New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Jade Bird, the UK-born and Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, has just released her beautifully temperate EP, Burn The Hard Drive.
Like falling in love, break-ups start slowly and then happen all at once. For Jade Bird, the end of her relationship gathered pace and crashed into reality in 2022, and became the driving force behind her new EP. Created with Mura Masa (Alex Crossan), Burn The Hard Drive is a short but powerful collection of songs that paint the various stages of grief that come with the end of a relationship in devastatingly astute but carefully optimistic strokes.
Finding freedom and joy in writing and experimenting with ideas, the EP was created with Crossan in his modest home studio. Gradually, the songs found form and Bird's emotions tumbled out into notes and melodies, shepherded by Crossan's unique and encouraging ear.
In celebration of the EP's release, Bird is embarking on her 'Open Up The Songbook' Acoustic tour - based on her Substack, an intimate space where Jade shares the original demos and stories behind her music. Her North American tour will see stops in Austin, Nashville, Washington D.C., Toronto, Los Angeles, and more.
Jade Bird on tour:
Thu, Apr 11 - Houston, TX - The Heights Theater
Sat, Apr 13 - Austin, TX - Mohawk (SOLD OUT)
Sun, Apr 14 - Dallas, TX - The Kessler Theater
Tue, Apr 16 - Nashville, TN - Bluebird Cafe (SOLD OUT)
Wed, Apr 17 - Atlanta, GA - Eddie's Attic
Fri, Apr 19 - Charlotte, NC - The Evening Muse (SOLD OUT)
Sat, Apr 20 - Washington, DC - Miracle Theatre
Sun, Apr 21 - Hamden, CT - Space Ballroom
Tue, Apr 23 - Portsmouth, NH - 3S Artspace
Wed, Apr 24 - Somerville, MA - Arts at the Armory
Thu, Apr 25 - Woodstock, NY - Levon Helm Studios
Fri, Apr 26 - Burlington, VT - Higher Ground (Showcase Lounge)
Sun, Apr 28 - Toronto, ON - The
Drake Underground (SOLD OUT)
Tue, Apr 30 - Evanston, IL - Space
Thu, May 2 - Salt Lake City, UT - The
State Room
Sat, May 4 - Denver, CO - Lost Lake
Mon, May 6 - Seattle, WA - Barboza
Wed, May 22 - Los Angeles, CA - The Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever
Thu, May 23 - San Francisco, CA - Cafe Du Nord
Burn The Hard Drive Tracklist:
1. Burn The Hard Drive
2. Complex
3. You've Fallen In Love Again
4. C'est La Vie
5. Breaking the Grey
Jade had met her ex-fiance when she was just 19. He was enmeshed in her life in a way that few of us experience, as he joined her band and they toured together. "When you're in a relationship like that, when it's good it's so good. You've got support at work, you're on the road together: it's this romantic ideal. And when it's not good, it becomes a bit of a living hell."
Even as they got engaged and moved together to Austin, Texas, things began to break down. "There's been so many times I've been on stage and I've just sort of had a bit of a breakdown, crying or whatever, because the songs are so interwoven into my experience." Bird began writing the songs that make up the EP just after the hardcore lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic ended. "I think we were all going through something," she says of those early writing sessions with Crossan. During one of the last writing sessions before the break-up, she wrote the song Burn The Hard Drive, a sultry, sorrowful song. "There's no good goodbye, no right way to die," she sings on the chorus before offering a digital Eternal
Sunshine solution of destroying all evidence of a relationship. "I listened back to it with Alex and was like, 'Oh my god this is a premonition of ending my relationship'."
Though a sad, reflective kind of EP, it begins on a hopeful note with Breaking The Grey, the final stage of grief when you realise you're going to be okay. "It's about getting out of a bad spot," Bird explains. "I often find in a room, there is a level of empathy, where I find myself worrying what the room is going through and I think with Breaking The Grey we were all feeling the murkiness of the pandemic, the clouds of that - so the chorus was about finding our way out of that while the verses are more personal." Over a jaunty piano line, she sketches out tiny scenes of a different kind of grey - "The look on your face as you hold me close, your feelings have changed".
It's a short, reflective record, one that seems to send Jade Bird off on a new trajectory. Life has taken a turn too. She relocated to LA, started seeing someone new and has been embracing more pastimes outside of her career - at just 26 she's already been a working musician for almost a decade. Even as her most collaborative work yet, Burn The Hard Drive sees her finally feeling like herself. It's been a transformative time: and from the darkness, light has come.
