Where, you are almost certainly asking, has JaySom been?
Six years ago, in 2019, MelinaDuterte released Anak Ko, the expansive sophomore album from
the project that had quickly grown far beyond its so-called bedroom pop origins into something
resembling an actual band. Duterte still wrote and produced that Jay Som record, but her friends
now surrounded her, playing parts of their own. But when a shuttered touring industry scrapped
Jay Som’s ambitious 2020 plans, Duterte realized she had long needed a reset from the road after
several years of constant pivots between touring and writing, anyway. She decided to splurge on
herself and her lifelong interest in recording, funneling her government stimulus check into a
piece of dream gear she’d repeatedly seen advertised—a vintage Neve console. She committed
herself to manuals and online tutorials, peppering experienced friends with questions about
becoming more than her own home-recording engineer. Five years later, she’s got a rich résumé
of album credits, guest spots alongside the likes of TroyeSivan and beabadoobee, the
centerpiece of the I Saw the TV Glow soundtrack, and a Grammy for her work on The Record by
boygenius, the band she subsequently joined as a touring member. Yes, Jay Som itself has been
on a bit of a break; Duterte, however, has perhaps been busier than ever.
When Duterte reckoned the time had come to revisit Jay Som, she did not pretend to be
hidebound by the project’s past. Instead, she let the half-decade of life she’d lived and work
she’d done since releasing Anak Ko filter not only into her songs but also her process. The new
friends she’d actually had time to make in Los Angeles now that she was off the
road—especially JoaoGonzalez (of SoftGlas) and MalHauser (a collaborator to Mk.gee and
IlluminatiHotties)—became key partners, as Duterte opened her music to others like never
before. But she also opened up her music to herself and her memories, writing songs that
revisited the sounds of her youth with the benefit of her experiences as a musician, producer, and
performer. She was neither shy about her influences nor limited about where they might lead her.
And so no previous Jay Som album sounds quite like the new Belong, a gripping 11-song set
about self-definition and, well, belonging, that floats between supercharged power-pop hits and
hazy ballads, between electronic curiosities and lighters-up anthems. It is a map of the first 31
years of Duterte’s life, all leading to the present that is Belong.
“When you try something for the first time, you’re always going to hold some type of fear, but I
had to come to terms with the fact that I had to let go of some control,” she explains. “This
record is essentially still me, but a lot of choices were made by friends who helped me, because I
trusted them.”
Duterte grew up with rock radio outside of San Francisco, memorizing the hits of early ’00s
pop-punk and emo as a teen. Though she was 400 miles north along the California coast, The
O.C. soundtracks—ImogenHeap, BlocParty, Death Cab for Cutie, and so on—became major
touchstones, too. You immediately hear the collision of it all in “Float,” the first song Duterte
wrote for Belong. She was experimenting with the vocal synths that still frame the intro when a
melody spilled out, inspiring the riff that soon slashes between those sampled synths and the
buoyant beat. A top-down radio wonder, its massive chorus—“Float, don’t fight/I’m not the
same”—documents the toggle between pressing into the unknown and trying the unexpected or
staying still and doing what you have always done in a push to stay safe and sane. Fittingly, that
is Jimmy Eat World’s JimAdkins, one of those childhood heroes, offering background vocals;
that’s a first for a Jay Som album, as Duterte pulls past and future toward an explosive present.
Duterte grins unabashedly at her adolescent impulses, too, during “Casino Stars,” a lusty bit of
acoustic emo about betting everything on love and trusting that this time you leave a winner.
“I turned 30 while I was making this record. There is a portion of your 20s about being cool and
hip and who can come up with the craziest ideas,” says Duterte, who also began her longest
relationship ever while recording Belong. (The new couple even adopted a dog.) “But as I’ve
gotten older, I am more nostalgic about the music I experienced and want to relive that—by
being inspired by that music.”
Those aren’t, of course, the only references she brandishes. Where “D.H.” bops like a prime
piece of garage-rock smeared with the stain of, say, SonicYouth, “Appointments” is a beautiful
waltz between the sad-eyed wonder of ElliottSmith and the twilit glow of PhoebeBridgers.
Despite those kinships, it is a deeply personal reflection on rejection, acceptance, and imposter
syndrome, or the realization that, even as we allegedly become good at something, we’re still
capable of flaws and fears. “Missed your appointment/Your head on my lap,” she sings softly
over chiming guitars as the second verse begins. “Changed your phone background/Smiling
again.” It’s about finding a way to make it through these hangups, about enduring. In a way, all
of Belong’s songs carry that implicit message—if you can’t embrace the sounds of your heroes to
sort through your own mess, what are you doing, anyway?
Belong, though, isn’t just Duterte’s record. Many of these songs emerged from relationships
rooted in friendship first, collaboration second. Duterte and Gonzalez, for instance, became true
pals only after she stopped touring so hard. When he brought her a sample early in the writing
process, telling her it reminded him of Jay Som, she immediately agreed, the stuttering rhythm
inspiring the melody that became “What You Need.” They built the song together, eventually
moving beyond a beat borrowed from “Young Folks” to something that is as springy yet sad as
the lyrics, a tight-rope walk between adoration and annoyance. Addictive on first listen, it’s a
subtle wonder of production, too, its layers of drums and curdled synths serving as a platform for
the bright guitars that bend through it.
Though Duterte has never been one for special guests on Jay Som’s intimate records, Hayley
Williams had insisted on singing together at some point since the band opened for Paramore in
2018. So Duterte and Steph Marziano—another new friend who has written with BarteesStrange
and CassandraJenkins and who began working and hanging with Duterte after Williams
introduced them—went to Nashville to try a song together. Williams’ soft harmonies on the
arcing “Past Lives” reinforce its forlorn sense of drifting in and out of doldrums, of finding
momentum only to watch it fade. It is a powerhouse of a tune, its downshifted midsection
landing like a fistfight with oneself.
And while Duterte’s production credits have mounted spectacularly since 2020, she knows
enough to know she might not always know best. As she neared the end of Belong, she went to
Philadelphia’s Headroom Studios, where producer KylePulley told her that, simply as a Jay Som
fan, he wanted to hear more of her. This became her first time working with another producer on
Jay Som, yet another sign of her opening the band to others’ ideas. You can detect that insight
and burgeoning conviction from the very first notes she sings on opener “Cards On The Table,” a
brilliant piece of electronic pop where her warped voice cascades over tessellated drum machines
and synths. (By the way, that’s LexiVega, of MiniTrees, offering harmonies; again, she,
Williams, and Adkins are Jay Som’s first-ever guest vocalists, representing Duterte’s push to try
new things with people she trusts.) The track is a pronouncement of renewed intentions for Jay
Som, running from those first notes through the underwater experimentation of “Meander” and
to the wall of noise and field recordings that end the finale, “Want It All.”
Though “Want It All” is the capstone for Belong, it is also the thesis, the moment where Duterte
makes the push and pull she feels in her life and career right now abundantly clear. For the better
part of six years, she mostly checked out of Jay Som, cultivating and tending to the other side of
her artistry. Now that she has returned to the band itself, she wonders where she belongs within
an indie rock ecosystem, or how much of the rest of her life and work she is willing to give up to
live up to that role. This is why she named these songs Belong, after all, as she tries to figure out
where she fits into the wider world as an artist, producer, and person. “Do you really want to go?
Will you hate what you will find?” she sings near the start of that title track, built on a seesaw of
repetition. Duterte doesn’t know the answer yet, how she balances being an acclaimed and
in-demand producer with being a proper bandleader, too. She just knows that Jay Som is back,
invigorated by more ideas, experiences, and inputs than it’s ever enjoyed before.