Jess Cornelius - Distance (Baby Blue)

Jess Cornelius

£18.70

Format: LP
Catalogue No.: CCHLP2
Barcode: 5053760070467
Release Date: 14th May 2021
Genre: Indie/Alternative

TRACKLISTING:
SIDE A
1 Kitchen Floor (3:52)
2 No Difference (3:49)
3 Body Memory (4:14)
4 Easy For No One (3:44)
5 Here Goes Nothing (4:12)
SIDE B
6 Born Again (4:24)
7 Palm Trees (3:42)
8 Banging My Head (3:06)
9 Street Haunting (3:38)
10 Love and Low Self Esteem (4:22)

LP FORMAT DETAILS: (Baby Blue LP)

Jess Cornelius first began writing the songs that would comprise Distance after moving from Melbourne, Australia to Los Angeles. At the time, she was excited to start fresh after several years as the primary songwriter in the band Teeth and Tonuge. But the distance she addresses over the album is hardly a geographical one. Instrad, Distance finds a deft songwriter analyzing the space between society’s expectations for her and her own dreams, the illusion of the love and reality of disappointment, and a past she is ready to let go of and a future she could have hardly imagined.

Distance documents a songwriter in the pursuit of living life on her own terms. As Cornelius puts it, “A lot of the rEcord was about me deciding to continue this nomadic lifestyle of being a musician. People would ask ne if I was going to have a family and lot of the songs are about me being ok with no pursuing that path. It was about coming to terms with the choice I had made.. And then two years later, I’m knocked up and married! I couldn’t have imagined that”

Cornelius gave a first taste of Distance with “No Difference,” released last year, which was featured by NPR’s All Songs Considered as well as Paste Magazine, Brooklyn Vegan, Hype Machine and Uproxx, who called it “a striking stateside introduction.”

On new single “Kitchen Floor,” Cornelius maps the space between the bedroom and the front door over a Roy Orbison tinged rave-up, lamenting the coming pain: “This is gonna be a hard one.” Its accompanying video, the first in a series in which she plays a familiar female character trope, was filmed by Cornelius and her partner on an iPhone at 5am in Los Angeles so they wouldn’t encounter any people. “I have a weird fascination with Hollywood Blvd — it’s such a grotesque place most of the time,” says Cornelius. “But I knew we’d have the chance to experience it deserted and empty, and it was like a different place. I’d been watching a lot of ‘last human on earth’ apocalypse-type films. Mostly, the concept behind the clip was to have this character just owning it. There are so many things pregnant women are not ‘supposed' be doing, like having casual sex with strangers. There’s a loneliness, too, that I wanted to get across in the clip, but ultimately she’s in a state of friendliness with herself and the world.”

The journey over Distance is a celebration of this newness. New beginnings and new perspectives on endings. From the chaos of a vagabond lifestyle to expecting a child just weeks before the albums’ release and researching the most sustainable ways to tour in the coming years. This is the distance Cornelius covers over the course of the albums’ ten songs. The result is an album where listeners get to hear a songwriter in the midst of a true transformation.

Jess Cornelius has performed at Laneway Festival, Meredith Music Festival, Falls Festival, Boogie, SXSW, CMJ, Perth International Arts Festival and Darwin Festival, toured with Courtney Barnett and Vance Joy and opened for J Mascis, Sons & Daughters, EMA, Juana Molina, The Dodos, The Mountain Goats, the Drones and Laura Marling

OTHER ACTIVITY: https://www.facebook.com/jesscorneliusmusic