Clara Joy – “Breakdown”
Americana Highways presents this premiere of Clara Joy’s song “Breakdown” from her forthcoming album What We Have Now, which is set for release on May 23 via Shimmy-Disc. The album was produced by Clara Joy and Bonner Kramer; and mixed and mastered by Kramer.
“Breakdown” is Clara Joy on vocals, guitars, and samples; and Bonner Kramer on bass, piano, mellotrons, and samples. Americana Highways had a brief chat with Clara Joy about the song. The premiere appears just beneath the interview.
Americana Highways: “Breakdown” touches on feelings of doom and coping with a collapsing world. What inspired this track, and what emotions were you hoping to capture?
Clara Joy: I was in quarantine and i was writing poetry about the buildings I look out at in my kitchen -and my memories of life as a teenager – and the whole song just came together. I was hoping to capture the feeling of a person who knows the world is collapsing.
AH: The song includes spoken passages, which add a unique texture to the music. What led you to incorporate that element?
CJ: I’m very interested in working with poetry in music. Of course music is poetry and poetry is music but I mean combining spoken word with music is something I really like and it gives the song a bigger life as it can be less defined as a traditional song. I like using language in different ways , this was one way. It also kind of functions as a monologue, letting the listener in on a secret of the song, the person is confessing, in the spoken word sections, memories of life “before this period of the world began.”
AH: What We Have Now has been described as a love letter to New York City. Can you talk about how the city influenced these songs?
CJ: I would say it was actually more of an attempt to reveal this big emptiness to New York right now, because I’ve watched the city change so much over the last 5 years , a lot of the songs are written in reaction to the isolation I have felt watching New York become so LA-ified and gentrified.
Amazing footage of Clara Joy as a precocious happy little child opens the video and then Clara brings it down to earth, and it’s truthful and sorrowful and poetic: “We’re just looking for a break from the breakdown.” Amen, sister. You said it. Clara takes it slow, with a heavy dose of realism and spoken word poetry over acoustic guitar. Listen and relate.
You can order the music here: https://shimmy.jyfl.link/breakdown
