Today Jay Som – a.k.a. Melina Duterte – announces her sophomore album, Anak Ko, pronounced Ah-nuh Koh, and meaning “my child” in Filipino. The follow-up to her breakout debut album Everybody Works, which received countless year-end list accolades in 2017, this album was completed during a week-long solo retreat to Joshua Tree. While much has changed both sonically and personally for Jay Som in the two whirlwind years since her debut, Duterte still recorded, produced, engineered and mixed this album herself at home, though this time in her newly adoptive city of Los Angeles. Additionally, for the first time, Duterte invited some friends —including Vagabon’s Laetitia Tamko, Chastity Belt’s Annie Truscott, Justus Proffit, Boy Scouts’ Taylor Vick, as well as bandmates Zachary Elasser, Oliver Pinnell and Dylan Allard—to collaborate on additional vocals, drums, guitars, strings, and pedal steel. Anak Ko will be released on August 23rd via Pod / Inertia Music.
The album’s explosive lead single ‘Superbike‘ is out now, alongside a video that features behind-the-scenes footage of the writing and recording process of Anak Ko. For one of her favourite songs on the record, Duterte aimed for the genius combination of “Cocteau Twins and Alanis Morissette”—“letting loose over swirling shoegaze,“ she explains. “I came up with the vocal melody while chopping onions during a rare snowstorm in Joshua Tree, definitely one of my favourite memories from making the album.”
To celebrate the announcement of Anak Ko, Jay Som also reveals a massive international Fall tour in addition to her previously announced Pitchfork Festival performance this Summer.
