Jay Som : Belong
Sometimes I have to remind myself that most people don’t check liner notes, that even to avid indie rock heads, songwriter and producer Melina Duterte may not be the household name I imagine. Especially when you consider that Duterte’s primary solo project, Jay Som, hasn’t released an album in over a half decade, an eternity for those (like me) who find her to be one of the best young songwriters working. Thankfully, this doesn’t tell the whole story. Duterte may have taken a bit of a hiatus from the bedroom-pop project that propelled her to early prominence, but she has been plenty busy working within the margins of some excellent moments in recent indie rock. Not only did she collaborate with similarly undersung songwriter Ellen Kempner of Palehound for a record as Bachelor, but was behind the boards on albums by the likes of Chastity Belt, Whitmer Thomas, Chris Farren, and Boygenius.
All of which make her return to Jay Som, with her new record Belong, such an exciting prospect. These kinds of monikered projects are always interesting to me for the way they do and don’t reflect the creative at their center. Early Jay Som records are pure bedroom pop, the kind released mostly under the radar, self-recorded, oozing a kind of understated, precocious charm. So what happens when you leave the bedroom behind, as Duterte has so clearly done? What does Jay Som mean six years after her last record?
The best Jay Som songs have always been able to walk a precarious middle ground between earnest, crunchy indie rock and the undeniable groove and dreamy bliss of pop. Her early albums, most notably Anak Ko and Everybody Works, are littered with this; the weaving bass lines of “Tenderness,” the rhythmic cool of “One More Time, Please,” the blissed-out haze of “Nighttime Drive.” It’s just this ability that has seemed to make her such an in-demand producer and collaborator. On Belong Duterte is, at times, willing and able to repeat this formula. “What You Need,” with its skittering percussion and raspy vocals, is just the kind of left-of-center indie-pop that is Jay Som’s calling card. Similarly, a song like “Drop A,” methodical and understated, is both sincere and undeniably sexy in a way that is deceptively difficult to pull off.
Where Belong differentiates itself most from Jay Som of old is in a pair of high-profile features, in what can most easily be understood as an extension of the work she has done between Anak Ko and now. Most notable is her collaboration with punk and pop icon Hayley Williams, the biggest swing and biggest miss Belong has to offer, trading nuance for the sort of grand, sweeping emotion that doesn’t gel with Duterte’s best impulses. It’s a line she is better able to tread on “Float” which features vocals from Jimmy Eat World’s Jim Adkins. This is big, chunky, earnest indie rock, drums high in the mix and chorus that soars above it all, but feels far more in line with not only the general Jay Som project but Belong as a record.
Perhaps the most interesting piece of Belong comes as the album hurtles towards its conclusion. The triptych of “Meander/Sprouting Wings,” “A Million Reasons Why” and “Want It All” are distinct in their production, more subdued and ethereal, dispensing traditional chorus-structure for something more languid. Duterte implements some excellent vocal modifications here as well, giving the songs an otherworldly quality and, perhaps, allowing her a bit of distance from both Melina Duterte and Jay Som. If not a specific way forward, it’s a tantalizing glimpse at the many tricks Duterte has at her disposal, a view at how she can continue to grow, both within Jay Som and without.
Label: Polyvinyl
Year: 2025
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Jay Som : Belong
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