Being an indie queen sure ain’t easy. Not that it ever was, but for the recent generation in particular, being picked apart, pinned down stylistically, constantly bounced between poles of ‘overrated!’ and ‘underrated!’, forced into corners, and so on, seems more than par for the course. It’s grown to practically an unavoidable occupational hazard.
Take a few peers who broke through more or less – or close enough to it – the same time as our heroine of the week, Jay Som: for now, let’s go with Mitski, Lucy Dacus, and Michelle Zauner (aka Japanese Breakfast). More than any of them, Mitski has been fitted with a frustratingly dismissive ‘sad girl’ plaque, but it’s a burden they all seem forced to carry. Following big swings and prickly rejoinders, most settle in a comfort zone into which they’re constantly beckoned, whether pleasant (For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)) or a hollowed-out surrender (Forever is a Feeling).
Amidst all this push, pull, resistance, and acceptance, Jay Som chose perhaps the boldest path: to count herself out completely. Seeming to recoil from standard-bearing and preconceived notions of what she ‘should’ do or sound like, especially following the resounding success of the kind-hearted generations commentary of Everybody Works, she jogged back inward with the insular Anak Ko. Then, in 2019, she saw herself out. Rather than be boxed in or play a game she never asked to be a part of, she bided her time.
In 2025, then, she’s decided to make her grand return. Fittingly – and thankfully – she still resists playing into anyone’s hands, offering a statement that’s at once both delightfully palatable and explores new corners of her sound. What’s more, they’re clearly the corners that interest and excite her.
If you’d told me a few years ago that Jay Som’s eventual return to the proverbial stage would boast features from Hayley Willaims and Jimmy Eat World’s Jim Adkins and, more broadly, serve as a singed, wounded, and deeply sincere love letter to the alternative and emo of the 90’s and early 2000’s, well, I’m not really sure I’d have believed you.
Then again, it bears repeating: Jay Som has always done her own thing. While the warm blankets of her prior records would have been all too tempting – and endearing – to revisit for an easy win, Belong instead bristles to the touch. Where once Melina Mae Duterte soared, here she tends to sear. Vocals that once wrapped you up in a swath of affirming cloth now hit with a wallop, exuding desperation and uncertainty amidst wails and weary sing-song asides. She deftly dodges being pinned down, once more, despite the unending sense of burden looming over Belong; she nimbly flits between stylistic leanings, rather than diving too completely into ‘do it louder’.
Indeed, following Belong‘s mid-album salvo of burned nerve ends that is “Past Lives” and “D.H.” (boasting some of her most powerful vocal performances), Duterte swerves. “Casino Stars” opens with hushed yet insistent singing and strumming, gradually adding twinkling keys, all before swinging into a pair of short songs – nearly interludes – with the decaying tape sound of “Meander/Sprouting Wings” and the beauty of “A Million Reasons Why” (it’s difficult to put into words, but the song feels like pure nostalgia itself).
All this leads into the grand finale, once more a rejection of the expected. “Want It All” speaks to the innately human desire to flee something good, all in wondering, one simple thing: what if there’s something better? What if there’s more? It starts out quietly enough, but ever so gradually, the guitars begin to chug. It resists ever truly going all out, and therein lies the rub. What if there isn’t more? All this time, you – we – have been waiting to see just what Jay Som would do. Rather rightfully, she leaves us standing there, the night air gradually growing all the colder, wondering just what it is you were expecting, both all and none the wiser for it. The final sounds of Belong are the sounds of a party, heard from just outside, what you missed out on from expecting so much, rather than simply letting things happen as they may.
