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On her 2018 debut album Lush, seventeen-year-old Lindsey Jordan sang “I’m in full control / I’m not lost / Even when it’s love / Even when it’s not”. Her natural ability to be many things at once resonated with a lot of people. The contradiction of confidence and vulnerability, power and delicacy, had the impact of a wrecking ball when put to tape. It was an impressive and unequivocal career-making moment for Jordan.

On Valentine, her sophomore album out November 5th on Matador, Lindsey solidifies and defines this trajectory in a blaze of glory. In 10 songs, written over 2019-2020 by Jordan alone, we are taken on an adrenalizing odyssey of genuine originality in an era in which “indie” music has been reduced to gentle, homogenous pop composed mostly by ghost writers. Made with careful precision, Valentine shows an artist who has chosen to take her time. The reference points are broad and psychically stirring, while the lyrics build masterfully on the foundation set by Jordan’s first record to deliver a deeper understanding of heartbreak.

On “Ben Franklin”, the second single of the album, Jordan sings “Moved on, but nothing feels true / Sometimes I hate her just for not being you / Post rehab I’ve been feeling so small / I miss your attention, I wish I could call”. It’s here that she mourns a lost love, conceding the true nature of a fleeting romantic tie-up and ultimately, referencing a stay in a recovery facility in Arizona. This 45-day interlude followed issues stemming from a young life colliding with sudden fame and success. Since she was not allowed to bring her instruments or recording equipment, Jordan began tabulating the new album arrangements on paper solely out of memory and imagination. It was after this choice to take radical action that Valentine really took its unique shape.

Jordan took her newfound sense of clarity and calm to Durham, North Carolina, along with the bones of a new album. Here she worked with Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee). For all the album’s vastness and gravity, it was in this small home studio that Jordan and Cook chipped away over the winter of early 2021 at co-producing a dynamic collection of genre-melding new songs, finishing it triumphantly in the spring. They were assisted by longtime bandmates Ray Brown and Alex Bass, as well as engineer Alex Farrar, with a live string section added later at Spacebomb Studios in Richmond.

Leaning more heavily into samples and synthesizers, the album hinges on a handful of remarkably untraditional pop songs. The first few seconds of opener and title track ‘Valentine’ see whispered voice and eerie sci-fi synth erupt into a stadium-sized, endorphin-rush of a chorus that is an overwhelming statement of intent. “Ben Franklin”, “Forever (Sailing)” and “Madonna” take imaginative routes to the highest peaks of catchiness. Jordan has always sung with a depth of intensity and conviction, and the climactic pop moments on Valentine are delivered with such a tenet and a darkness and a beauty that’s noisy and guttural, taking on the singularity that usually comes from a veteran artist.

As captivating as the synth-driven songs are, it’s the more delicate moments like “Light Blue”, “c.et. al.” and “Mia” that distill the albums range and depth. “Baby blue, I’m so behind / Can’t make sense of the faces in and out of my life / Whirling above our daily routines / Both buried in problems, baby, honestly” Jordan sings on “c. et. al.” with a devastating certainty. These more ethereal, dextrously finger-picked folk songs peppered in throughout the album are nuanced in their vocal delivery and confident in their intricate arrangement. They come in like a breath of air, a moment to let the mind wander, but quickly drown the listener in their melodic alchemy and lyrical punch.

The album is rounded out radiantly by guitar-driven rock songs like “Automate”, “Glory” and “Headlock”. Reminiscent of Lush but with a marked tonal shift, Jordan again shows her prowess as a guitar player with chorus-y leads and rhythmic, wall-of-sound riffs. “Headlock” highlights this pivot with high-pitched dissonance and celestially affected lead parts – “Can’t go out I’m tethered to / Another world where we’re together / Are you lost in it too?”, she sings with grit and fatigue, building so poignantly on her sturdy foundation of out-and-out melancholy. On Valentine, we are taken 100 miles deeper into the world Jordan created with Lush, led through passageways and around dark corners, landing somewhere we never dreamed existed.

Today, in the wake of recording Valentine, Jordan is focused on trying to continue healing without slowing down. The album comes in the midst of so much growth, in the fertile soil of a harrowing bottom-out. On the heels of life-altering success, a painful breakup and 6 weeks in treatment, Jordan appears vibrant and sharp. “Mia, don’t cry / I love you forever / But I gotta grow up now / No I can’t keep holding onto you anymore” she sings on the album closer “Mia”. She sings softly but her voice cuts through like a hacksaw. The song is lamenting a lost love, saying a somber goodbye, and it closes the door on a bitter cold season for Jordan. Leaving room for a long and storied path, Valentine is somehow a jolt and a lovebuzz all at once.

The budding grunge four-piece Momma has always relied on songwriters Etta Friedman (21) and Allegra Weingarten’s (22) symbiotic writing style and creative intuition. “I remember the title, Two of Me, originally came from this creative day Etta and I were having together,” Weingarten recalls. “Etta said something like, ‘It’s crazy —being alone with you is like being alone with myself.’ It references that feeling and encapsulates how we write together: a form of communication, where we’ll constantly switch off who is playing lead and who is playing rhythm guitar in the same song.”

Self-taught guitarists who grew up outside of Los Angeles, Friedman and Weingarten met by fate in high school and eventually began writing songs together. The pair’s close friendship provided an open channel to create and experiment from a place of trust and joint experience. Inspired by songwriters like Kim Deal, Liz Phair, and Elliott Smith, the two developed a knack for dynamic song structure and gripping lyrics fused by a dulcet pop sensibility. Much like the two fish that depict Friedman and Weingarten’s birth sign, Pisces, the duo are locked in an infinite loop, constantly feeding off of one another’s musical ideas.

Although the pair now live far from home and each other while finishing college in New York and New Orleans, Friedman and Weingarten have continued to write the same way they always have. For the past two years, during breaks between semesters, the two would assemble DIY west coast tours, open LA dates for bands like Gang of Four and Ian Sweet, and workshop new songs together at home. Decorated with bright interlocking guitars, confident harmonies, and vivid storytelling, the band’s debut album Interloper and recent Apollo 7” capture Friedman and Weingarten hitting a stride at the end of their adolescence, while establishing a sound and vision that the band continues to expand upon. Friedman and Weingarten began building a more focused and detailed world in the material they started to write for their second full length. Over the course of several writing sessions —often months apart —the two wrote one song after another, slowly piecing together the story of an alternate reality they called “The Bug House.”

Two of Me is an ambitious concept album made up of fictional vignettes dealing with morality, youth, and punishment, that Friedman and Weingarten have populated with tragic heroes from their imagination. “The Bug House represents this sort of underground purgatory or hell that people are sent to as punishment,” Weingarten explains. “Two of Me’s songs are about coming to terms with the side of you within yourself that is maybe capable of darker things.” Momma’s second full length unfolds like a small town drama, where characters like video stringers and young lovers experience poetic justice in carnivalesque settings, detailed through Friedman and Weingarten’s illustrative lyrics. “It’s cool to have this world to go to that just belongs to Allegra and I, that we can both work on and revisit while we’re living in separate places,” Friedman notes. “Having a larger concept that’s not rooted in reality made it a lot easier to work on together from a far. The album is rooted in a lot of real feelings and experiences, but we wanted the stories to be set in a fictional world.”

Two of Me was recorded in Los Angeles with producer/engineer Aron Kobayashi Ritch, who bolstered Friedman and Weingarten’s desire to experiment with deeper and more distorted sounds, along with drummer Zach Capitti Fenton and bass player Sebastian Jones, who made up the rhythm section for most of the album’s tracks. Two Of Me’s opener “Bug House” sets the stage for the record, with its expressive guitar tones and brooding mood. The album’s more abrasive moments like “Derby,” which alludes to the anxiety of a Jockey in a fixed horse race, are balanced by melodic ballads like “Double Dare,” which follows a romantic pair pining for a world away from their violent hometown. “Biohazard” features some of the album’s most grotesque diction (“Crushing cartilage. Binding on a binge. Fucker is a freak, baiting this barbarian”) sang in unison to tell the story of a troubled individual struggling with Dissociative Identity Disorder, and the evil/remorse that co-exist within him. Friedman and Weingarten each step into a lonely spotlight on their respective solo performances “Ready Runner” and “Not a Runner,” which feature tender instrumentation and introspective lyrics.

Two of Me’s climactic closer “Habitat” doesn’t offer resolution for the album’s protagonists, but instead uses the moment to take in the complex beauty of life and the landscape, before releasing a final deafening exhale. Despite Friedman and Weingarten’s many similarities, their creative compatibility on Two of Me is fueled by their appreciation for each other’s differences. The songwriters’ personal tastes and intuitions are valued and explored by one another equally, allowing the pair to make a record that feels both familiar and intriguing. Like a yin & yang symbol, Friedman and Weingarten understand that nothing is made up solely of light or darkness, and confronting each part of yourself is the first step to seeing the whole picture