Jessica Winter Tickets

A conversation with Jessica Winter never quite goes in the direction you expect it to. Aninnocuous question about where a song came from can end up spiralling in all directions fromrare animals, her deep love of trains to scientology healings.On herfirst full-length studio album, Jessica Winter is not healed: but she’s getting there. “I havebeen around the block,” she says emphatically. Dodgy industry encounters, strained family dynamics, euphoric festival sets and fucked up relationships have allled her to this, her firstalbum-sardonically named 'My First Album' despite her years of graft in the music industry as a solo performer, songwriter, multiple-mac-wearer and band member. It’s a record that ping-pongs poppily through the sounds that have shaped her, a collection of vibrant, audacioussongs about figuring out what’s wrong with you and finding a way to make it right.

In 2016, after years of gigging in bands and writing with other artists, Jessica met Alex Sebley and together they became Pregoblin, fusing punk sensibilities with art-pop bangers, but Jessica found herself developing her own persona as an artist. Stepping back from Pregoblin, “Jessica Winter” came into sharper focus as a blend of every thing that had come before: the sharp edges of punk, the open-hearted silliness of pantomime, the tragic drama of opera, and the hooks andbounce of big-haired 80s pop, here she finally is.

Since 2019, her singles and EPs have been postcards from that journey and 'My First Album' is a fully realised dispatch from this same pathway: a bold, questioning album, full of personalitysitting somewhere on the spectrum between therapy and the dancefloor.A year into working on the record, which was started in 2023, she began to realise much of theframework of her life, even her perceptions of good and bad and who she herself was, hinged oncodependency and this is when she wrote L.O.V.E.-the first single from the album. “I used tobelieve that all you needed was love-you know, the Beatles vibe. And in a sense, you do, butnow I look at love differently. Through music I’m untangling the strands of love and panic. Whenyou think about all of the greatest pop songs about love, lyrics like ‘I can’t live, if living is without you’, all these classic, huge, dramatic lyrics... they’re so codependent!” She joined Co-dependents Anonymous (“the most unglamorous of all fellowships!”), a therapy group that ishelping her to develop healthy, loving relationships.My First Albumwas never really meant to chronicle that journey but that’s the way it’s workedout. Some songs are about a character striving for fame and success-the tongue in cheek ‘Big Star’ where she lets delusions of grandeur distract her from what’s important , followed by theunbelievably catchy stadium pop of ‘Worst Person In The World’ (“I saw the film and was like,this needs to be a song”)-and others are inspired by moments in Jessica’s own life.Having grown up in a family of unusual, “outsider”personalities, Jess is used to throwing herself into“outsider” situations that others maybe wouldn’t. “It’s had negatives and positives to it,” she says ofthis openness,