THE 10-SONG ALBUM TAPS INTO MELODRAMATIC ‘70S ROCK AND PIANO BALLADRY TO GRAPPLE WITH TALES OF MODERN TRAGEDY 

FIRST SINGLE “I’M SO HAPPY (I THINK I MIGHT CRY)” AVAILABLE NOW – LISTEN HERE 

Nashville, TN – Jesse Daniel Edwards will release a new album entitled Violensia on June 23 via Cavity Search Records (PRE-SAVE HERE). The album is the second under his name – a departure from his previous project, Juni Ata – marking a new artistic chapter in Edwards’ career. The lead single “I’m So Happy (I Think I Might Cry)” is available now – listen here.

Experienced in many roles across the music industry – tour manager for Lucinda Williams, Morrisey, and Jason Isbell; under the aforementioned Americana moniker Juni Ata; and as a member of his brother LA Edwards’ band – Edwards is pursuing a new sound and vision with Violensia. Across 10 songs of piano-based alternative indie rock, he presents a unique style and tackles real-life tragedies befalling the common person. 

The lead single “I’m So Happy (I Think I Might Cry)” launches the album with theatrical flourish and bombast, heard in the rising and falling emotion of piano fingerings and confessional lyrics (“I’ve been around the world / And guess what, it’s all the same”). The song lurches forward with dual guitar solos and rock ‘n’ roll that straddles operatic, elegiac, and jubilant all within alternating verses. 

Violensia responds to the challenges of these times through a lens that is personal, though not autobiographical. Its voice is a widescreen treatment of various characters caught in the grip of national traumas, the familiar shocks of the 5 o’clock news. There is suicide and murder. Drug misadventures and unplanned pregnancies. Yet none are rendered in self-pitying remorse; Edwards’ musical response is a full-on effort to grapple with all of it, delivered in the life-affirming tradition that is rock and roll.