NYC-based singer-songwriter Jessie Kilguss steps forward with “Fool’s Fight,” a sweeping indie-folk anthem drawn from her album ‘They Have A Howard Johnson’s There,’ out now. The track moves with emotional velocity, tracing the surrender to a love so immediate it feels cosmic. Guitar and voice anchor the song before it expands into something vast and luminous. It lands as a striking introduction to her sixth full-length.
Kilguss writes from a place where literature, cinema and memory intersect. “When I wrote ‘Fool’s Fight’, I was deeply ensconced in Elena Ferrante’s ‘Neapolitan Quartet’, which I loved! The song is slightly inspired by those books. As with any song it also relates to my own life but I like to let people project their own stories onto my songs, find their own meaning,” she says. The result is intimate yet wide open.
The album was engineered, produced, mixed and mastered by Charlie Nieland at Saturation Point Studios in Brooklyn. “I’ve been working on this album for the past year with producer Charlie Nieland, with whom I have been collaborating since 2007. We started every track with just voice and guitar and built them out from there,” Kilguss explains. That process shapes a record that grows from spare beginnings into layered, cinematic statements.
A longtime presence in New York songwriting circles, Kilguss surrounds herself with heavyweight collaborators including Kirk Schoenherr, John Kengla, Andrea Longato, Rob Heath, Dave Derby and Rembert Block. ‘They Have A Howard Johnson’s There’ also features the melancholic lead track “Howard Johnson’s” and the slow-burn revelation “St. Teresa in Ecstasy.” It is a bold, literary indie-folk statement that commands attention.