Jade Bird

Please Note: There is a delivery delay on all orders until approximately two weeks prior to the show.______Like falling in love, break-ups start slowly and then happen all at once. For Jade Bird, the end of her relationship gathered pace and crashed into reality in 2022, resulting in the beautifully temperate EP Burn The Hard Drive. It is a short collection of songs that paint the various stages of grief that come with the end of a relationship in devastatingly astute but carefully optimistic strokes.Bird has always railed against being pigeonholed and wary of collaboration. Having grown up in the UK, she was influenced heavily by Americana and hailed as a powerhouse performer. Even as she was compared to country-folk titans, in those early days she was determined to be fully Jade Bird without any shades of anyone else. Every note had to come from her. But for the Burn The Hard Drive EP, she worked with Alex Crossan, known better as Mura Masa, finding freedom and joy in writing and experimenting with ideas in his modest home studio. Gradually, the songs found form and her emotions tumbled out into notes and melodies, shepherded by Crossans unique and encouraging ear.She had met her ex-fiance when she was just 18. He was a musician and she was newly signed. It was an unsaid thing that it wouldnt have worked unless he kind of joined my band and we toured together, so things evolved very quickly, she says. So for the next few years as Birds career took off, they did everything together: recording, touring, writing, everything. Every cool memory Ive got musically, hes in that. The second record is about him. He was enmeshed in her life in a way that few of us experience. When youre in a relationship like that, when its good its so good. Youve got support at work, youre on the road together: its this romantic ideal. And when its not good, it becomes a bit of a living hell.Even as they got engaged and moved together to Austin, Texas, things began to break down. Theres been so many times Ive been on stage and Ive just sort of had a bit of a breakdown, crying or whatever, because the songs are so interwoven into my experience. Bird began writing the songs that make up the EP just after the hardcore lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic ended. I think we were all going through something, she says of those early writing sessions with Cossen. During one of the last writing sessions before the break-up, she wrote the song Burn The Hard Drive, a sultry, sorrowful song. Theres no good goodbye, no right way to die, she sings on the chorus before offering a digital Eternal Sunshine solution of destroying all evidence of a relationship. I listened back to it with Alex and was like, Oh my god this is a premonition of ending my relationship.