonics, combined with fascinating - and connective - lyrical content make it an immersive listening experience, that you can enjoy for the whole story it presents. We recently sat down with Day to find out more about the album’s creation.

Hi Jess, so lovely to see you. Let's talk about your debut album A Garden of Small Disappointments. Congratulations! How are you feeling?
Relieved, I think, to have it out finally! I've been sitting on it for a while. It’s been a long time coming.

The whole album is this beautiful blend of indie pop and punk and rock, which I love. Talk to me a little bit about the creation of this album and going at it so solo?
I think there's benefits to being in a band as opposed to a solo artist in the sense that you've got at any point maybe three to four people to bounce off of and go ‘am I being neurotic? Is this actually fine and I don't need to fix it? Or is this actually terrible?’ So as a surrogate for those other people to bounce off of, you just need to rely on time. That's why it's so time consuming, because I would write a song and be like, ‘That's it, I've got a hit'.’. And then I'd come back a week later and I went, ‘oh my god, I was so far off the mark’. Or opposite would happen, I'd write something I didn't think was noteworthy, and then I come back to it three months later, and go, ‘why didn't I put this on my album? This is exceptional.’ You really rely on time revealing whether you can use something or not, as opposed to relying on the other people to back you up on if you're right or you're wrong. That's something I probably would enjoy about being in a band. However, I don't have to make any creative sacrifices. I can just keep it completely how I want to, which is nice as well.

Yeah, it's a double edged sword. You have spoken about being your own producer, and being in control of every aspect and how that affects your music. You’ve just spoken about time, is that something you've learned over the years to specifically give yourself, to write a song but then make a point of not touching it for several weeks?
Yeah, definitely. That’s something I factor in, even that feeling of ‘I've got a hit’ immediately sparks red flags in my mind, because now I'm very cautious of that. I know that the stronger the feeling is that I'm on to something, it's usually much farther off. It's usually the slow burns that end up being quite good. So I do factor that in, I need to give time to this. I would never in a million years write a song knowing it had to be released in X amount of time, because it does not give me the amount of time I need to go through to love it, hate it, love it again, or hate it, love it and then release it.

Let's talk about latest single ‘Bad News’, because I'm just really excited about it. The lyric ‘the siren I swam straight to’, the imagery is so so cool. You have this theme of being drawn to what's bad for you, which you also do on ‘London’, and what I love about both those tracks is there's such an energy to them. It's less just laying on your floor and wallowing in your own shit, and more ‘oh, fuck it.’. There's a joy to it.
For sure. I think I'm beyond judging myself too harshly for wanting what's bad for me. I’ve just realised there’s innately a part of me that's drawn to that darkness. I almost look at it comically, like, ‘Ha ha, you really want to go back to that person? Classic. They were really bad for you.’ But I can't get rid of that innate desire to be drawn to dark things. There's definitely been a maturity in realising that.

There's this real supernatural dichotomy across the whole album, you've got this beauty, but then this brutal honesty. Talk to me about the theme of the album as a whole.
It's quite literally looking back at a garden of small disappointments. I think when you get into your late 20s, there's a bit of a reckoning that happens where you were just looking back. It's just looking around at this graveyard of things that just didn't work, and then going, ‘I'm just getting older. What am I meant to do? I've botched it’, but then realising you can actually grow some things. You might not grow tulips, but you might be able to grow like a cactus. So this whole album was just literally a collection of small disappointments in my life that I just had to put into some kind of art. And so I'm looking back on it being ‘yeah, that was really disappointing’, but from a removed standpoint of ‘this had to happen’.

There's a kindness that comes with that, isn't there?
Definitely, it was all worthwhile. There's a dark humour to it all. I have quite a dark, dry sense of humour, and I feel like that subtly can be picked up on throughout the album.

You taught yourself multiple instruments and have really just gone headlong into your music and doing it all alone. Can you talk me through your musical journey?
I remember being a kid probably around age 12, it was abundantly clear to me that not everyone liked music in the same way I did. They didn't feel it was life affirming, or they didn't get goosebumps listening to it, or they weren't, quite literally, transcended to another dimension, through listening to music. I realised that's a unique experience and is why musicians become musicians, or artists become artists, because it draws you so much into the passion that you actually just have to start creating it. I had a friend in primary school, and he played guitar, and we were both just obsessed with Paramore. But beyond that, once I entered high school, I just wasn't surrounded by people that were playing music and that were as obsessed with it as I was. And so I felt quite lonely, and that maybe I missed out on the opportunities to be in a band. It was an isolated experience where I just relied on myself to teach myself that stuff. I had guitar teachers through high school, but by that point, I was proficient enough that it was just a jam session, I was probably better at guitar at 12 than I am now, because I just loved it so much I was doing all the time. I realised, through trial and error, that if you want something done right, do it yourself. And that's translated to me making my own album.

That’s awesome. When we last met, you spoke about the anxiety you had about performing, despite being a one woman show when you were younger, and now we're coming out with multiple tours under your belt. I'm just curious how your relationship with performing has evolved?
It's really interesting. You hear it a lot with the creative introverts that don't want to be performers. They have these stories of throwing up on the side of the stage, or having panic attacks, and then they suddenly become these crazy good performers and you think, ‘how did that happen?’ But it's just doing it enough that it stops being as scary. It probably took me [until] some of the more intense tours I did with the bigger bands that were like 20 show dates or whatever and I reckon after you've done 20 to 30 consecutive shows, you just get over it. I can't even imagine myself as an 18 year old being as comfortable as I am on stage now, and I can't even imagine myself enjoying it because I shied away from the spotlight so much. I didn't even sing in front of anyone till I had songs out that were doing well, and I refused to perform them. I didn't come up in the scene playing gigs or anything because I was just too scared. I didn't want to perform live. I wanted to write songs, I didn't want to sing, but I needed someone to sing the songs, so I became a singer. And then I had to become a performer. I just kept facing the fear because I loved doing it. Now I enjoy performing in its own right, which is fascinating to me, because I just could not have comprehended that years ago.

That was always it for you? I just want to write songs because I want to hear the songs that haven't been made yet. So I better just write them and hope someone else sings them to me. That's such a beautiful place to start.
Exactly. I really was apprehensive about having to sing them myself. My fantasy was always being a ghost writer or something, like in those writing sessions in LA when there's 15 writers, and I'm just there, and I'm put on a credit somewhere, but my face and my name and my voice is not attached to it.

Is that because while music is so freaking beautiful, it is the most exposing thing you can do. Having someone sing their feelings at you is just terrifying.
Yeah, absolutely, so vulnerable. I think it also comes from a string of perfectionism in knowing that I'm not technically a singer and I don't have a technically good voice. I just needed to sing the songs. So I figured, if I can't do it perfectly, I'd rather just someone else to execute it perfectly.

And do you still refer to yourself like that? You're not a singer, you're not a guitarist?
It's no, no shame to those people, because they're trying to be supportive, but I hate it when people say ‘Oh, I found out that you're a singer’ or ‘you've got such a beautiful voice’. It's always about me singing, and that's led to me having some really awkward conversations of trying to explain that I write the songs, and they can't seem to comprehend it. They have this image of a solo female artist being a singer on top of the instrumentation that's already been written and produced. I have to really sit them down and be like, no I holistically do it all myself. I don't even want to be a singer. That’s like the least interesting part of it. My voice is not the star of the show. I just wanted to be a songwriter

You've been a big advocate of getting women into alternative music and making their own and you’ve really been shouting that. There is still this notion in Australia of you get one woman on the bass, and that's exciting. Two questions on that: how have you found the industry navigating your way through it, and how do you drive that with your own career, celebrating and embracing other females in the alternative music space in Australia?
I use any opportunity I can to encourage women to do it themselves and to record themselves, and whether that's been historically, just showing a friend or someone who's interested how to set up their own demo space, I'm very willing to do that. Just take them for a trip to a music store and just be like, ‘This is what you need, just go do it. It's really not hard’. I think I'm really transparent with making it seem easy, because men have a real tendency, and it's not necessarily from a malicious place, but when they are interested in something, they can get into the finite details and over complicate it, and then it can unintentionally become gatekeeping. I try to encourage men to break it down, especially when I'm in a producing setting, or I'm encountering men, they speak in a lot of jargon and terms that would be intimidating to women that are new to the industry, and it doesn't need to be communicated that way. So if I see it happening, I will ask them to explain it. We need to be aware not to gatekeep by over complicating things because that used to intimidate the hell out of me. So I try to make opportunities to make the language as accessible as possible and the least intimidating as possible for people who are interested about getting into the industry. Women are a bit more innately aware of making each other feel included and not made to feel stupid. That’s something I’m aware of. Also, I've taken on opportunities to try and teach friends of mine instruments, because if I can just teach one more girl an instrument, that's great. That's one more person in the music industry.

That’s so freaking cool. People talk about it, but then you're actively doing it. And you're so right about the gatekeeping and the jargon.
I think a lot of men are like ‘how do I help make things more inclusive?’ My advice would be toe the perfect line as much as you can between not making someone feel stupid and infantilised, but not using unnecessary jargon. Just make it accessible. I was a guitar teacher for a while, and I obviously had a bunch of different primary school aged kids, and was so interesting half of the boys would love Taylor Swift. They were super excited to learn pop songs, and they didn't have that ingrained misogyny yet, and it was great. But then I had half of them that had such adverse reactions to learning Taylor Swift, literally just because they would tell me, ‘she doesn't write her own songs, she's just a singer.’ And I said she does write her own songs, she's not just a singer, she's a songwriter. We had posters of Taylor Swift in the room, and we had posters of Bruce Springsteen and I was like, ‘how are they different?’ I'd say you can't bring that into this classroom. If you can't give me a reason why you don't like this artist, other than that she's a woman, you probably shouldn't come to class. It starts young, and it's so interesting seeing that in kids.

You have this very fun, very proud, very confident, even in within your vulnerabilities, collection of songs out now. You're about to do some kick ass live performances. What are you looking forward to going forward from this album with your career?
Honestly, I'm looking forward to having a break! I have been so involved in this album for the last couple of years that I just need a breather. Birthing it is going to feel like such a weight off my shoulders, and I just need a moment to breathe and have time to enjoy art and music as a consumer as opposed to someone who's scrutinising it and creating it and going through it with a fine tooth comb. I'm also really excited to play some shows, because I haven't played live shows in years. It's been a tricky situation, because when you not releasing music, you don't necessarily want to oversaturate yourself with shows. You've got to wait till there's a reason to play a show. The album just kept getting pushed back and pushed back, and it ended up being a year later than I intended. A year was a reasonable time to wait to not play a show, but two years was like, I need something to fill up my tank. Recording is not fun for me, it's exhausting, and I've just been running on fumes getting the album done without any incentivisation of connection, and filling up my cup. So I'm really excited to get back into playing shows, because that's where I think artists fill up their cup.

A Garden of Small Disappointments is out now via Wonderlick Recording Company/Sony Music Australia. You can buy and stream here.
Follow Jess Day on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.