From the dreamy, confessional indie-rock that fills her newest release, Bad Actor, to the bluegrass and old-time roots music that soundtracked her upbringing in small-town Pennsylvania, Jen Starsinic has spent much of her 20s in a whirl of evolution. She’s been a frontwoman, a side musician, a songwriter, and a top-tier instrumentalist. As her music has deepened and diversified, so has her understanding of her own emotional makeup — an understanding that’s been shaped not only by the onset of adulthood, but also by her time taking care of a sick parent, navigating the twists and turns of modern-day romance, making a new home in Nashville, and taking a hard look at her anxieties. Bad Actor shines a light on that period of personal and musical growth, reintroducing Starsinic as a songwriter whose folk roots have blossomed into something bigger, bolder, and far more amplified.
“I grew up playing fiddle in bluegrass bands,” she says. “In my heart, I’ll always be a folk writer, because what that means to me is a musician who writes truthfully about her own experience. But I also love weird pop music, indie-rock, and dream-pop. I’ve always wanted to be in rock bands. The opportunity had just never been presented before…so I made my own.”
Starsinic began writing the bulk of Bad Actor‘s songs in Nashville. She’d moved to town in 2014, having already cut her teeth in the old-time music communities of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. A graduate of the Berklee School of Music, she had also earned her stripes as a road warrior by joining the touring lineups of several bands, including the David Mayfield Parade. Moving to Nashville gave Starsinic the chance to concentrate more on her own music, and The Flood and the Fire — her critically-acclaimed debut as a solo artist, featuring cameos by icons like Molly Tuttle (IBMA’s Guitarist of the Year) and clawhammer banjoist Allison de Groot— was released the same year she relocated to Tennessee. As she began to settle into Nashville life, though, she found herself drawn back to Pennsylvania, where her father was busy battling life-threatening liver disease. She became one of his primary caretakers, traveling back and forth between her childhood stomping grounds and her new home. It was difficult to find time for herself — time to focus on her own mental health — when she was investing so much effort in being somebody else’s support system.
Something needed to change. Starsinic began going to therapy, examining her past relationships, and experiencing an adult coming-of-age, while also updating her own art to reflect those changes within. The rustic, rural sounds of her musical roots began giving way to something more guitar-based, inspired by powerful female acts like Sharon Van Etten, Phoebe Bridgers, Courtney Barnett, and Alvvays. Written and recorded over a four-year period, Bad Actor is a reinvigoration of her sound, mixing Starsinic’s swooning, woozy vocals with synthesizers, distorted electric guitars, glittering waves of reverb, and autobiographical lyrics. The effect is reminiscent of War on Drugs’ expansive shimmer, and the studio band — including keyboardist Ben Alleman (Jenny Lewis, Grace Potter), guitarist Paul Niehaus (Calexico, Justin Townes Earle), and rhythm section/co-producers Parker McAnnally and John Wood, both of The Prescriptions — pairs Starsinic with a number of sympathetic musicians who, like her, have logged time in acclaimed acts.
“This record is really about learning to face ingrained, self-destructive habits with compassion, understanding, and genuine curiosity about where they came from, accompanied with accountability,” she says. “It’s about learning to admit to yourself that you’re not being who you really are, and allowing yourself to change.”
Glide is proud to premiere “Foreign Thing” from Starsinic (below), a vivacious composition that recalls the wistful songwriting gold of Regina Spektor and Cat Power. With a crips fusion of vulnerability and grace, there is a blissful aura that surrounds Starsinic’s sound, making for one fo 2020’s must-hear albums.
“I wrote “Foreign Thing” a while ago actually and recorded it as a solo voice and fiddle song on a folk album called The Flood and the Fire I put out when I was 21/22″ describes Starsinic. “A lot of that album was about facing the abyss of adult life, not so much in an “adulting” sort of way but in the way of, “Ok this is more or less what you do until you drop dead and do I really have any idea how to live with that idea?”
At 28, I find that idea still so relevant to me, it probably is something that’s always a question for all of us. This song has stuck around in my psyche all these years, and my setlist.”
“This song has felt a little closer to me too over the last couple of years with the Trump-era coinciding with my path into middle-adulthood,” says Starsinic. “The climactic verse is “I learned the hand that feeds you keeps you quiet, keeps you dull / Hunger, not blood or trust, is how the west was won / And it’s a foreign thing, it’s a foreign thing, the cowboys on TV / Either good or evil, always untamed and free.”
“Something I think about a lot is the way the idea of the American Dream as “conquering something or emerging victorious” is sold to us as something that will free us when really, it tends to have the opposite effect. I meet people (and see them on TV) made desperate by it, and what does that desperation cause? Don’t get me wrong, my life as a musician has afforded me the opportunity to travel to many places. I love it and its people deeply. But there’s definitely a kind of confused and conflated story in there.”
