Jeremy Zucker Unveils CRUSHER
The 12-track album features his latest single, “Therapist” (co-written and co-produced with Ethan Gruska[Phoebe Bridgers, Fiona Apple]), alongside his summertime anthems, “18” and “HONEST,” and heartfelt ballad, “Cry with you.”
On the album, Jeremy says, “‘CRUSHER’ is my response. I take back everything I said. It’s no longer about us, or me. It’s about you. During the writing process of this album, I became more myself than ever. It’s a more raw and confident me. I found new influences sonically, and I finally learned how to have fun making music again.
office sat down with the musician to talk about his latest album release, his inspiration, future plans, and more.
Check out the interview below.
How are you and how's your year been?
I'm good. Year's been okay. I've been working and keeping busy.
Nice, you’re releasing your sophomore album, CRUSHER on October 1st. Could you talk to me about how you conceptualized your vision for the album?
Yeah, I think a lot of it came from a place of, a lot of like reflecting on a prior relationship that in the past I had really sort of romanticized and softened. During the past year I had a lot of time to think and a lot of things came to light and it became an album about almost hating someone. It's very hateful, spiteful, resentful, but not really in a negative way, which is interesting. It's sort of this self-empowerment thing.
Sweet, I love that for you. This album feels very intimate 一 and it sounds like you’ve really tapped into yourself. What did the creative process behind this album look like and what do you want your listeners to feel when they’re listening to it?
So when I finished the album, I came up with the name CRUSHER. It has nothing to do with a romantic crush, It's more, crusher, meaning one who crushes, one who destroys and pulverizes. I was thinking a lot about what a crusher is in my mind and just playing around with the idea. A lot of the industrial aesthetic sort of comes from that and like I was looking up schematics of rock crushers and we went to a rock quarry just to see what the vibe was and , and it was just insane. It's a part of the world that you don't ever focus on 一 like, the rocks that made this building?
But yeah, they were just putting massive pieces of granite in this giant machine that was pulverizing it and then sorting it and spitting out on a conveyor belt into a giant pile of gravel. In my head it was like, okay, this is a machine that's systematically destroying and reorganizing this thing that's supposed to be unbreakable. It sort of became a metaphor in my mind for like somebody that's intentionally and methodically and systematically breaking somebody down and destroying them and fucking with them. So that's a lot of the metaphor of the album. It's like, how do you look at someone that's doing something like that? How do you engage with them? For me, it was less about that and more about how do I feel about this? Like, I resent this person and I feel empowered by my decision to not fuck with any of that.
Amazing. I love all of that. How is your writing process? Do you go to the studio and sit and write, or is it kind of happening as part of your day?
So I pretty much make everything myself and write and produce myself. But this time around, I collaborated with a lot of friends and a lot of the lyrics come from random things that I’ll jot down during the day and with the random guitar parts, I’ll figure out on my own as well. Then I sort of sit down on my computer alone or with a friend or two and just lay down the bass and immediately start writing and riffing. The song is built at the same time as it's being written, so it's being produced as it's being written. I'll usually come up with a draft really quickly and then spend weeks and months sort of dialing in the production. Sometimes I'll bring other people in when I feel like I can't completely do something the way that I want to.
How do you get into the mood to create the vibe that you want to convey to your listeners?
It’s really tapped into how I'm feeling at the moment. I will play an instrument or modify sounds or pull out a synth or find samples or voice memos or recordings that I've taken in the city or wherever. It's really just whatever I gravitate to and whatever makes me feel more of the way that I'm feeling in the moment. It sort of becomes like a landslide in the sense of when I do zero in on that feeling, I'm pulling in more things that are eliciting more of these feelings, sonically. It snowballs until you start feeling it more and then more ideas come up that you put in that then convey that even more. Then you put in something that changes the context of all of those feelings and the way you deliver certain lyrics make you feel a certain way. It becomes this journey of expression in one lane that is that initial feeling that was felt.
Love all of that. The focus track from this album is “Deep end,” what feeling dominates you when you’re listening to this track?
It's the only song that I would consider to be a pandemic inspired song on the album, only because it's sort of the monotony of daily life. Like, not wanting to get outta bed and not wanting to do anything or feeling like you're driving yourself crazy and all the things that you do to sort of cope and feel better. It's framed in this really hopeful and celebratory tone and I’m honestly never doing these things on purpose. It just, it just feels right, that's the only way I can explain it. I end up juxtaposing lyrics with emotions in songs a lot of the time. For example, my song ‘comethru' sounds like the happiest song in the world, but the lyrics are super depressing and somewhat hopeful, but mostly depressing. I think ‘deep end’ is similar, It's literally like I'm going crazy. These little things that I do help me a little bit, but still not feeling great. It's just not my year and it's a really bouncy, sort of a bubbly chorus.
Your “MORE NOISE !!!!” tour is coming up on October 19th! How excited are you to finally return back to performing live? Are you nervous at all?
So excited! It's been a long time since I've actually been able to do a real show and I've only done one full US tour and that was in 2018. It was just the way my schedule worked out, I was ready to do a full world tour in April, a month after most of the US shut down. So I've been set back probably as far as I possibly could have been. So, I'm just super hyped to get back to it, and I've had just as much time to sort of think about where I want to take the live show and really work on it. So it'll just be that much better.
I guess my last question to you would be, what do you have planned for the rest of 2021? What can you tell us about your future projects?
So my album crusher is coming out on October 1st and I'm going on tour in the middle of October. I’m doing a full US run and currently working on a Europe tour, hopefully this spring and Asia and Australia after the summer, hopefully. Then festivals next summer, so we're really thinking very far ahead making up for lost time, but yeah, I'm just gonna plan on just touring and continuing making music and excited for it all.
