Family Jordan is a band from northern New South Wales whose membership waxes and wanes in size – at one point there were seven members. There is only song that was written collaboratively by the entire band, and that’s when it had those seven members. That song is their new single ‘Sally’, a rolling country-rock road trip of a song that is perfectly timed for spring as it practically demands that you roll up your sleeves and roll down the windows to let the breeze in. It’s the latest single from the band’s forthcoming fourth album, Big Grass, which will be released on new indie label Holiday Maker Records.
Says lead singer Jordan Rochfort of the song, ‘So much merit is placed on ‘authenticity’ when folk and country writing is concerned. Whilst I have no issues with this, I’m also a firm believer in light-heartedness and an element of absurdity, so it gave me great pleasure to engage with the absurdity of a bunch of young Australian guys and girls playing with the cliches of American country music.‘
***
Singer-songwriter Emily Soon‘s last single was the sublime ‘Love is the Loneliest Place’; it was released in March and the Melburnian no doubt had musical plans for the rest of year which had to be shelved along with everything else. Instead, she has reworked the Whitney Houston hit ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ and, by recording it in her bedroom studio, turned it into a 2020 anthem. Soon is great at excavating the crevices of songs, using her voice to find all the light and all the dark, and she has brought something special to this cover.
‘I first had the idea to cover this song after hanging out with some friends one night last year,’ says Soon. ‘We were staying at a cabin in Warburton and got to the dance party end of the evening when this came on. I had a bit of an outer body experience, watching my friends having so much fun, but at the same time I was really listening to the lyrics in detail. We ‘re all individuals who are quite content in our independence and not ones who would so easily settle. But that doesn’t stop us from wanting to be able to experience romantic love at some point – so when I sing this song it’s just a moment for me to really sit in that feeling, embrace it and let go.’