Jen Eve x Dreams of the Lights

Jen, the suite of songs on your album are generally introspective. Is that style of writing liberating or exposing?

I’m not sure I could really claim either - I’ve been sharing my thoughts through music for about 17 years now, it just feels natural to let them pour out via this medium. So many musicians have opened up to me over the years, holding my hand through hard times and leading me back to the good, filling me with hope when I’ve needed a reminder… it seems only right to pay it forward. And it’s through sharing our truths, inner thoughts, and vulnerabilities that we find connection; in these moments we know we’re not alone. And I think that’s pretty special.

The idea of leaving a legacy is also never far from my mind and creating art is something I feel compelled to do in order to feel like I’m doing enough, that I’m leaving my mark on the world. So I guess it just feels like a necessity more than anything else.

My personal favourite is Marlborough Hill. Can you expand on the story at all? 

Thank you! I actually finished writing and then recorded that song on the day before my album was due to be sent off for mastering. It had been sitting in my mind for a while, evidently waiting for a looming deadline to get it finished.

I think we can all relate to that feeling when you’re young, before getting jaded by the world, where you really think you can change it. That you might be the person to make a difference to the Status Quo, and everything feels so big and so real… Marlborough Hill is about looking back on the days you thought you could take on anything, with your co-conspirators by your side. When you protested and stood for causes and claimed you’d never be like the rest of them before you realise you do actually need to make a living and the corporate world calls… I like to think we can all make our way back to Marlborough Hill, but it might never quite be the same.

Like some of the greats (Morrissey, Bush, Cohen); is it exciting for an artist to know that they’ve managed to intrigue an outsider? 

I imagine so – I certainly cherish every listen, every person who lets my music walk them home, everyone who finds a lyric that speaks to them. There’s another reality, a sliding doors moment, where I didn’t finish this album and get it into people’s ears, and it’s not a nice thought. It was an intense time getting it done - I had a deadline to get it to my Mastering Engineer, while also having radiotherapy treatment for cancer every day. So it was mornings at the hospital, afternoons working on the album, sleep and repeat, which went on for about a month before I sent the album off. But sharing my art with people who get it is the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. There’s no greater feeling than finding out something you’ve created has found a home in someone else.

Describe your general approach to writing. Does it start with the music/lyrics? 

It usually comes from a bit of a melody. My phone is filled with voice memos of snippets of melodies, or various instrumental parts sung into it, usually to the words of ‘da da daaaaa’. I once had to have a friend staying with me while I was in hospital having chemo and after we’d turned the lights off to go to sleep, I got up and went to the bathroom. When I came back, she asked if I was ok, the tone of her voice laced with worry, and I replied ‘oh, yes, I just had an idea for a song I had to get down…’ If the words ever come first, it just ends up as a poem rather than a song. So it’s always the music first for me. The lyrics seem to suggest themselves after the idea is already there.

I personally dread the term “influence” in interviews because It’s only ever used in the context of sound-alike-ness when inspiration can come from anywhere. Do your songs start as thoughts; like a means of diarising something? 

Yeah, we humans really like to group things together to understand them, don’t we? But you’re right, inspiration is so much more than just what music you listen to, or remind people of. Picasso said ‘Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working’ and I think when you work with creating things and generating ideas, that inspiration can come from anywhere, at any time. But you have to have your mind tuned in to pick up on it and see where it takes you. I don’t see my songs as a means of diarising my life (I have a journal for that), though of course the songs will often hold my thoughts and views within them.

I’ll often write about a situation that isn’t even mine – I went through a week of writing songs about break ups and couldn’t work out why, until my friend told me she was getting a divorce, then it all made sense. One of them made it onto the album – Lemonade. I don’t tend to believe in things like that, fate or whatever it is, but there is a lot of unexplainable universe synchronicity in my life, where things seem to connect…

There are a few duets on this album. Are they the result of collaboration or did you feel like those songs needed a secondary narrator?

They were all songs I wrote, then threw at my wonderful friend Sam, who does well to keep up with my musical whims. But they did come about in different ways - 

JAIBTR was always going to be a duet. I love a male/female vocal combination, a lot of my favourite bands (Stars, The New Pornographers) employ it well and I wanted a song on the album to do it too; two separate parts, two characters who interact with each other through the story, who then come together at the end before breaking apart. I made Sam record that song while we were quite hungover when he was meant to be ‘looking after me’ after a surgery. It also features my mum and dad on bass and guitar, respectively, which involved many late nights/early mornings sending tracks across the oceans between Sydney and London to get it right, but it was definitely worth it.

‘Darling, it’s Hard’ almost existed without being a duet, but I had a brainwave a week before the album was due that it needed Sam’s voice in it. So I sent him the rough demo I’d recorded, with the instructions to ‘just learn the whole thing’, and two days later we recorded it. I couldn’t imagine that song now without him on it. It feels like it was written for him to sing – but I just couldn’t give him the whole thing because I’m selfish and wanted some too.

Jen Eve’s album Dreams of the Lights is available to stream from 12 November, 2022
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