Jana Horn’s Window To the World
The Glen Rose-raised, Charlottesville-based singer/songwriter talks about her new album, The Window Is The Dream, being in a fiction MFA and letting listeners take what they need from her songs
Photo by Ebru Yildiz
It was barely a year ago when most fans were properly introduced to the cosmos of Jana Horn, who spent time singing in country music revues as a child and then became an MFA student moonlighting as a singer/songwriter as an adult. Or maybe the order of the latter was reversed. Her debut LP, Optimism, was actually recorded five years ago, but Philadelphia-based label No Quarter reissued it to the masses in 2022. It was a perfect reintroduction to Horn’s minimalist rendition of plucky, dreamy, jazz-tinged folk music. What’s unique about Horn is that her oeuvre stands apart from that of her contemporaries. She’s often likened to folks like Cate Le Bon and Aldous Harding, which is a fancy way of calling her lyricism modernist. But it’s true, Horn’s language is arcane, and much of it stems from her fiction escapades at the University of Virginia.
But, at the same time, there’s something different—something mythically eclectic— about Horn’s music-making. Is it because she doesn’t use any streaming service for music? Or is it because her literary influences are what’s teaching her to pen worlds, not records? On her sophomore album, The Window Is The Dream, it appears to be both and then so much more. Songs like “Days Go By” and “The Dream” tap into her off-kilter approach to arrangements. The tracks are still as dainty and minimal as ever, but, now, there’s a new edge to all of them. She doesn’t get too personal in her storytelling, but she doesn’t need to. The songs evoke visceral emotion through the architecture of her sonic vision. It doesn’t hurt that she has an incredible ecosystem of musicians around her, including Jared Samuel Elioseff, Adam Jones, Jonathan Horne, Daniel Francis Doyle and Sarah La Puerta Gautier.
The Window Is The Dream is a bit more electric than Optimism was, thanks to Horne’s splendid guitar work. That aural upgrade pairs well with Horn’s hypnotizing soprano vocals, which are sharper than ever. When she’s not making records or playing shows, she’s teaching freshmen classes, working on her thesis and making note of the world that surrounds her. Though it’s only been a year since Optimism was put back on all of our radars, Horn has grown exponentially between records, making The Window Is The Dream a small triumph at the beginning of—what will likely be—a long, winding career. With The Window Is The Dream out today via No Quarter, Horn sat down with Paste to talk about the record, not defining her own work, the pre-Optimism album that never saw the light of day and how she keeps up with her students who consume music 24/7.
Paste Magazine: So you put out Optimism in 2022. And then you turned around and recorded another album pretty quickly after. Did you find yourself in a particularly good creative spark, or was there more left that needed said after Optimism?
Jana Horn: I don’t suppose it was that conscious. I think that I am always in the process of working on something—creating something—and it just came out. It wasn’t conscious, to follow up Optimism. I had no intentions, really, of putting it out. I had turned a page in my life: I’d gone from living in Austin, where music was very much central to everything I did, and moved to Virginia where I really wasn’t friends with musicians. I was in a completely different world, a more literary, writing world. And I didn’t intend to depart from music, per se. But I was in a situation in which it was something I did privately, as opposed to in a more communal sense. So, the fact that it came about at all is a bit indirect, I suppose, and less consciously than I made Optimism.
Paste: You recorded a solo album before Optimism, but you scrapped it. What happened there?
Horn: Yeah, I just started making music on my own after many years of making it with other people. And there was a process of discovery that ensued and it wasn’t graceful. It was difficult to figure out how to do it all on my own. I didn’t do it all on my own, and I don’t do anything on my own, really. But trying to figure that out was a bit of a mess. I had to lose some stuff in the process. I had to whittle away at what it meant to be a solo artist.
Paste: It feels like the direction you took on Optimism is reflected in The Window Is The Dream. Was there a moment where you figured out what that direction was going to be and that you wanted to pursue it fully?
Horn: I don’t know if I have really defined what I am or what I do. I try to just let what’s happening happen. I do have a strong sense of not wanting to trick anyone and give songs their own time and space. I used to be self-conscious, or something. There was a time in my life when I really was frustrated by the fact that my music didn’t sound like the music that I liked or that I listened to. Now, I came to this realization that the music I make isn’t for me. I make music and I seek out what makes sense to me, what comes naturally. But, I wouldn’t say I’ve found that thing that is particularly reflective of me. I make it in the way that feels most intuitive to me.
Paste: There are some great collaborators on The Window Is The Dream: Jared Samuel Elioseff, Adam Jones, Jonathan Horne, Daniel Francis Doyle. How did you come to assemble such an eclectic group of people who can conjure sounds that mirror everything from Judee Sill to Mount Eerie to Television?