“I used to do very stripped back demos at home, and then I met Mikal Cronin,” jokes New Zealand-raised, Los Angeles-based artist Jess Cornelius about working with the famed LA musician perhaps best-known for his collaborations with Ty Segall. Cronin served as producer and multi-instrumentalist for Cornelius’ sophomore solo effort, CARE/TAKING, which dropped June 14th via her new home, Tender Loving Empire (also home to our good buddy Nisa). However, during a recent phone chat, Jess admits to me that she doesn’t really consider the album to be LP #2: “I never think of this as being my second record, because my band even started out kind of as just me, anyway.” Cornelius is referring to Australian (She relocated across The Tasman Sea as a young adult.) band Teeth & Tongue, who released four full-lengths between 2008 and 2016, before she moved to LA in 2017.
CARE/TAKING is the follow-up to 2020’s Distance, which Jess released independently. Joining Cornelius and Cronin for the album was Philadelphia drummer Steven Urgo, known for his time in The Interest Group, Chris Forsyth & the Solar Motel Band, and The War On Drugs. Jess tells me that Cronin and Urgo provided a foundation for the music of CARE/TAKING that was a little different from how she approached Distance: “For Distance we used a different band for every like three songs, so there were all these different players who were all these amazing LA musicians. But for this one, it was just us three for the entire record.”
“We really demoed it very thoroughly… We remade most of the record [from my initial demos],” Cornelius explains of Cronin’s process as producer. Following three singles, Cornelius released “lead track” “Tui is a Bird,” a track named for her daughter, with whom she was visibly pregnant in numerous of the Distance music videos (who makes a cameo in the recent “Laps in the Drugstore” video) and who can be heard during our chat asking for a banana, but settling for crackers while her mother and I conduct, “the meeting.” Jess tells me this is one of many tracks that went through this thorough process of demoing: “It went through so many iterations. I have to find it, but I have a recorded version of that song in a studio with a lot of finger-pick guitar and no drums. It was a very different song at that point, before I met Mikal.” And while the trio are thrilled with the album recording, Jess admits to liking this earlier version as well, for which she used a drum machine, a tool that she’s actually quite fond of: “I’ve always loved drum machines. Like, you press ‘reggae’ and it’s nothing like reggae [laughs], but it can be fun!”
“It was a different process, but not drastically. Distance is a very classic record, whereas this was a little more experimental, with horns and sax and synths,” Cornelius tells me of the recording of the LP, which was done at Cronin’s home studio, in addition to Ty Segall’s Harmonizer Studios. Although she admits that the writing process hasn’t really changed since her days fronting Teeth & Tongue: “I feel like my process has always kind of been the same. I just write songs as they come. I don’t sit down to try to write a record.”
The lyrical content of CARE/TAKING revolves largely around the transitions Cornelius experienced making a new home and stable life for herself in LA, including motherhood and the conclusion of the relationship with Tui’s father, in addition to the turmoil of the current state of the world. Jess apparently had a slight concern that the songs’ narratives would be a bit too personal to resonate with many listeners: “There was one review that said that it was too specific, and the lyrical content might alienate some people.” However, she tells me that the responses have by and large been great: “One of my favorites was from a journalist on Radio New Zealand who said that he doesn’t have a kid, but said he found the subject matter really relatable and interesting… I Still feel it to be universal, even if I’ve narrowed it down to some specific elements.”
Jess Cornelius recently recorded a yet-to-be-released KEXP studio session with Cheryl Waters, which she says was a dream-come-true, although admits that she was happy to have a band who had some experience with Seattle’s famous non-commercial radio station: “Everyone else in my band had done KEXP tons of times, Steven Urgo with The War on Drugs, Mikal with Ty Segall, and Paul Sukeena with Angel Olsen, but this was my first time!” She also confesses that sometimes it’s the little things that help make experiences like that so memorable: “They treat you great and they have the best espresso maker in the green room! That stuff matters [laughs]. You feel so fancy!”
Last month Jess Cornelius took her CARE/TAKING trio (in addition to Paul Sukeena, on bass) on the road for some West Coast dates, and later this week they’ll kick off an East Coast run, which includes a stop at MilkBoy on Saturday, August 10th. It will be her first proper Philadelphia gig, and she’s quite excited about it: “It’ll be great… When we get Paul, Mikal gets to play saxophone!” “We’ll mostly be playing CARE/TAKING, and then add in a few songs off Distance, like crowd favorites,” she tells me of the performances. And when I ask how she feels about playing sweaty, intimate, standing rooms like MilkBoy, she admits that’s actually where she’s most comfortable: “That’s kind of what I grew up doing, like The Tote in Melbourne, this punk venue… With the band, we get pretty loud. It’s not like a quiet singer/songwriter show [laughs].”
*Get your tickets here.
