FEATURE: Spotlight: Jessica Winter — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Nan Moore

Jessica Winter

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EVEN though I have…

PHOTO CREDIT: Grant James-Thomas

included the music of Jessica Winter in weekly playlists, I have not included her in Spotlight. That needs to be corrected! I have been a fan of hers for a while now. Earlier this year, Jessica Winter released the incredible E.P., Limerence. I am going to come to some recent interview with Jessica Winter. There is one from last year I will start with. Before I get there, here is some important information and background about a tremendous artist:

“Jessica Winter is an artist who doesn’t belong to one genre, scene or group. She is not confined by sound but by song. Much of her childhood was spent looking out of the window from her hospital bed which enabled a very vivid imagination to grow. Jessica Winter takes inspiration from every life experience and explores sounds from the 80s, to trap, to indie and back around to pure pop. She is currently residing in Brixton but originally from Portsmouth.

Having been in bands for the past few years and currently one half of the duo PREGOBLIN, Jessica has a habit of never stopping and consistently curious of writing and producing music for herself and others. Most recently Jessica has been working with Jazmin Bean, polish singer Brodka, LYAM, S-Type, Paul White & Remi Kabaka (Gorrilaz) and previously featured on CID RIM’s track, ‘Is This Love’.

After years of writing with people for joint projects Jessica started to write soley for herself in her garden shed come studio releasing her first solo project in 2018 catching the attention of Death Grips who quickly asked Jessica to support them over Europe.

From there Jessica amassed a huge collection of music for her own solo project, fine tuning her works with label friend Redinho, additional productions from Jonathan Snipes of Clipping, plus additional performance from Alex White (Fat White Family) on saxophone and Jason Cooper of The Cure on drums”.

Prior to getting to some 2023 press, there is a great 2022 chat with Rolling Stone UK. They spoke to Jessica Winter around the release of Limerence. Chatting with the London-via-Portsmouth artist about her Experimental Pop music and influences, it is a good starting place for anyone who wants to know more about one of our finest and most exciting young talents:

“‘Limerence’ describes a state of obsessive infatuation, where the intensity of one’s feelings for a person can become intrusive, all-consuming, and downright agonising. The psychologist Doroty Tennov, who coined the term with her 1979 book Love and Limerence, likens it to an addiction, with limerent people doing unusual and out-of-character things in order to get closer to the object of their affections. In recent years the concept has exploded — you can find Reddit communities full of self-appointed coaches and experts who are devoted to helping limerent people get over their crushes.

The UK musician Jessica Winter explores this theme across her new EP, Limerence. “There are three stages of limerence,” she explains, speaking over a Zoom call from her current home in east London. The first is infatuation, where you start to notice a person and feel they’re special; the second is crystallisation, the obsessive response; and the third is deterioration, where you begin to accept that the idealised object is a human being with flaws and the all-consuming feelings start to abate. “The EP’s five songs go through those stages.”

Winter grew up in Hayling Island, Portsmouth. She was born with hip dysplasia, a condition where the hip joint does not properly form. Going in and out of hospital for hip operations from 11 months old, the only place where Winter could only adequately sit with her brace was at a piano stool, and with little else to do but to play the instrument and follow her imagination, she began to cultivate her musical talents. When she was 16, she left Portsmouth and moved to Brixton, where she began to pursue a music career of her own, though a series of bad management arrangements during that time left her feeling pulled in different directions.

It was only when she formed the band Pregoblin with fellow musician Alex Sebley and concurrently began developing her solo project that she refined the musical identity she has today. It’s pop music, and unashamedly so (musical theatre and Barbara Streisand are key influences), but Winter often deals with far stranger subject matter (it’s not for nothing that she previously toured with Death Grips). “I’m obsessed with pop music,” says Winter. “I want to see how far I can take certain sounds, and how I can encapsulate weirder messages, in a pop song.”

She explored those weirder messages on 2020’s Sad Music EP (and its accompanying ‘Chambermix’ piano version) and its follow-up, 2021’s More Sad Music. But outside of her solo songwriting, Winter has built a career as a producer for other artists, recently working with Phoebe Green and The Big Moon (not to mention producing a rework of Metronomy’s ‘I Lost My Mind’, due for release on the UK band’s special edition of Small World later this month). “I feel like I can make people calm in a studio,” Winter says. “I have such a crazy bunch of characters in my family that I know how to deal with people who are up and down, which most artists are.”

We caught up with Winter to learn more about the EP and her upcoming plans for the year ahead.

How did growing up in Hayling Island influence your relationship to music and creativity?

Jessica Winter: Hayling Island is quite a small, depressed town. It’s where people go to die. It’s a bleak atmosphere, and I think in the bleakest atmospheres, you need some kind of imagination to enjoy life. Being surrounded by the sea, too, is something you can’t escape. When I came to London I really missed the sea — maybe there’s a natural rhythm to it.

Your uncle was a local punk hero, and your mother was a glamour model. What impact has your family had on the music you make today?

Jessica Winter: There’s a big punk scene in Portsmouth and Hayling Island. My uncle is in a punk band, so growing up I saw him play. My mum was a glamour model; my mum’s brother is also an artist — Uncle John, he’s called — they all inspired me visually and lyrically. That’s probably where all my sad songs come from.

What sort of things did you hear around the house growing up?

Jessica Winter: My dad was a New Romantic. My mum loved S-Club, Kylie, and Madonna. But my biggest influence was probably the Sex Pistols and 70s punk bands from my uncle. And musical theatre, obviously! I got really into musical theatre and wanted to be a dancer from when I was born, but I couldn’t dance as I’d had so many hip operations and was always in and out of hospital.

I guess punk-rock and musical theatre are both big expulsions of energy, although theatre is choreographed whereas punk is spontaneous.

Jessica Winter: But they’re both very dramatic.

When you were in and out of hospital, you played the piano a lot. But did you pick up any other instruments during that time?

Jessica Winter: I picked up the guitar. I tried a bit of violin; that was really bad. It was the piano that stole my heart. When I was about 11 months old, I couldn’t do anything, as I had a back brace that put me in the splits, so my mum would fix me onto the piano stool with each leg through the hole so I was really secure to this chair, and that would be my entertainment. My only entertainment, really, because I couldn’t walk or crawl. So I’d tinker away for a few hours, and she’d be able to get some chores done.

You moved to Brixton aged 16. That’s quite a mad thing to do at that age.

Jessica Winter: I knew I wanted to be in London. It wasn’t that brave of me, because I went to move in with my uncle. I went up there to try it, and I never left. Brixton was full of interesting sights and smells and culture. Now everyone is being moved out — it’s horrible. But it was such a culture shock going from Portsmouth to Brixton. You’re so in a bubble in a small town.

Did you have a plan in London?

Jessica Winter: When I first wrote a song at 16, it all suddenly clicked into place. I’d love creative things but didn’t know what I wanted to do — I thought I wanted to do acting or dancing or art. But as soon as I wrote something, I was like, ‘This is the best feeling in the world.’ With dancing you have to learn a piece, and with acting you have to learn someone else’s lines, but with a song, you’re creating from the heart.

I got a driving licence, and I had a keyboard and drove everywhere to play gigs. I played in Bournemouth, Portsmouth, Southampton, and London. I got spotted. I thought, then, that that’s how you did it — you get spotted by a man with money. I signed with this manager who ended up trying to get me into the porn industry. That was for five years, and I never put any music out. The management company itself was good — they gave me money every few months so I could spend it crafting, writing, rehearsing, and gigging, but never actually putting music out — but this specific manager… He tried to get me to do something like that, and I thought, ‘That doesn’t seem right.’ My mum had taught me all about that, as she was in the glamour industry and knew all about it. I’ve had a few incidents with people I’ve worked with in studios, producers, people in famous bands, and there was a moment where I felt enough is enough. Now, I’ve put a team around me which is not like any of that and it feels right and nice and like a family. It’s a shame that it has to take these experiences to realise. I’d love to start something for young girls getting into the music industry to recognise the warning signs, like an HR programme.

How did you go from being inside this nightmarish part of the music industry to where you are today?

Jessica Winter: I just stopped working with everyone. You have to do a reset. You get told so many things — ‘You need to do this,’ ‘You need to be like that,’ ‘What about this?’ — so it was good doing that. I met Alex Sebley from Pregoblin at a Harry Merry concert, this German avant-garde artist. Alex is also from Hayling Island [although we didn’t know each other beforehand]. He told me how terrible his music career had been, and I was really angry, and we said ‘Let’s just write a song.’ And then we had Pregoblin. That gave me some confidence. I started my solo artist project around the same time, so it was nice that we could do it at the same time”.

There have not been that many interviews since the release of Limerence. I hope that there are other chats very soon. I will drop in a few, since they give more context and colour to this incredible musician. I feel that 2024 will be a huge one for Jessica Winter. Even though some people may just be tuning into Jessica Winter, she has been in the industry for over a decade. Someone who has been honing her sound and making her way through. The Forty-Five spoke with Winter earlier in the year. They noticed that her sound has evolved through recent years:

“The last time you spoke to The Forty-Five, back in 2020, you were all about the sad banger. The tracks you’re releasing now have a more empowering spirit – still bangers, less sad. Are we entering a new era of your music?

That’s really encouraging to hear that because maybe that means I’m mentally, getting better? I’ve definitely had a few revelations over the last few years. I’ve been in lots of different headspaces that I’ve not been in before so I would hope that all my songs aren’t going to be sad bangers. In your late teens and early 20s, your mind opens up at different times. I’m in that next stage: I’ve had another fishbowl moment where you take the bowl off and you can actually see things way more clearly than you have before. I can look at myself from a different perspective now. I never understood why I was ending up in quite traumatic relationship patterns and it’s only with a lot of digging deep with therapy, that I’ve had some huge revelations. I think it’s going to help me be a bit more balanced in the world.

You work with a lot of other artists (Jazmin Bean, Phoebe Green, The Big Moon) as a songwriter as well as being an artist in your own right. The Big Moon’s Jules credits you for helping her to get over writer’s block after the birth of her baby. Tell us about the experience of working on ‘Wide Eyes’ with her.

I’d heard through the grapevine that she’d had a baby but she didn’t actually tell me until the day. It was so exciting for me to be able to try and think up a song of what it would feel like to have a baby. It’s such an alien concept and I don’t know if I ever want to do it myself, so I just think it’s so exciting to think about how that would feel when you don’t know what they’ll turn out like or if you’ll like them! So because I was just like ‘Wow’, it happened so easily. We literally wrote that in four hours, because she had to get back and feed the baby!

You’ve been in the music industry for close to a decade. What are some changes you’ve noticed over that time?

I do feel like algorithms have ruined a lot of individuality. We’re in an individualistic age but the algorithm is creating a format and a system that everyone must follow in order to be seen and heard. It’s ruining the mystery and the magic of music because you have to be a constant content provider. Sometimes songs can take months and months but now because we’re in a technological age, you can’t really do that. But it is what it is. We just have to accept it.

What are you most excited about in 2023?

I’m going to [Texan new music festival] South by Southwest for the first time. It will be my first gig in the USA. I can’t wait. And then after that I’ll be going to LA to finish off doing some writing and recording for the album. I think it will be released towards the end of this year. It’s a really exciting time. I’m getting so many amazing opportunities which I’ve not had before. I’m particularly excited to play with Rebecca Black in Heaven on Friday. We haven’t spoken much yet. I was in LA working last year and went to a Dorian Electra show. Rebecca was there and we were all just hanging out. We didn’t really talk or anything but then she came through with the tour support, so I don’t know if I maybe impressed her with a dance move or something”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Daisy Jones for DAZED

Let’s move on to DAZED. Having come back from supporting Rebecca Black on tour – that must have been quite a double header! -, Winter led them through the hands of a slightly wild night in East London. We get an even deeper connection and impression of one of our most remarkable talents:

“Winter had been making her own stuff alongside everything anyway, and in 2020 she released her Sad Music EP, followed by More Sad Music in 2021. Most recently, she put out Limerence, an exuberant, paradoxical slice of pop about love, loss and relationships. In “The Love Song” she sings “When I hear you in the morning, it makes the demons go away” over a chugging guitar riff that warps and bends like a heartstring. Why is she so drawn to writing about love’s melancholy, twisted shadow? “I’ve never been very successful at it,” she says. “I do think [romantic] love is possible, it’s just taking me a bit longer. Maybe because I had such an unhealthy teaching growing up. I’ve had to relearn a lot of what healthy love looks like… I was drawn to wild, unstable characters. But I’m not ruling love out yet – don’t worry.”

Winter blames part of this feeling on the “difficult landscape” we’re in now. “Everyone is a bit lost,” she adds. “We’re ever more separated from intimacy than we think we are – it’s really hard to connect. So I just sing about these things that upset me a lot. I’m desperate for something different. If no one says how they really feel, how is anyone supposed to change?” At this point, she casually drops in the fact that she got married at 22, and that she’s currently in the process of getting divorced. It feels fairly typical of Winter – just another odd addition to what’s already been a comparatively colourful life. “I’ve been in codependent relationships, it’s been up and down, like romance in a film and then it’s terrible, traumatic. I didn’t know who I was, or what I wanted.”

Suddenly it’s 10pm and the night is closing in on us, or at least on the cusp of turning. The air outside is thin and spring-like, warmer than you’d expect for February, and we spend some time walking the streets, snapping photos in a local off-licence and hanging around the bin-studded Dalston alleyways. Winter says that after vomiting the other night she’s learned her lesson about touring: you always party at the end, never at the beginning. She won’t be doing that again. The next day, while performing in Bristol, she’d thought she was going to drop down dead, or at least vomit again. Torturous.

So what next for Jessica Winter? She tells me that she’s supporting someone cool very soon, but it’s not confirmed yet, so I can’t reveal anything in print. Other than that, she’s working on a debut album, hopefully out before the year’s through. She doesn’t know what it’ll sound like, but she has some ideas; each song tends to unfurl itself as an individual creation, untethered to genre or the past.

As I leave to catch the overground, I’m thinking about what Winter told me earlier, about becoming solo, and taking control of her own creativity. “I needed to have something that was mine, that was sacred,” she’d said. “I was like ‘fuck it, I can’t rely on anyone. I can only rely on myself.’ I had to take a moment to be like: who am I, what am I and who do I want to be.” Right now – from the outside at least – it looks as though she’s found out”.

I will finish with an interview from DORK. They highlighted the fact Jessica Winter has inspired a load of other artists. She is someone primed to be a star very soon. I would urge anyone who has not checked out Winter’s music to get involved now:

“Jessica Winter is your favourite artist’s favourite artist. Even Robert Smith has voiced his approval. It’s taken her a long time to get here, time spent trying on a variety of styles in a variety of bands. Now she’s striving for success on her own terms, under her own name, as the musician she’s always wanted to be, and the music she’s making is nothing short of magical.

The magic she possesses is never more apparent than when she performs. Dancing under the stage lights at her live shows, singing and spinning in the rain in the music video for ‘Choreograph’, pulling shapes against a stormy sky in the music video for ‘Clutter’, it’s when she’s breathing fresh life into her songs that Jessica shines the brightest.

“I just live for that, actually,” she enthuses of performing. Forging the unique kind of catharsis that comes from dancing away your demons in the dark, her live shows are an exploration of gleefully freewheeling abandon. “It’s a craft, for sure,” she describes. “I feel like I’m at a point now where I’ve felt the audience change with me.”

Having spent more than half a decade cutting her teeth in bands – from the punk stylings of Rotten Luck when she was 16, through turns as Hall Of Mirrors, Glass, and Pregoblin – before starting out as a solo artist, her live show is something she’s reinvented several times over. “You’re always trying to get people’s attention,” she contemplates. “That’s what you’re doing. You’re going out, and you’re going ‘these are my songs! Listen!’”

PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Gunning

Her innate understanding of who she is as an artist and how to express that to an audience has been hard-won. “I remember looking around just thinking, ‘I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore’,” she recalls of a band she was in back in 2017. “I remember just thinking, ‘do I even like doing this? Do I even like music?’” While she was fronting her own project at the time, writing and performing her own music, she felt disillusioned with where she found herself. More particularly, she felt disillusioned with the industry she found herself in. “It’s like the Wild West,” she describes. It was a moment like this one that prompted the decision to release and perform music under her own name. “What you realise is that you just don’t like the industry,” she clarifies. “Music is healing.”

“I’m obsessed with the juxtaposition of light and dark,” Jessica enthuses of her songwriting. It’s something you can hear in every song she makes. Take recent single ‘Funk This Up’, for example: with its sledgehammer of a beat and glimmering chorus cry of “we can be different,” the track takes the guise of a rallying call to the dancefloor, while the lyrics tell a tale of bad habits and addiction. “That’s what the beauty of pop music is, for me. It’s having the boundary and then trying to push as far as you can go within the boundary.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Patrick Gunning

Playing with elements of light and dark, of directness and poetry, one thing Jessica’s committed to is not holding back. “I’m always trying to find the perfect balance between saying something as directly as possible in the most poetic way,” she describes of her writing process. For her, making music is less about pinning down the direction you’re going in, and more about understanding where you’re creating from. “I think it’s about going back to why you do it in the first place, and not thinking about what you need to do to get somewhere,” she conveys. “It’s trying to find out why you love music and what makes you want to make music and what makes you want to write songs. Once you get focused on that, everything else falls into place.”

And fall into place it has done. ‘Limerence’ has just been released, she’s just wrapped up a UK tour with Rebecca Black, she’s got her first US performances ahead of her at SXSW, and she refuses to slow down any time soon. “This is the beginning now, and I’m not gonna stop putting stuff out for a long time,” Jessica enthuses, “hopefully.” With promises of “a larger body of work” in progress (*cough* debut album *cough*), the alt-pop world is hers for the taking.

“I’m still writing everything at the moment. I haven’t gone into the production stage yet,” she details, before continuing with the magic words, “but I really feel quite confident with a few bangers that I’ve got now.” This, dear reader, is exactly what we’re here for. As for how the new music’s shaping up, it’s early days yet, but her goals are simple ones. “I’m singing from the heart. And hopefully, people will feel that”.

Such a staggering talent who I think is going to go on to some very big places and stages, take some time out and listen to Jessica Winter’s music. What 2024 holds in store, I am not sure. You know that we will get yet more stunning music from your new favourite artist. Coming to the end of a successful 2023, we can see how Winter has attracted the attention of some pretty big stations, magazines and websites. All well deserved. This is an artist that needs to be…