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Jack River (aka Holly Rankin) grew up in the NSW coastal town of Foster. She was drawn to music from a young age, playing piano, trombone and violin as a child before discovering guitar and beginning to write songs as a teenager. Her first EP, Highway Songs No. 2, mixes psychedelic vibes with lyrics that she says evoke a sense of emotional resilience. GRAZIA caught up with her to discuss her development as an artist and her upcoming tour. And if you like what you read (and hear), hit her up on Twitter for your very own Holly-generated Pirate name, just like hers: Jack River.
GRAZIA: On a scale of one to ten, how excited are you? So ten’s the most excited – for your Highway Songs no. 1 tour.
Holly: “Oh, probably an eleven, or a ten, whatever I’m allowed! I’m so excited to do my own shows and play for people who actually want to see the show. I love playing live and I haven’t been able to do it for so long, so it’s really cool.”
How are you preparing for the shows?
“Well, we do a fair bit of rehearsal, and then I just like to get in a good mind space. I’m swimming in the ocean every day and thinking about the songs a little more than usual, making rad things for the stage, and getting our nerves together. Lots of cool little things – like a big craft project.”
Will we have any surprises during the shows? Any hints of what to expect?
“There’ll be lots of sparkly things. Sparkly dresses – and definitely new songs, which is exciting.”
Your EP is “five songs written and produced at different times in your life”. How have you changed as a young woman during that time, from the oldest creation to the most recent?
“I think a little more badass. It’s really cool, because the songs from when I was seventeen, I wrote it, so it’s been five years, or six years. The process of what you can say in a song and how you can change the story into how you want it to make you and other people feel – I kind of make songs a little more resilient feeling, with a little more grit.”
How do you obtain a little more grit? Is it in the sound, or the way you perform it, your voice?
“Well lyrically, when you experience something and you can write about it naturally into a song you get to change the story and really put your perspective into the story, instead of just poetically describing how it was. I love that part, building extra meaning into lyrics and extra thoughts that I didn’t really get the time to say in that situation. Vocally it just comes with passion and energy. Growing up and realising the worth of your life and your energy and putting that into vocals is pretty fun as well.”
I love how you have said, “I wanted each song to have each cinematic feeling of moving on”. Can you explain that a little bit more?
“As soon as I write a song, an image starts to form in my head. I guess the lyrical part is a separate thing to me but when I start to produce the songs, and I’m looking at this imagery in my mind, I really try and put whatever I can into the production to reflect that cinematic feeling in my mind. Turning feelings into sounds is a really subjective world but it’s really fascinating. What notes correspond to what feelings, and that kind of thing.”
What inspired Palo Alto?
“Well, I was writing loads of different notes, different parts, and started to bring them all together, and then the chorus came about because my friend lived in this building in Rose Bay, in Sydney. There’s this building in Sydney called Palo Alto, and we used to drive to Bondi every weekend. I looked up Palo Alto on a map one day, and realised where it was, up in San Francisco, and just made up this silly song in my head about driving to Mexico. It just kind of stuck, and I brought all these pieces together around that chorus, and it turned into what it is.”
Where was the video filmed?
“The video was filmed around California, in my friend’s sick Bronco.”
How much input or control did you take in the creation of the video?
“A fair bit. I kind of collaborated with a few friends to dream up what we would do on the filming days. Once we filmed it, I ended up editing it day and night with my friend Tom Wilson. So we sat there and created it from scratch, which is really cool and different for me because I haven’t really made films before.”
People use such different adjectives and genres to describe your sound – how would you describe it?
“I like to think of it as psychedelic pop, or psychedelic folk-pop, or something, but genres are weird. It’s hard to nail it down. I’m always trying to write a good song and make it listenable and universal, and put as much kind of weird stuff in it as a I can without crossing the line.”
How did you get into music?
“I’ve always been really into music. I’ve played piano since I was five, and picked up the violin when I was four. I was always around it, and I think at around age thirteen I realised that you could actually write songs, and I think it took a while to figure out that you could actually create your own music. It’s always been there, in my life, and at a certain age, I started writing songs, and I had to keep them pouring out of my brain, otherwise they’d be stuck in there.”
You grew up in Foster – what was your upbringing like?
“It was pretty awesome, really. I grew up right beside the beach, so me and my siblings would walk over there every afternoon and just have our own little world. Lots of ocean and surfing and dogs. It was pretty sheltered from the crazy city world. My younger years were definitely a cool coastal holiday.”
How did you think the passing of your sister shaped your music? You’ve said that it was medicinal.
“Yeah. Well, I guess that was the point where I started truly writing songs, rather than just words. It was just an insane meteorite into my world and my family’s world.
“When a child passes away, everyone’s going through their own thing, and you can’t really talk to anyone because everyone’s going through a hectic situation. I really turned to music at that point.”
I was fourteen years old, and turned to songs to get that life advice that you might get from a parent – even though my parents were awesome, and always there – but I turned to music for support. I also needed to release this emotion somehow, so I began to really write songs to heal myself and give myself that space, and talk to myself.”
What do you think she would think of your success today?
“I think she’d be pretty stoked. I do miss her a lot, and wish she could be here today for this fun stuff. I think she’d also be proud that I kind of funnelled that sad, scary energy into a cool, creative and fun place.”
Of course. It’s an amazing thing to come out of something so awful. Tell me how you arrived at the name Jack River?
“My friends and I came up with pirate names when I was 16. They were these names that we would go to parties where no one knew us, and say that our names were Jack River and Simon Woodpecker and John Scarlett, and it was our little way of feeling like pirates on the loose. On the music project I just wanted to feel limitless, and like I could take it anywhere and make anything. I also wanted to kind of make a – not make a statement, but carve myself away from the way women are judged in the industry. I put all that together, and came up with Jack River. I also love the word river a lot.”
You’re at Falls this year, which is so exciting – how do you want people to feel when you listen to your music there?
“I guess I want them to feel stoked, and excited, and I hope I can make music that people can dance to.”
JACK RIVER TOUR DATES
HIGHWAY SONGS NO.2 TOUR
Thu 1 Dec The Foundry | Brisbane QLD
Fri 2 Dec Hudson Ballroom | Sydney NSW
Sat 3 Dec Workers Club | Melbourne VIC
GROW YOUR OWN FESTIVAL
Fri 23 Dec Grow Your Own – A Summer Festival | Forster NSW
FALLS FESTIVAL (LORNE ONLY)
Sat 21 Jan Sugar Mountain VCA, Melbourne
Interview: Jessica Bailey
Editor: Jennifer Worgan
