Elinor Kry.
James Ivy says the first drafts of his debut album The Seams sucked.
The Jersey-born singer-songwriter had spent a month in 2023 holed up at a studio in New York City, recording 15 tracks for his debut album. None of them made the final cut. “I just cooked up a bunch of bullshit,” he says on a summer afternoon on the patio at The FADER offices. “I didn't have the tools that I needed to make this album. I needed a lot more time to shed the skin of my past self.”
Ivy’s solo singles from the early 2020’s were heartfelt and sweetly pop, culminating in his 2023 EP Everything Perfect. He had long floated in SoundCloud circles as a rising producer and pop-leaning crooner within the jack dance scene, a precursor of sorts to the hyperpop scene of the late 2010s. But despite the internet buzz and momentum, perfecting his debut album proved complicated. “I just have like choice paralysis, like for everything,” Ivy says. “I want to do everything. I want to satisfy every itch.” He also admits that a single-minded focus on the vague task of making a debut album wasn’t helpful, especially when moving back home. “I wasn't living life at all.”
The Seams (released on FADER Label) may come as a surprise to longtime listeners; he grew up in the annals of Soundcloud as primarily an electronic producer trading beat ideas and references with a digital crew of creatives from around the world. Many of them linked up IRL for the first time at SXSW in Austin, Texas, with Ivy’s father in tow as a chaperone the first year, his mom coming along the next. “My parents were very strict, so they were already like, ‘Oh my god, he's getting into music and he's meeting all these people through Skype,’” he remembers, laughing.
He cites his musical origin point as, in many ways, PC Music — which may sound like a stretch listening to his current rock cinematics, but it makes sense when considering the heartfelt earnestness of SOPHIE and A.G. Cook’s music, and the fact that A.G. Cook is — always has been, really — a rock guitarist. Ivy snuck into PC Music’s 2015 SXSW showcase with his ragtag crew. “There’s a video that's burnt into my brain of us in the mosh pit when SOPHIE was playing. I was like, ‘I'm going to be a producer.’"
Elinor Kry.
He’s since taken that inkling and ran with it. After graduating high school, he went to New York University’s pop star training school Clive Davis for college before dropping out to pursue a career in music in earnest. And he’s wracked up significant co-signs and collaborators, like Porter Robinson who he opened for on his Nurture Tour and his dear friend, the artist Roy Blair, who he has a side project with, American Road In New Jersey. (Their touching self-titled album from January is among my dark horse favorites of the year).
I want to do everything. I want to satisfy every itch.
The tides began turning when he visited a friend and former classmate, Ally Sianga (who plays in Been Stellar), in London. “It was like we're back at the dorm rooms … let's just fuck around, except we're at Studio 13," he says, namechecking Damon Albarn’s famed musical palace in London. There he wrote album pillars “Bent” and “Tear” and the big feelings world of The Seams began to build. He also credits making American Road in New Jersey with Blair as helping him “unlock” what his own record would be. That tone poem of a record — textured, somber, rife with drones and xylophone — helped Ivy feel confident in committing to his own atmospheric impulses.
Elinor Kry.
My favorite song off The Seams is probably “Putting Together A Device” — one of the slower, more roving tracks on the record. There’s something yummily meta about this song which nods to the toils of assemblage, made amidst these spinning wheels years of making the album. “You are who you were in your late teens / You’re far from where you wanna be / When you’re ripped at the seams,” he mutters softly, the album title sinking to the ground.
Another standout, lead single “Bent” begins with a down-the-middle croon by Ivy over classic Oasis-esque guitar strums: “I’m bent out of shape / And I don't recognize myself.” When the drums come in — glitched, hectic, sputtering — towards the song’s last gasp, Ivy yelps, “When you hold me like you would / And you take me like you should.” There’s an obstinance and a struggle in the line, but also a feeling of relief, like he’s letting out one final scream of frustration to exorcize the demons of creative paralysis.
There’s something small and specific about this story — an artist, James Ivy, trying to complete a debut album. But for anyone kicking the dust of your mid-20s, there’s a universalism in these cinemascope songs about staring at your own indecision and limits. It’s ironic, in a way, that Ivy reached beyond his notions about his artistic boundaries by exploring them.
“Maybe that was just the first step in the rest of my life,” he says of white knuckling his first full album. “Just finish the first one.”
Elinor Kry.
