Shiverstruck, Ian Sweet’s fifth album, delivers honesty and personal reflection
Jilian Medford, also known as IAN SWEET, just dropped her fifth album, “Shiverstruck”. SWEET is following the beat of her own drum, charting her course through the brightest and darkest moments life has to offer. Now 33, she reflects on moving to New York, singing for babies, and locking herself up in Atlanta to birth her latest album.
Photo credit: Enoch Chuang.
There are too many emotions, and too many outlets through which to pour them once they are felt—from a journal to the Notes app or even a voice message. Songwriting reveals IAN SWEET at her most instinctual. She explains, “It’s crazy to speak to yourself in this way and find out what you’re struggling with through songwriting; it’s basically the subconscious fighting to come out.” Bias Cut delves into the private catharsis at the heart of “Shiverstruck.”
Described as Los Angeles indie rock’s reigning “sad girl,” IAN SWEET began as Jilian’s solo project over a decade ago. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, she needs no introduction to critics and popheads alike.
Jilian joined the interview from her tour bus in Chicago, where she had just finished a mini-tour in support of Midwest emo legends American Football. Soon to make her way back home to Los Angeles, she giggled, obviously giddy in the lead-up to her album’s release. She told me that she’d been singing her heart out in a “crazy cathartic way,” and asked me “not to mind” her strained voice. She sported her own merch and expressed excitement to return to Southern California.
As transformative as it was to discover singing and writing in her bedroom at 13, Jilian projects a renewed version of herself on her fifth studio album, “Shiverstruck”—a ten-track ode to talking herself through it all. “Shiverstruck” is what Jilian calls her happiest and most grounded project. She brought it to life over the course of a year spent secluded in an Atlanta recording studio, a deliberate choice made to help her feel completely removed from her everyday life. Throughout the album, SWEET traces self-made and man-made heartbreaks from the last few years.
“Shiverstruck” was written during Jilian’s second year living in New York City, a time she describes as her most crucial period as a human being and independent musician. She longed to leave behind a now-void relationship, and as she searched for a place shaped to fit her, spent too much time in her head—a tendency the city has a way of encouraging. However, it wasn’t all bad; she found a job teaching music to keep her afloat in the city and shared Devo, Bruce Springsteen, and Prince with her young students. Of course, she sang of rainbows and farm animals as well, and the classrooms of babies became a pocket of the city where she could share in the joy of children learning what it meant to jam out. As wholesome and innocent as the job was, she felt an equally unavoidable necessity to write about her life. So, with an album in mind, she pursued the creation of something that felt like her own.
“Silverscreen”, the album’s third track, is Jilian’s soft-sung meditation on fame—not a clout-driven fantasy of VIP rooms and followers, but rather a reflection on the oft-spouted industry refrain to “do your 10 years.” Jilian recalls conversations with industry professionals that she couldn’t quite shake, in which her status as a small artist prompted ridicule and taunting. But the truth is that Jilian has put in her time and can’t be blamed for wanting her moment. She beams as she admits, “I just know that there's nothing more that I enjoy in life than performing and doing this, so that feeling of being able to do this for the rest of my life in a sustainable way would just be like…” She stops and sighs wistfully.
Throughout the album, she constantly reality-checks herself with lines like “Jilian / You talk like someone's always listening / Like pain makes you more interesting” in the self-titled track, “Jilian.” Recounting the process of its creation, she explains, “It’s such a sarcastic song—like, ‘This is so dramatic and you need to snap out of it.’ [That’s what] I was feeling.”
Photo credit: Enoch Chuang.
Despite her tell-alls, Jilian clarifies, “I honestly think this is one of my least sad albums, which is funny.” Though it contains a lot of frustration, another prominent throughline is her own de-masking. She allows herself to zoom out and reframe her journal-like lyrics with a newfound willingness to leave them exposed. As easy as it is to say that an artist is “rediscovering themselves” in a new project, Shiverstruck is a wholly restorative project for Jilian that, as a forward-dive concept album, draws inspiration from the seamless, unashamed approaches of artists like Sharon Van Etten, PJ Harvey, and Kate Bush. “I’ve always wanted to shy away and bury my voice under production and a lot of instruments, but in this record I feel like—in all ways—I’m not trying to hide behind anything,” she says.
Amid the love and rage, and within the chaos of the cheeky, blurred lines of her relationships—to both artistry and others—Jilian senses an excitement in her work that she hasn’t felt in some time. What seem like sad moments in this album are simply the raw and real she had been searching for after her previous album, “Sucker.” In comparison, “Shiverstruck” is a human, tactile, immersive sound, deliberately devoid of computer-generated or programmed noise. She outlines how living in New York, constantly feeling “raw” and “vulnerable,” granted her a true growth spurt. Thankfully and completely unexpectedly, she conceived this album from novel emotional landscapes.
On July 24, a day after the release of “Shiverstruck”, those feelings and their songs found a fitting stage at Highland Park’s historic Bob Baker Marionette Theater in collaboration with musical act Sid The Cat and the theater’s live concert series, School House Rocks. IAN SWEET held an intimate listening party for the village that helped create the album, and laughter filled the room as the theater’s critically acclaimed puppeteers—renowned for their participatory performances featuring handcrafted marionettes—performed along with every song. With listeners gathered around her, Jilian was all smiles as she sang and interacted with the theater’s colorful fabric characters.
IAN SWEET’s celebration of these songs, surrounded by collaborators and loved ones, cast “Shiverstruck” in a new light. There was no room for heartbreak, doubt, or exhaustion—only love to be shared.
Photo credit: Lucy Sandler.