As part of Music Is To Blame’s What’s to Blame? series, Joni has given us a special insight into the film, people and places which helped curate her into the impassioned musician she is today.
Hey Joni! How are you? Can you introduce yourself to our readers?
Hello, hello. I’m Joni and I’m an American singer-songwriter currently living in East London with my dog Sylvia.
What or who would you say is to blame for your music career?
I think the scene in Garden State, where Natalie Portman plays Zach Braff the song ‘New Slang’, by The Shins, had a pretty big influence on me. They’re in a waiting room and she puts her headphones on him and says something like, “This song will change your life.”
I just related so much to that scene, the setting, those characters... It was a big realisation that so much can be said with a three-minute song. It felt like it encapsulated my entire life. I still don’t even really know what the song is about, but I don’t think it even matters. Something about it really spoke to me as a teenager longing for something more to life than the New Jersey suburbs.
Who are the biggest musical inspirations for the sound you’ve curated?
Jon Brion, Sparklehorse, George Harrison, Feist, and Daniel Johnston
You’ve got your debut album, ‘Things I Left Behind’ coming out on 11th April. How excited are you?
It feels like a very long time coming. It’s a beginning of something and also the closing of a big chapter. There’s a satisfaction in the alchemy of taking little broken pieces of my life and turning them into something whole and new.
The latter half of the album is said to feature happier songs. Were there any factors to blame for helping you reach that point of optimism?
I didn’t want the album to be a chronological story, really. I was more interested in it sonically making sense versus reading like a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
That being said, the song ‘P.S.’ closes the album and was also the last song I wrote for it. I think as soon as I wrote that one, it felt like I really had found the closure I was looking for and realised that everything turned out the way it was supposed to be. And all the hurt wasn’t for nothing.
The first song you wrote for the album was the penultimate song, ‘Still Young’. Does that mean you worked backwards, from happy to sad, when you recorded it?
No, I really jumped around in the story. The songs didn’t come in any order. I wish I had the ability to control what comes out in a song, but really, it’s more just catching something and then realising later what I was trying to say.
‘Still Young’ just happened to be the entry point because my friend Luke Sital-Singh really liked that song and wanted to try to help me record it. We had been touring and I was playing the song live every night and getting a really good reaction from it, so it felt like a natural one to start with.
And luckily it was a very easy process. I think that gave me some confidence to continue working on songs. I didn’t have a plan to make an album, it just sort of went that direction, eventually.
‘Things I Left Behind’ is a journey before and after a period of drastic change and intense sadness. How does listening back to the album feel?
It’s nice to feel the transformation reflected in an album, because I can vividly remember what I was going through as this all came together.
So, to be able to sort of time travel back to that place, knowing I made it to the other side, is comforting. And when I started the process of writing, I was hoping that it would all eventually make sense.
In ‘Avalanches’, you sing about the heartbreak of losing your ex, but with the acknowledgment that you’d do it “over and over again”. In the song, you sing “All of your favourite songs are running through my head”. Does that mean you can still find comfort in the good memories of that relationship?
I don’t think I would’ve stayed in that relationship for almost a decade if it had been all bad. It was a very pure and happy one. He was my first love; he taught me what love is and that I was capable of being loved, which is why it was so devastating when it abruptly ended.
He also taught me what heartbreak was, which I think is so transformative to experience. I think, once I went through that heartbreak, I finally felt like I became a real artist. Maybe I learned more through the grief.
So yes, I’ve learned to hold the dark and light together. Nothing is all good or all bad and I wouldn’t change what happened.
You’ve lived across Europe, Asia, and the US, but are there any places in particular that are to blame for shaping you and your music?
I think in general, because I moved so frequently, I’ve always felt a bit like an outsider looking in. I think that being an observer was very helpful to my songwriting.
On this record, London played a huge role. It was the backdrop to all the things I was going through and also represented the new life I was starting. But everywhere I’ve lived has [played] a little part in shaping me.
What does the rest of 2025 look like for Joni?
Hopefully, I get to share this music live with everyone. I’ll be playing a show with Hannah Cohen in Brooklyn in April and then in London in May. I’ve also started writing some new music, which has felt really good.
Kai Palmer
Image: Barbora Krizova
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