Interview: Jonathan Something plots freakish, hypnotizing & ‘Outlandish Poetica’ on debut album

The most terrifying nightmares are the ones that feel real ⎯⎯ with flecks of surrealism. Like the kind in which you’re running from some unstoppable, shapeless figure. You know you have to get away, but the door is always locked. Or your feet weigh two tons, and you can feel your form slowly sinking down, down, down. Other times, everything is seemingly normal, but things take an about-face for the truly bizarre. Folk-rock upstart Jonathan Something, the oddball brainchild of Jon Searles, who hails out of Connecticut, scrawls bone-splitting imagery about a nightmare with his single “Outlandish Poetica,” the titular cut off his forthcoming debut record. It’s otherworldly fiction, naturally, cluttered with silky, doo-wop background vocals and waves of twinkling ivories and metallic bangs and pops. “I wish my nightmares were that interesting,” he quips over an email with B-Sides & Badlands about the song, which stars a ludicrous encounter with Larry Bird and came to him while out on his dad’s boat on the way back home from Block Island.

The panoramic scene the stunning backdrop, the words poured out of him. “I just followed the idea of me being in some wacky nightmarish landscape. It’s sort of inexplicable as to how Larry Bird came from,” he stresses. But his “real world” dreamscapes are rarely as Alice in Wonderland as that. “My nightmares have a tendency to be very realistic, graphic depictions of heinous crimes. No fun there,” he notes. The later addition of a choral of strings make “Outlandish Poetica” a bit sinister, scraping along in time with the chime-like percussion and bluster of guitar.

So, it makes perfect sense such a far-out song title would also make for such a fantastic album title. “I think it’s just got that ring to it. The word ‘outlandish’ sums up a lot of my lyrics and topics. And the word poetica is a made up word, which I guess could showcase my tendency to talk out my ass,” he says.

Upon spinning “Outlandish Poetica” below, if you’re itching for more freaky, outrageous musical excursions, Searles promises his impending album will deliver. “This album is technically a Frankenstein album. I had originally self-released three separate albums before I signed to Solitaire [Recordings]. They loved the music and thought it deserved to see more exposure than it got,” he remembers. “So, we turned the first two albums into one super-album and the third (now second) album will be hot off the heels. That being said, the songs on this album were very much me in a fledgling state of discovering my voice as a songwriter.”

Below, in our exclusive rapid-fire Q&A, Searles digs into nightmares, his erratic style and the album’s themes.

Are you normally so inspired by a nightmare you have (or just the thrill of having nightmares) to write a song about them?

I’d say nightmares in general are quite often just the most interesting of dreams. I think I was more inspired to capture that dream-like sense in a song. It’s sort of impossible to fully capture, though ⎯⎯ unless I bonked every listener on the head and put them in a fugue state.

Musically, “Outlandish Poetica” mingles blues, funk, old school soul and even a throwback country rockabilly. As the song crescendoes, it erupts into utter bedlam, sonically. How did this style emerge?

I recorded that song a while back now, so I can’t remember exactly what headspace I was in at the time. I think I was just aiming for some tight, dry, ’70s sounding psych-rock, and it snowballed into banging around pots and pans and cellos and garbagy garage pianos.

Does this song express the general style of the rest of the album?

I’d say, on this album, “Outlandish Poetica” is one of three songs that have that sort of long-form story-driven narrative. One song accounts a man on his death-bed experiencing some abstract sense of reality. And another one, the oldest song on the album, is a song I wrote on a train ride home after a gig I played for like six people. It vividly describes things and people around me and then relates it all to my sense of self. I definitely don’t always write like that, though. A lot of the songs are more digestible.

How have you seen your songwriting transform over the years?

I used to write music under a different name and released four albums like that. But then one day I had this epiphany like I finally knew who I was as a songwriter. So, I left that music behind and started fresh under [this name]. I knew it was important to find “myself” in my songwriting, not just find my “sound.” Because who wants to be making the same-sounding music their whole career? Right now, I’m a few albums deep into the future, and the “sound” is very different ⎯⎯ but they all feel like they’re coming from the same place.

What have been the most important moments of your life connected to music? How did they lead you here?

I think the most important moments, musically, are the discovery of particular albums that changed my perspective of myself and music. Bob Dylan’s ‘Blonde on Blonde’ and Iceage’s ‘Plowing into the Field of Love’ were two very pivotal discoveries for me.

Are you writing about any other dream-like shenanigans? What are some of the album’s other themes or states of being?

Oh man, let’s see, there’re themes of love, confusion, emotional self-flagellation and lyrics about apple fritters, vampires, losing my hands, whippets, wet-wipes and hunky young males in their 30s. So, there’s something for the whole family.

Photo Credit: Gabby Jones

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