Jordan Igoe

Jordan Igoe

It’s been 10 months since singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jordan Igoe moved from her lifelong home of Charleston and took up residence in Columbia. While she’s grown to love the city, she acknowledges that there’s been an adjustment period settling into a new place.

“I’m still trying to make new friends and do that, because I was so spoiled being there my whole life in Charleston,” Igoe admits. “I had a strong support group.”

Igoe’s change in scenery came on the heels of her departure from the touring lineup of nationally trending Charleston band SUSTO in January. Looking to refocus on her own musical endeavors, she and her boyfriend and drummer Josh Kean chose to relocate to Kean’s native Columbia.

“It was a necessary move,” she says. “Trying to turn that into a productive and pleasant experience was really challenging initially, but it’s good.”

Oct. 24 will see the release of Igoe’s new EP, Sober and Sorry, her first multi-song record since putting out the full-length album How to Love in early 2014. Though her public output has been quiet for nearly six years, she’s never slowed down writing new material.

“I’ve had a bunch of songs I’ve been sitting on,” she explains. “But, because of life stuff and just lack of financial support and me being D.I.Y. and doing everything myself, it’s been kind of lulled out. But as far as writing goes, I’m still writing a lot.”

Igoe estimates she showed Nashville producer and engineer Paul Ebersold 20 or 30 different songs before they landed on which ones she would start recording with him. After beginning the record in Nashville, the in-progress work was brought to Charleston’s Wolfgang Zimmerman, who helped mix and engineer the finishing touches. 

The resulting five-song EP contains two previously unreleased tracks that date back as far as How to Love alongside three newer compositions. When it comes to which songs end up in the vault and which are ready to be heard, Igoe trusts her creative instincts.

“I don’t feel like I really intentionally hold onto songs,” she ponders. “Sometimes I do, if it doesn’t feel quite right. It’s like if a visual artist was painting something and the colors weren’t quite right or something needed to change.”

The older and newer material on Sober and Sorry is indistinguishable from the listener’s perspective, as Igoe’s raw wit remains sharp throughout, regardless of each song’s born-on date. The opening track, “The Only One That Matters,” is a newer number that flexes her ability to inhabit different narratives, extolling the gripes of a narcissist over a sweet piano pop backdrop that’s entirely disparate to her character’s delusional vitriol. “Sober and Sorry,” one of the earlier written tracks, juxtaposes lyrical content and musical feel again to chilling effect, with Igoe reimagining the story of a young girl being drugged and violated atop a bouncing Southwestern shuffle that initially disguises the song’s darker plot.

“The title track is about a movie that I watched,” she discloses. “It sounds so morbid, but I just thought that was such a strong story and I wanted to write about it even though it’s not personal.”

“Walking Contradiction,” co-written with Zimmerman, eschews contrast for continuity in creating one of the EP’s brightest moments. The stark vocal accompaniment of only rock-steady guitar fingerpicking and a distant four-on-the-floor bass drum deftly accent Igoe’s languid account of a complex and lingering relationship, her subdued vocals furthering the record’s sonic and emotional range.

Igoe doesn’t plan on repeating the multi-year drought between records now that she’s establishing roots in Columbia. She’s begun tracking with producer and engineer Kenny McWilliams in town at Archer Avenue Studio and already has a couple songs in the can from previous sessions with Zimmerman. She hopes to combine the efforts into another full-length release in 2020. That record will likely feature more older, yet unheard, material, she says, recognizing that it’s time for many of the songs she’s stored away to see the light of day.

“I realize that I’m not gonna remember these forever,” she reasons, “and my catalog’s getting so big that it needs to happen.”  


What: Jordan Igoe

Where: The White Mule, 711 Saluda Ave.

When: Friday, Oct. 25, 8 p.m.

With: She Returns From War, Daniel Howle

Price: $10 ($7 advance)

More:whitemulemusic.com

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