Jay Som, Boy Scouts

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Lindsey Byrnes

Jay Som

Jay Som is the Spotify recommendation that results from listening to a concoction of Phoebe Bridgers, Mitski and Japanese Breakfast. Los Angeles-based DIY wunderkind Melina Duterte’s dreamy bedroom pop songs sound like they’re playing on a child’s record player — sweetly melodic and slightly worn and warped. Touring on the August release Anak Ko, she shares the bill with genremates Boy Scouts.

$15 ($13 adv.; ages 18-plus).

press release: The highly anticipated sophomore album, Anak Ko, by Jay Som - a.k.a. Melina Duterte - is out now. Following " Superbike" and "Tenderness" comes the lovely and restless road song "Nighttime Drive." About accepting and becoming stronger from constantly being on the road, the song "basically encapsulated my entire life for the past two years," she explains. The track receives a hilarious, paranormal video which director Han Hale describes as "an homage to the song's namesake; the song is about being a band on the road and the camaraderie involved." Check out the video where Melina--fast asleep in the van en route to a gig--dreams that her and her bandmates go full-on X-Files and have an alien encounter

Anak Ko is the follow-up to Jay Som's breakout debut album Everybody Works, which received countless year-end list accolades in 2017. Pronounced Ah-nuhk Koh, and meaning "my child" in Tagalog, one of the native dialects in the Philippines, this albumwas completed during a week-long solo retreat to Joshua Tree. While much has changed both sonically and personally for Jay Som, now 25 years-old, in the two whirlwind years since her break debut Everybody Works, Duterte still recorded, produced, engineered and mixed this album herself at home. However, for the first time, Duterte invited some friends -including Vagabon's Laetitia Tamko, Chastity Belt's Annie Truscott, Justus Proffit, Boy Scouts' Taylor Vick, as well as bandmates Zachary Elasser, Oliver Pinnell and Dylan Allard-to collaborate on additional vocals, drums, guitars, strings, and pedal steel.

In November of 2017, seeking a new environment, Duterte left her home of the Bay Area for Los Angeles. There, she demoed new songs, while also embracing opportunities to do session work and produce, engineer, and mix for other artists (like Sasami, Chastity Belt). Reckoning with the relative instability of musicianhood, Duterte turned inward, tuning ever deeper into her own emotions and desires as a way of staying centered through huge changes. She found a community; she fell in love. And for an artist whose career began after releasing her earliest collection of demos-2015's hazy but exquisitely crafted Turn Into-in a fit of drunken confidence on Thanksgiving night, she finally quit drinking for good. "I feel like a completely different person," she reflects.

The striking clarity of Jay Som's new music reflects that shift. "In order to change, you've got to make so many mistakes," Duterte says. "What's helped me is forcing myself to be even more peaceful and kind with myself and others. You can get so caught up in attention, and the monetary value of being a musician, that you can forget to be humble. You can learn more from humility than the flashy stuff. I want kindness in my life. Kindness is the most important thing for this job, and empathy."

Anak Ko will be released on August 23rd via Polyvinyl (N.A), Pod/Inertia Music (AUS/NZ/Asia), and Lucky Number (ROW).

"Melina Duterte writes jangly and emotionally-complex guitar-pop as Jay Som...['Superbikes'] swirling guitars and sweet pop melody hit the mark, especially as the song's second half unfurls with layers of instrumentation and Duterte's crooning guitar." - NPR

"Jay Som's voice intertwines with glassy Britpop guitars as she dreams about hopping on a motorcycle and leaving her erstwhile lover in the dust. When the momentum builds to a fierce drone in the song's final third, picture Duerte riding into the night, her hair whipping around her at a crisp 80 miles per hour as a triumphant fuzz-driven guitar solo echoes into a star-lit sky."  - Pitchfork

Free Company – Taylor Vick’s first Boy Scouts release for ANTI- Records, set for an August 30 release - is her most vital and incisive work yet, a stunningly tuneful rumination on heartbreak and loss that is always galloping toward the horizon. Her tightest and most cohesive collection of songs, Vick recorded Free Company in a tiny studio that Steinbrink set up inside a rented shipping container--a unique spot that ended up being perfect for her. "It's a windowless little room, but that made me feel really comfortable," she says. "We did it in the comfort of a weird, atypical recording space."

With a keen ear for melody and a palpable sense of empathy, Vick picks apart all the confusing and contradictory ways that people glance off each other while moving through their lives. Her music is an invitation to shake off the weight that's been dragging you down, to lighten your step and keep moving forward no matter what lies ahead.

“Vick had a knack for wrapping wrenching ballads in tender arrangements that foreground her voice in innovative ways.” - NPR Music

“Her music is defined by its warm tenderness—twangy guitars, cooing vocals, supportive keys—but she doesn’t necessarily want to be your caretaker.” – Paste

“Pure bedroom-folk, luring you into finding yourself lost with yesterday’s thoughts, occupied by today’s choices, and captivated by tomorrow’s chances.” - The 405