Much-loved Arkansas duo joan today share their sixth single of 2021, ‘so done’, a punchy, guitar-laden kiss-off to a relationship gone sour. Alongside the track, joan have shared an accompanying video in which Alan from the band gets entangled by an ever-growing telephone wire during a break up. ‘so done’ is from bye, one of two upcoming EPs (hi & bye) due for release in December via Photo Finish Records, while hi lands a month earlier.
Speaking about ‘so done’, joan share: “growing up we always heard artists say things like ‘we wrote this song in 20 minutes’ and always thought it was a bit dramatic because it just doesn’t really happen like that. but listen, we basically wrote this song in 20 minutes. we sat down in the studio and alan started humming ‘called to tell you that it’s over’ and from there it seemed like every line wrote itself one after another, it was a really cool experience. the music side of the song was a little tougher for us to figure out, though. sat in a dropbox folder for a few months until one night we had a session with hazey eyes who loved the song and really helped us bring new life to it. we usually do everything ourselves and you never know what it’ll be like going into sessions like that, but hazey eyes was such an amazing collaborator on this.
“this song actually was the counterpart to ‘so good’ which became the two songs that jumpstarted the thought to create a double ep called hi and bye based around the start and ending of a relationship.”
joan’s new chapter, the ‘wave era’ will see new singles from two EPs landing on the first Thursday of each month, soundtracking the rest of 2021 with their trademark alt-pop bops, tinged with the sweetest hint of 90’s R&B influences. Titled hi and bye, joan explain “after we released “cloudy/partly cloudy”, we got straight to work, writing so many new songs. we found that the songs were naturally falling in two different camps. so, we decided rather than trying to force them to work together, it would be more interesting to release two ep’s over the course of the year. welcome to the wave era – here comes a new joan song each month through the end of the year :)”
joan (Alan Benjamin Thomas and Steven Rutherford) have spent the past few years building their musical empire, single by single, tour date by tour date, with the past two years being landmarks for them; their debut EP, 2019’s portra, and last year’s EP cloudy have been streamed well over 90 million times, with over a million listeners a month across streaming platforms.
The guys spent much of 2019 on the road with major US and international tours supporting the likes of The Aces, COIN, Bloc Party and Jeremy Zucker, as well as playing to fans across Asia with headline shows and festivals in the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong. Early 2020 saw them playing to sold out crowds across the US on their first headline tour, including having to add additional shows in LA to accommodate ticket demand. Their virtual cloudy release show in August 2020 boasted thousands of ticket sales from fans who tuned into their livestream. 2021 is going to be an incredibly exciting year for joan, they’re only just getting started.
