JODI RELEASES NEW SONG + VIDEO “HAWKS”

DEBUT ALBUM BLUE HERON OUT NEXT MONTH ON SOOPER

Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Jodi, AKA Nick Levine (ex Pinegrove) has their debut LP Blue Heron coming July 16th via Chicago’s Sooper Records (NNAMDÏ, Sen Morimoto, KAINA), and today they’ve dropped the final single “Hawks” and along with it a video by Chicago filmmaker Jake Karlson. For the video Jodi pored over hours of old family film to line up lyrics with past events; a beautiful snapshot of their past that coincides with their deeply intimate style of songwriting. They note of the song “Hawks is a song about wandering. It’s about walking around Chicago with eyes open and headphones on, holding a deep affection for public transit, listening to Big Thief, and trying to make sense of a private experience of the world.”

For Levine, Jodi is tentatively described as an alter-ego, a lens through which they can ask questions, push boundaries, and step outside of their inner world. The album captures Levine’s continued search for meaning; a search where, during the writing and recording process, a couple of chance encounters with a bird —a great blue heron— taught them to embrace the fortuity of creative expression and surrender to its symbolism as a metaphor for understanding their own work, and the world. Committing fully to the symbolism, Levine had a large blue heron tattooed on their back and submerged themself in a freezing Chicago pond as a means to forever memorialize the Blue Heron as both the album cover and title. While Blue Heron claws at the strands of meaning and tries to make sense of the world, it’s a work that ultimately only finds closure in the complete surrender to forces greater than oneself. It embraces chance, coincidence, and fate with a sublime curiosity, ultimately finding meaning in the randomness of it all.