Jack River, release her debut album Sugar Mountain on June 22 via Holly Rankin’s own label Hopeless Utopian. News of the album comes amisdst a completely sold-out Australian tour.

Sugar Mountain is described as a phosphorescent album. It seems to glow with pop highs and spacey riffs, but come closer and you’ll glimpse the darkness in its depths. The first clue is in the title, says Jack River (real name Holly Rankin). Sugar Mountain is named after Neil Young’s bittersweet ode to youth and the loss of innocence. As Rankin explains it, “It’s the souvenir of my youth, the wish of what it could have been.”

Eleven years ago, a tragedy fractured Rankin’s life – and the small NSW coastal town she grew up in – when her beloved younger sister passed away in an accident. Rankin found herself adrift, and songwriting became not so much catharsis as a survival tool.

“Writing and producing what is now Sugar Mountain was my self-created tool to pour every fragment of my inner destruction into some kind of creation. When I stopped to look at what I was doing and what I was chasing, I realised that every single song on this album is about something I didn’t have, lovers I never touched, and the production was the vision and sound of an alternate youth, one (naturally) from the movies, from the dream. Coupled with this vision of youth, this album was made over so many years and setbacks that the drums got louder, the guitars got thicker, the synths got clearer and my vocals found strength they never had when I started. It’s my self-written bible of crawling toward the light amidst one of the darkest times a family could ever endure.” – Holly Rankin.

JACK RIVER ON TOUR:

March 22 | Howler, Melbourne SOLD OUT!
March 23 | Oxford Art Factory, Sydney SOLD OUT!
March 24 | Woolly Mammoth, Brisbane SOLD OUT!
May 19 | The Great Escape Festival, Brighton
May 25 Dot to Dot Festival, Manchester
May 26 | Dot to Dot Festival, Bristol
May 27 | Dot to Dot Festival, Nottingham