News
"it’s a nesting egg of an album, seven songs concluding with the 30-minute improvisation that inspired the album. The majority of the album traverses jazzy climes, where Feist-era Canadian indie and Prince demos are part of the same ecosystem and love in all its forms is the life-giving sun" - THE FADER
Jonah Yano is always shifting the unstable ground his songs rest on, revising it, making it anew. Often his compositions are warm, soulful, and hazily impressionistic, but Yano prefers to resist easy genre categorization, flitting, instead, between jazz and folk traditions, R&B and hip-hop, rock and ambient and electronic. On portrait of a dog — the 2023 LP he made with frequent collaborators BADBADNOTGOOD, praised in Pitchfork for its “cryptic, diaristic intimacy” — the Japanese-Canadian musician weaved his lilting, wistful voice into a harvest-hued mosaic of heartbreak and family memory, for which he recorded hours of conversations and digitized thousands of old photographs to wrestle with his grandfather’s encroaching dementia. The album featured guest contributions from Slauson Malone and Sea Oleena, with string arrangements by Eliza Niemi, Leland Whitty, and Yano. On Jonah Yano & the Heavy Loop, his forthcoming record out Oct. 4, Yano has once again upended his musical direction, crafting an experimental, chimerical album with the live ensemble-turned-studio band (Christopher Edmonson, Benjamin Maclean, Leighton Harrell, Felix Fox-Pappas, and Raiden Louie) that he’s been painstakingly scouting for the last three years. Yano has conceived of this as a kind of double-record; the anchoring song, The Heavy Loop, is a 30-minute feat of improvisation that sees the band leaning into noise music and free sound, and constitutes the “raw materials” of the album’s freewheeling soundscapes. “Concentrate,” the lead single, smoulders over subdued keys, bright guitar arpeggios, jazzy drums, and clarinet work from Clairo, whom Yano and his band opened for during her 2022 EU/UK tour. “If souvenir is about what I feel, and portrait of a dog is about what I remember or want to remember, then this album is about what I think,” says Yano. “And maybe that’s the difference.”
Though he now resides in Montreal, Yano was born in Hiroshima in 1994, and emigrated to Vancouver when he was four. He grew up listening to blues guitar players and classic rock music, and after learning the piano under his grandmother’s tutelage as a child, picked up the guitar in a “School of Rock-esque” middle school program. He started recording demos on his cellphone in 2016, when he moved to Toronto and joined up with the city’s burgeoning underground music scene. Many of the people he met and jammed with there — Monsune, Jacques Greene, Joseph L’Étranger, BBNG — became his eventual collaborators, and taught him technical skills he would use to record his first real songs. His friendship with the Toronto-based experimental music duo MONEYPHONE culminated with a song they made together called “On Lock,” his first ever feature, and Yano released his first solo single later that year, “Rolex, the Ocean.” “It’s important for me to interface with what’s happening in whichever localized area I’m in,” says Yano. “I always want my music to reflect where I am as much as what I’m trying to say.”
In his room and the home studios of friends, he began working on a suite of songs that would form his début project, the breezy, six-track Nervous EP (2019), which blended jazz, hip-hop, and R&B influences with subtle electronica. It introduced Yano as a soulful, genre-agnostic talent with an ear for melody and intimate songwriting, and he followed it up later that year with a lush cover of The Majestics’ “Key to Love (Is Understanding),” which the original Memphis funk/soul band praised as “well done with [a] slight personal twist.” Yano’s well-reviewed début album, souvenir, expanded the panoramic sonic landscape of his first EP, seamlessly weaving together drum’n’bass, rock, ambient, soul, jazz, and more. His free association-based songwriting introduced many of the themes that would prove central to his work — memory, family histories, the nuances of interpersonal relationships, identity fractured by diaspora — and the record included a reworked version of a song called “shoes,” which Yano’s then-estranged father, Tatsuya Muraoka, had recorded 25 years before their reconciliation. In Japanese, Muraoka sang about a pair of shoes he bought for his child son, and Yano, now older, filled it in by questioning his father’s absence from his childhood due to his parents’ separation: a duet traversing oceans and decades. He released the album on Father’s Day in 2020.
Since then, Yano’s work has earned praise in major international music publications, including Billboard, The Fader, CLASH, Exclaim, Complex, and Pitchfork. He’s been featured on NTS Radio, CBC Music’s The Intro, NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, and performed on COLORS twice. He was twice nominated for the SOCAN Songwriting Prize, and has garnered the attention of Gilles Peterson, Benji B, and the late Virgil Abloh. He’s played the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the EFG London Jazz Festival, and toured Japan for ten solo shows in 2023. In 2024, he released the little italy demos, a three-song tape he made with his neighbour in Montreal, Le Ren. His forthcoming record features contributions from Helena Deland, Ouri, and Clairo.
"an architect of recollection" Exclaim!
"warm, wistful, and quaint all at once" HYPEBEAST
"'contemplative and comforting" NPR
"His voice lilts with every syllable, making the imagery feel crushing and poignant" Pitchfork
Montreal artist and songwriter Jonah Yano announces his new album Jonah Yano & The Heavy Loop due October 4th. Coinciding with the album news, he shares two new songs, the previously-unheard “Romance ESL,” as well as releasing his momentous album closer “The Heavy Loop." Both songs, and his new album as a whole, signal an experimental new chapter in Yano’s creative trajectory and his first time working hand-in-hand with his band, Christopher Edmonson, Benjamin Maclean, Leighton Harrell, Felix Fox-Pappas and Raiden Louie. Together, they’ve crafted a collaborative album with Jonah at the helm, that melds free sound, rock, R&B and jazz traditions into a panoramic view of the experience of making an album.
Yano is a soulful, genre-agnostic talent, always shifting the unstable ground his songs rest on, revising it, making it anew. Having emigrated to Vancouver from Hiroshima at the age of four, much of Yano’s approach to music is influenced by his own fractured identity as a member of the Japanese-Canadian diaspora, as well as his larger interest in memory, family histories, and the nuances of interpersonal relationships. The result is a soundtrack that defies easy genre categorization and captures the grey area in which we can find the most fruitful experiences life has to teach us while also highlighting Jonah’s expert musical compositional skills. Yano’s band – composed of Raiden Louie (Drums), Chris Edmondson (Saxophone, Clarinet, Synthesizer), Benja (Guitar), Leighton Harrell (Bass) and Felix Fox-Pappas (Piano, Rhodes) -- first came together to record his 2023 single "concentrate" with Clairo. Now, Yano sits front and center playing the role of conductor as he guides the gentle haze of his musical soundscape into a new ever-evolving world with a steady hand.
Jonah Yano has made songwriting contributions to fellow Canadians Charlotte Day Wilson’s Cyan Blue and Mustafa’s forthcoming album Dunya. In 2023, Jonah released his sophomore album portrait of a dog, co-produced alongside BADBADNOTGOOD and received critical acclaim from outlets like RANGE, Pitchfork, and Exclaim!. He was twice-nominated for the SOCAN Songwriting Prize, drawing the attention of Gilles Peterson, Benji B and the late Virgil Abloh. He’s played the Montreal International jazz Festival, the EFG London Jazz Festival and toured Japan for ten solo shows in 2023. Earlier this year, he released the little italy demos, a three-song collaborative tape with his neighbor in Montreal, Le Ren.
"an architect of recollection" - Exclaim!
"warm, wistful, and quaint all at once" - HYPEBEAST
"'60s soulful voice that has hints of Smokey Robinson" - NPR
"His voice lilts with every syllable, making the imagery feel crushing and poignant" - Pitchfork
Montreal’s Jonah Yano shares a new single today titled “concentrate." The new song bookends a year that he kicked off with the release of his critically-acclaimed sophomore album portrait of a dog, which was co-produced alongside frequent collaborators BADBADNOTGOOD.
Jonah recorded “concentrate” with his live band (Christopher Edmondson, Benjamin Maclean, Leighton Harrell, Felix Fox-Pappas, and Raiden Louie), the first time they have all recorded a song together in-studio after first coming together to support Clairo on tour in the UK in 2022. The song also includes guest contributions from Clairo herself on clarinet and backup vocals. Fittingly placed to cap off the year, “concentrate” is a song about beginnings, and it also marks the beginning of a confident step into a new musical direction for Jonah Yano, having worked alongside the likes of Mustafa and BADBADNOTGOOD.
In addition to the single, Jonah will embark on his European tour dates later this week. The tour includes a stop at the Pitchfork Music Festival Paris, where Jonah will share the stage with acts like Youth Lagoon, Weyes Blood, Crumb, and more. Tickets can be found here.
This is Jonah’s first solo release since his sophomore album portrait of a dog, which was released earlier this year and received critical acclaim from outlets like RANGE, Pitchfork, and Exclaim!. Jonah also performed several of the album’s standout songs live for CBC’s The Intro in April.
Read more about the release on Sterogum.
See his upcoming European live dates below and stay tuned for more from Jonah Yano in 2024.
Tour Dates
11/9 - Bruges, Belgium @ Cactus Club
11/10 - Paris, France @ Pitchfork Festival Paris
11/12 - London, England @ Jazz Cafe
11/15 - Istanbul, Turkey @ Zorlu PSM
Accompanied by his bandmates from BADBADNOTGOOD, Leland Whitty performs "Glass Moon" live on Blogoteque. "Glass Moon" is from his recently released debut solo album, Anyhow.
On his sophomore album, Jonah Yano shares the single co-produced by BADBADNOTGOOD. The track, "the ordinary is ordinary because it ordinarily repeats" opens with fleet-footed base notes into a cresendo of jazz prowess from Jonah and the BADBADNOTGOOD crew, with space for each instrument to shine.
Portrait of a Dog includes the previously-released singles "song about the family house," "Leslianne," "always," "the speed of sound!," and "portrait of a dog," which is at the confluence of his love of folk and jazz music. The album is a family affair in every sense, meticulously pieced together by Jonah and frequent collaborators BADBADNOTGOOD, while also deeply rooted and written from Jonah's personal experiences as he rediscovers his Japanese heritage and the importance of archiving family memories.
Beyond the co-production of BADBADNOTGOOD, Portrait of a Dog features additional guest work from Slauson Malone, Sea Oleena, with string arrangements by Eliza Niemi, Leland Whitty, and Yano himself. Yano's forthcoming second album follows his stint supporting Clairo for the last leg of her North American tour and the entirety of her European tour dates, which wrapped up last November. He also closed the live run with a headline show of his own at Servant Jazz Quarters in London.
See Stereogum for more about it.
And NPR's New Music Friday for a featured album piece.