PREMIERE: Daphne - Last Believer

Laura Kerry

A note on Daphne, AKA Jordan A. Martin’s Bandcamp page for her new EP reads, “The following poem should operate as both a description of and a companion to the record:

a total beTween ~ 
an orchid blooms on youtube ;) 
~ I die a lesbian . . .”

Martin, an artist who lives in Brooklyn but hails from Columbus, Ohio, writes poetry and creates visual art. Her musician bio reads like a museum blurb, citing performances and work shown at the Columbus Museum of Art, Wexner Center for the Arts, La MaMa Theatre, Dixon Place, and other venues in Ohio and New York. The themes listed on that bio read like a graduate thesis, including, “Desire, Pedagogy, and Institutionality as they intersect with race, class, age, and queerness.” Art seems to be the lens through which she approaches the world, thoughtfully and seriously broaching the most pressing of social issues.

Like its accompanying poem, though, Last Believer feels much lighter than its themes suggest. A collaboration between Martin—who sings and plays guitar—and friends Sivan Silver-Shwartz (bass), Sheena McGrath (drums), and Henry Ross (sax), the EP and its seven songs resemble good, old-fashioned alt-rock with an infusion of pop, jazz, and the just plain weird. The music tends towards a looser feel, but one thing is certain: Martin can shred, both on her instrument and in her vocals. And from the lively opener “All in All” to the slow arpeggio of “Alice,” shred she does.

VIDEO PREMIERE: Daphne - Crooner

Laura Kerry

For a video in which not much actually happens, Daphne’s “Crooner” is unexpectedly intriguing and confrontational. In the Zach Teplin–made work, a woman (played by Liz Kidwell) sits draped over a couch, smoking a cigarette while wearing only a fur jacket and old-timey bangs in her hair as she stares at the camera. Surrounded by a white frame in the shot, the scene emulates an old, elegant, black-and-white porn film, crackling with distortions on the screen as the woman smokes and stares, stares and smokes.

Minimalistic and retro, it’s the kind of video that allows the music to speak for itself. And in the case of “Crooner,” that’s a great quality. Off of the artist’s debut EP, Last Believer, the song sounds like the Pixies if they graduated from art school in New York recently and made poetry, visual art, and music in Brooklyn. Daphne, who is really Jordan Martin and a rotating cast of her collaborators, did and does all of those things. On Martin’s website, “music” sits alongside other categories of artwork, including poetry, prose, and videos, among other mediums—but she clearly has enough talent to go around. Like its video, the song “Crooner” does a lot with a little, harnessing driving guitar, light percussion, and accents of yelps in the vocals to pack a real punch. It’s more than enough to tide us over until the rest of the EP comes out at the end of the month.