Growing up in small-town Pennsylvania, Jen Starsinic was raised on a diet of folk and old-time roots, going as far as to play fiddle in bluegrass bands. While still ostensibly a folk songwriter, her forthcoming EP, Bad Actor, sees her transcend her folk roots, branching out toward dream pop and indie rock, and blossom into something altogether richer.
The change in style coincided with a period of self-examination, with Starsinic not only broadening her horizons both musically and personally but visiting therapy to help make sense of her life. “This record is really about learning to face ingrained, self-destructive habits with compassion, understanding and genuine curiosity about where they came from, accompanied by accountability,” Starsinic says. “It’s about learning to admit that you’re not being who you really are, and allowing yourself to change.”
The majority of the EP was written after a move to Nashville, and something about the new space facilitated an updated palette of sounds. The folk sensibilities are still apparent, but now synthesizers and electric guitars add a new depth, washes of reverb and distortion not erasing the textures but accentuating them. The change from traditional folk to more a more guitar-based sound is an evolution rather than a revolution, representing not so much as a pivot away from Starsinic’s past self but rather a deeper engagement with it.
The latest single from the EP, ‘Cold’, serves as the perfect example. Described by Starsinic as “a song about reaching some kind of bottom, losing track of hope, being kind of lost in uncharted territories,” the track contrasts the immediate loneliness of deep fear and sadness with its contradictory universality—the very notion of alone-ness being the thread that binds us to the fundamental human experience.
However, far from holding this realisation aloft as some trite answer to all suffering, ‘Cold’ opts for a far more ambiguous tone. There’s a sense of motion and rhythm in the drums, yes, but the promised crescendo never quite arrives. If there is a solution to such feelings, Starsinic appears to be saying, it will arrive not in some moment of great epiphany, but rather in the slow, incremental progress of moving forward.
Bad Actor will be released on the 7th February and it is available from the Jen Starsinic Bandcamp page.
