FEATURE: Spotlight: Kara Jackson — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Lawrence Agyei

Kara Jackson

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WITH a run of dates taking her…

PHOTO CREDIT: Christian K. Lee for Pitchfork

around the U.S., it is going to be a busy 2023 for the phenomenal Kara Jackson. Some in the U.K. may not have heard of her. She is a mesmeric and magnetic songwriter who has this voice hard to put into words! The proof is in the extraordinary songs you hear on her new studio album, Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? I do hope that she comes to the U.K. at some point, but she would go down a storm here. Before getting to some interviews from the Illinois-raised artist, I reaffirm my belief that women have created the best music this year. In recent weeks, albums from Feist, Jessie Ware, and Kara Jackson have shown that. It is an embarrassment of riches in terms of quality and diversity! If you have not heard of the incredible Jackson, I have found some recent interviews where we get to know her better. Earlier this month, Our Culture Mag spotlighted an artist who is rising and will have a very long and hugely prosperous career:

“Kara Jackson is a 23-year-old singer-songwriter and poet who was born and raised in Oak Park, Illinois, a small community 10 miles west of Chicago. After taking piano lessons at the age of 5, she taught herself how to play guitar before discovering her passion for poetry in high school, becoming the National Youth Poet Laureate in 2019. That same year, Jackson self-released a stripped-back EP called A Song for Every Chamber of the Heart, which will be followed this Friday by her debut full-length, Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?. With help from a group of musicians including NNAMDÏ, Sen Morimoto, and KAINA, Jackson fleshed out the demos she recorded in her childhood bedroom in the early days of the pandemic into a candid, tender, and audacious collection of songs that confront overwhelming emotions around grief and love without smoothing them over. But the loneliness in her music is a rare kind – one that nurtures her internal contradictions, finding ways to be humorous and playful and fierce as a means of sustaining, if not warding off, suffering. In its honest specificity, you’re reminded of the things we share – all worth the light of day.

We caught up with Kara Jackson for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about her earliest musical memories, the ideas behind Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?, usefulness, and more.

Could you share some early musical memories that you hold dear?

I had a very musical upbringing. My parents both really loved music, and my dad especially was always playing something. I feel like some of my favorite memories, and some of the earliest memories I have just being immersed in music, are honestly just being in the house and getting up and cleaning on the weekends. [laughs] My mom would always play soul music, and we had this speaker growing up, so I knew if I heard Stevie Wonder or something it was time to get up and help. I don’t remember a time not listening to music; even when I was a baby, my mom told me that they couldn’t get me to go to sleep without listening to something. They’d play this radio station and play jazz – my dad is a huge is a real jazz connoisseur. I’ve heard a lot of stories growing up about me going to the jazz showcase as a baby and being picked up by jazz legends. And being obsessed with Sonny Rollins, like I wouldn’t let people play anything else.

As a title, Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? is such a disarming and direct question to frame the subject of grief, because to me, it gives weight to both the gift and the implied taking of it, and the senseless yearning that persists through both. Did it ever feel too heavy of a way to introduce or sum up the album?

There wasn’t really an alternative title, because I felt like the question in the title track was just the title to me. I don’t think I knew it going into the project, but once I really had the song done, I couldn’t think of something else to name it. I’ve been joking about how long my album title is, because of course my album title is so long. [laughs] It just feels very characteristic to me. I think it is a heavy question to lead with, but it’s also the question that’s driving the whole album. The more I worked on it, the more I understood how, while the title track is its own ode to my friend Maya, who passed away, I think when you take it out of the context of that song, the question remains relevant to all of the songs.

PHOTO CREDIT: Lawrence Agyei

The more I worked on the project, I understood the question to be really what was driving so much of my work in general: this curiosity around humanity, and really why we act the way that we act, and why, at the end of the day, as individualistic of a culture we have come to know and nurture, there’s still so much of a drive for love. People want love and they want to be around each other. You can think you’re like the best person in the world, but at the end of the day, even the best person sometimes wants another person. Even the most independent, fierce person wants to love someone. I think that’s as much of a dig on other people – a song like ‘dickhead blues’ – as it is on myself, too. As invincible as you can sometimes feel, there is still that question of love, and there is still that vulnerability inherent in knowing that that’s what makes us human. So it is a heavy question, but I’m someone, I guess, who is dealing with a lot of heaviness in general, so I wasn’t so much concerned with the weight of it. It just made sense to me.

Especially on the songs ‘dickhead blues’ and ‘brain’, you grapple with the idea of being worthy and deserving of a certain kind of love. But you also specifically use the word “useful” in a way that’s really potent. What has usefulness, as a personal trait, come to mean for you?

I feel like “useful” is a word that I’m still grappling with, even when I sing this song. I’m not always married to that word anymore the older I get – in terms of why I want to be useful, or trying to unlearn the idea that you have to have a purpose in order to be deserving of care. Especially as a black woman, the idea that I have to be useful to someone else is something that I grapple with a lot of the time. But in ‘dickhead blues’, it really was an affirmation in terms of, also, what I do; for me, reminding myself that I’m useful also comes from reminding myself that the work that I’m doing is meaningful.

I think it’s important that ‘therapy’ and ‘pawnshop’ follow ‘dickhead blues’ in terms of these questions of worth and usefulness. “All that glitters is not gold” is definitely an element of ‘pawnshop’. I’m someone who buys things second-hand a lot, so I was playing off the idea that you can go into a pawnshop and buy something that’s really used, but you can also get something that is second-hand but is just as good as something that’s brand new. I feel like throughout the album, I’m really trying to contend with how, just because someone else may think that you don’t have worth or you may not deserve something, they don’t get the final say in terms of what your value is. Value is very subjective in that way. I think what makes me useful is so different, too, depending on who I’m even talking to. I don’t want to have to do anything to be worthy of love. I feel like sometimes I’m useful to people without doing anything at all. Even offering this album up to people – maybe that’s not enough to save someone’s life literally, but even though it’s small gestures of writing a song, it’s useful enough”.

I am relatively new to Kara Jackson’s work, but I was instantly hooked. Another relatively new discovery, Samara Joy, has the same impact regarding her vocal gifts. It is the sense of passion, characters, beauty, and nuance that means you listen to the songs time and time again and get something new. You also get drawn into these vivid and remarkable worlds! Pitchfork also championed and spent time with Kara Jackson. Discussing her album, Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?, it is amazing to see how far she has come in a relatively short time. Truly, a phenomenal talent:

“In 2019, Jackson self-released her first EP, A Song for Every Chamber of the Heart, a sparse collection primarily written alone and for the guitar. Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? is an ambitious step forward, one that was nourished with the help of some of Jackson’s Chicago musician friends, including eclectic indie faves NNAMDÏ, Sen Morimoto, and KAINA, all of whom helped Jackson get out of her own head and bring her pain and poignancy to life.

Grief permeates the album, and Jackson is unapologetic about hers. Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? is dedicated to her best friend Maya, a fellow musician who passed away from cancer during high school. Being faced with grief is overwhelming and unnerving, potent and confusing. It can also be isolating. We are often denied room to grieve publicly, and supposed loved ones sometimes lack the words to comfort us. It is in that place of incomprehension and despair that Jackson is most adept at articulating her feelings in song. “I remember having to lay the vocal tracks down and thinking, I don’t know if I’m gonna cry in this session or not,” she recalls.

PHOTO CREDIT: Christian K. Lee

Jackson first began writing the album’s title track around the time she graduated from high school, when one of her mentors was dealing with the same cancer as Maya. “I’ve buried old and young/I watched them lower a saint,” she sings over doleful guitar. “We’re only waiting our turn/Call that living?” The song includes devastating memories of Maya that don’t flinch: “At the age of 17/Your knees were weaker than a sheet.” But then, toward the end of the six-minute-plus ode, Jackson dreams of what could have been—about the band they could have started, the harmonies they could have sung—as strings start to swell, holding up her wishful thoughts.

Grief is also a manifestation of love. We grow around grief, change around it, sometimes wither around it, too. But it never goes away, not really. In the end, it confirms that the love was there and real and true. “The name of the album is a real question: Literally, why are we put on this Earth just to love each other? It’s just a really hard thing,” Jackson says. “But I’m so lucky to have the people that I have, and to have loved them as hard as I have.”

Other types of relationships, ones that aren’t as sacred, are also explored on the record. “Like, why did this Earth give us dickheads?” Jackson jokes, referencing the track “dickhead blues.” It’s at once a mantra of self-worth and an airing out of emotional deadbeats, with lines Fiona Apple could appreciate like, “I’m no longer amused by losers/Who find themselves losing me.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Christian K. Lee

After walking through north Oak Park, we settle down at a table in the backyard of Jackson’s childhood home, located on the corner of a street where cars fly by all day. Although she grew up in the Chicagoland area, Jackson’s roots stem firmly in the South. Alabama, Louisiana, and rural Georgia, to be specific. It is where her father is from, and it is Jackson’s heritage. “I’m proud to come from slaves and from sharecroppers,” she says. “I eat grits every day. I literally had grits this morning. You can’t really go wrong with some grits.”

She explores and asserts her history within her work. Talking about critics who have deemed her music unapproachable, she says, “A lot of what people are seeing in my work as inaccessible is my Blackness, and the fact that I make music that’s not typically associated with my people. They really don’t like Black women being in places that they don’t think we should be.”

She’s drawn to the unvarnished truth of country and folk music, genres that are just as historically Black as rock and rap. In this sense, her album is a throughline of musical lineage and legacy, a reclamation. “At the end of the day, you just have to do the things that make you feel very joyful,” Jackson says. “And guitar-ass music just makes me feel very joyful”.

I would urge everyone to go and buy one of this year’s finest albums. It will hit you immediately, but you will also want to return to it. Such a powerful album from an artist who is poetic and passionate, but there are so many layers and levels to her music. Rough Trade describe Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? like this:

“Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? is the debut album by Chicago-based Poet Laureate and singer-songwriter Kara Jackson. Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?, is a sonic invitation to process our grief. The title is a question the author is always answering. How do we give ourselves permission to yearn for the people we miss? How do we find the courage to let go of what begs to be released? How do we have the audacity to love in spite of everything invented to deter us from it?

Kara wrote and recorded the original demos in her childhood bedroom during the early days of the pandemic, drafting lyrics in bed and singing into a mic propped up on her dresser. From there she brought in Nnamdi, Kaina and Sen Morimoto to re-record the demos and help shape the production.

Wielding her voice like a honey-coated blade, Kara Jackson crafts a blend of emotional folk music and poetic alt-country. With the radical honesty of Nina Simone, the intricate lyricism of Fiona Apple and Joanna Newsom, and the straightforward, no-frills delivery of artists like Kimya Dawson, Kara’s writing blurs the line between poetry and song, demanding an attentive ear and a repeat listen”.

Having scooped so many positive reviews, there is no doubt that as many people as possible will want to see Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? live. I think that the American sensation will find a dedicated and growing fanbase here. There is already attention from the U.K. press - although a lot of the promotion and interviews are from the U.S. This is what PASTE noted n their review of a staggering album that leaves you stunned and in awe when you hear it:

“Much ink has been spilled on young women’s music and its “rawness.” Rawness is revered; channeling emotions through music, while obfuscating how curated those revelations are in the songwriting, is an artistic achievement. But, the discursive application of “rawness” alludes to the quality being gendered and racialized, unsubtly suggesting that off-the-cuff emotions in the music industry are reserved for, primarily, young white women. Rawness is fraught and often minimizes the agency of singer/songwriters; too often, it forecloses the possibility of praise for emotional vulnerability from women of color, primarily Black women. It’s a reductive, exclusive critical urge.

What the Chicago-based interdisciplinary writer and musician Kara Jackson accomplishes on her debut LP Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love is not “raw,” at least not in the sense that the writing is unrefined or off-the-cuff. Instead, that distinction comes through how the listener is made to feel listening to Jackson’s cosmic country jams. Lines like “Some people take lives to be recognized” are delivered with nonchalance, and the way she belts “don’t you bother me” over swirling harp notes elicits chills. Jackson is communicating her message with precise orchestration for optimal impact. As a listener, you may feel exposed, maybe even singled out.

Jackson starts Why Does The Earth Give Us People to Love with “recognized,” a lo-fi exercise contemplating what people do for validation and why. As she and her piano arpeggiate, she raises the stakes. It contrasts with the lush “no fun/party,” where her theatrical voice balances with a racing guitar and reclining strings. She reckons with men who won’t rise to the occasion and take that out on her and, as much as she laments the loss of companionship, she remembers that the other person is just as liable to miss her, too.

Across the album, Jackson’s expert guitar work and lyricism reveals an extensive archive of her relationships with peers, partners and more who she’s entrusted with her love. Many of those people are men who’ve mishandled that love. “Dickhead Blues” speaks on it with the necessary crassness required to describe exactly what these men, and their antics, resemble. They’re pompous, self-absorbed, ignorant. With every passing note, she grows more courageous, promising to swear off foolish boys. In turn, the track’s classic blues stylings are unforgettable. “Therapy” is the briefest foray into the all-too-familiar archetype of men who trauma dump on their new partners, especially at the expense of the relationship’s health without opening their own ears. After such mistreatment, Jackson is resolute in her self-worth, concluding “…I’m the gold and you’re just a fool” over bright shakers and slide guitar.

Perhaps the most nakedly devastating passage appears on the title track, where Jackson addresses the cruelty of death. She’s open about the tragedies she’s experienced: the death of her best friend and supportive relatives, the racist necropolitics that policymakers let run wild when they grew weary of the pandemic. She asks: “Why does the earth give us people to love and give them a sickness that kills / Why does the earth make us pay for the dirt? Are you saying the dead pay bills?” Few songs call out the terror inflicted on families and communities where death has a price; how finances augmenting trauma can be explored over an entire album.

“Lily,” one of the album’s briefer moments, has its own power that shines between the record’s broadest tracks. It’s a gentle march —celebrating eternal friendship —and stands out from Jackson’s explorations of betrayal and tragedy. Her encounters with grief are multiple and multifaceted, threatening her concept of herself, making it harder and harder and harder to love again. While the world presents us with new people to love just as quickly as it takes them away, Jackson concludes that loving is still a noble pursuit. With “Lily,” she reminds us why the earth gives us those affections and relationships, despite all the tribulations they may bring.

Jackson’s first release, A Song for Every Chamber of the Heart, revealed her skillful songwriting and nuanced viewpoint over four tracks, each lasting fewer than three minutes. It’s an outstanding sampler. On Why Does the Earth Give Us People To Love, she intersperses brief exercises like “therapy” and “liquor” between sprawling mini-symphonies, like the country drama “rat” and the restrained, delicate “free.” It’s a distinct privilege to hear Jackson capture an idea and explore its lyrical possibilities over songs that command a presence. The breadth adds extra opportunity for her Chicago collaborators — legends like Kaina Castillo, Sen Morimoto and Macie Stewart, to name a few — to give Jackson’s songs a storybook quality. When she is solo, she is a force. With her friends’ help, the result is divine”.

Go and check out the wonderful Kara Jackson. Someone who we are going to hear a lot more about, Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? has already worked its way to become one of my favourite albums of the year! Such a rich and unique work from someone quite new to my ears. I am excited to see what comes next. If you are based in the U.S. and can go and see Kara Jackson, then this is an experience that you will really not…