Jess Urwiler is Planting Roots with Debut EP
photo by Laney Powers
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Singer-songwriter Jess Urwiler is preserving the last four years of her life in her debut EP, roots. Sprouted back in high school and now snaking through memories from the past four years, roots is an anthology of Urwiler’s most vulnerable moments.
Six songs, sequenced in the order they were lived, form a diary of adolescence, heartbreak, and the fragile unknown of becoming someone new.
Urwiler, now a Philadelphia-based singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer, has created entrancing resonance with guitar lines that cascade over themselves and earnest lyrics layered with tender backing vocals. With its spellbinding texture, roots offers an ethereal sonic experience for fans old and new.
The EP delicately unfolds over the course of 23 minutes, each song offering a familiar yet new sensation and perspective. The leading track, “meet me” serves as an introduction to Urwiler as an artist and character in her story as she grapples with feeling out of place and disconnected with herself — a theme that permeates the project. By the time “make it out” — a hard-hitting and satisfying outro — unfurls, Urwiler has confronted her hard truths and molded them into something resembling acceptance. The EP concludes with chilling echoing vocals that emanate nostalgia and perfectly wrap up a project full of ambiguity and the distant past.
photo by Laney Powers
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Q&A
Evie Seetoo: Happy day before release! How are you feeling?
Jess Urwiler: Excited. Also a little nervous. Everyone’s heard the songs, I’ve performed the songs for the past four years but no one has heard the fully recorded versions of them. It’s also just vulnerable.
ES: This is your first project. Were there any unexpected challenges that you faced? Anything that came surprisingly easy?
JU: Everything took a little longer than i thought it was going to in every aspect possible. In the process of recording this EP I spilled water all over my MacBook and lost everything.
ES: How has the Drexel Music Industry program influenced your writing and production?
JU: Honestly, before I came to Drexel I didn’t really record anything. I didn’t have any intentions to record and produce and release music. Coming to Drexel and seeing so many other people doing it and learning, you know, how to record and how to produce things and being like, wait – this is fun, and also a little bit of a challenge to figure out.
ES: The instrumentation is pretty minimal and stripped back. Was that purposeful?
JU: Originally, I literally was just gonna have me, my voice and guitar. So building off of that, I only added like a few things so it didn't end up being that much… I'm a big believer of the way that I wrote a song in the moment is kind of how it should be delivered to other people because that's how I was feeling in the moment.
