Indie rock act Jay Som brings 'Everybody Works' to Chapel Hill

Jay Som performed Sunday at Chapel Hill’s Local 506, and for the entire show, Melina Duterte, the 22-year old frontwoman in round glasses and stripes, wore a pink cowboy hat. The band kicked off the set with the title track from Duterte’s latest album as Jay Som, “Everybody Works.” The intimate verses — “My folks they don’t think it’s right to be living in a shell / I’ll just bite hard on the luck” — accompanied by haunting beach instrumentals swelled into a choral chant repeated over and over: “Everybody works, everybody works.” This style of poppy repetition guides the structure of most tracks on the album — Duterte has openly proclaimed her deep love for Carly Rae Jepsen — encasing the various complexities of life into powerful mantras, creating atmospheres at once desperate and hopeful. 

Throughout the show, songs transitioned without interruption from one to the next, the band only taking breaks every three songs or so. Duterte or the other guitarist would break the silence with a slight joke as they set up their pedals and modulators for the next set of songs. They arranged themselves with the drummer in the back and the other three in an evenly spaced row: the guitarist, the bassist and Duterte on both vocals and guitar. All four lashed at their instruments with all their might, but they still complemented one another to produce a unitary tremor. This balanced relationship was visually present as well; as they played in a line with the singer off to one side and no one standing too far in the front, they exchanged regular smiles over the blaring melodies, fostering warmth that emanated throughout the venue.

Duterte didn’t draw out the song with indulgent guitar riffs and prolonged belts. Instead, she immediately peeked under the rim of her hat to thank the audience, then nonchalantly joined her band backstage. It seemed as though she was completely accustomed to the spiritual effect that her lone vocals, sustained and emergent, had when they reverberate hypothermic waves of California melancholy through a room of 50 people. Less than two minutes and just a few lines of verse: “I like the way your lipstick stains the corner of my smile / How you brush my hair aside … I pray it lasts a while.”

Beyond her voice, what stands out in Jay Som’s aural dreamscape is Duterte’s lyricism, which has been critically lauded for its poignant nature. Loaded with simple yet potent “I” statements (“I just want,” “I can’t,” “I’m tired,” “I breathe again”), Duterte’s songwriting doesn’t describe the physical world, but rather its feelings, which take the form of personal and impressionistic bursts: “Why don’t we take the bus? / You say you don’t like the smell / But I like the bus! / I can be whoever I want to be.”

Duterte references others but speaks to herself. She lets us into vignettes of her mind’s moods, her desires and her fears. Her work is the profoundly personal poetry of who she is — and she accepts its vulnerability.

Duterte’s project has evolved. After the release of her first album, “Turn Into,” she told Rookie that it was the result of “a collection of finished and unfinished songs.” She had spent two years producing a huge collection of songs, playing every instrument herself, then she picked nine of those songs. After touring with Japanese Breakfast and Mitski, she began the process of creating “Everybody Works.” In an interview with She Shreds, Duterte revealed the stress of recording her sophomore album: Right before she wrote the would-be title track, she checked her bank account to find “negative 10 dollars.” While “Turn Into” captures the growing impatience that makes you want something bigger, “Everybody Works” invokes fighting the fear that prevents you from moving forward. Duterte has grappled with the paralysis of work and love that scares everyone to produce something cathartic and deeply personal. Now that she has given life to this work, we keenly await what’s next.