Before hitting the record button, there are a couple things Jules Grace has to do first.
“We have to turn the heater and the furnace off, so it’s not making that airy noise,” she said. With her father’s help, Grace was able to haphazardly rig the basement of her Concord home with acoustic foam, soundproofing it in the hopes of completing a project years in the making.
Most college students have summer projects, and Jules Grace, an Emerson sophomore majoring in media psychology, is no exception. She spent most of last summer in recording sessions with her father, who helped produce and mix her debut album “Diaries & Daydreams.”
“Diaries & Daydreams” was released on Dec. 14. Despite being recorded in a basement and mixed on GarageBand, Grace is certain that her summer-long effort paid off.
Capturing a sound ripe with light, summertime riffs in a style reminiscent of acts like Beach Bunny and Plumtree, Grace’s exploration of growing up examines the need to escape into a world of one’s imagination. “The last line in ‘Catch Me If You Can’ is ‘follow me on the path to make-believe, baby, we’ll start to dance,’” said Grace. “That’s kind of the idea of the album. It’s very adolescent.” Her “dreamy pop rock” switches from leisurely to lively, and might be best suited coming from the speakers of a convertible cruising down a nice stretch of road.
Grace’s songwriting methods vary greatly. She often recalls lying in bed late at night, trying to sleep, before suddenly sitting up with an idea for a musical lick or lyric.
If the age-old question is “What comes first, the music or the lyrics?” to Grace, the answer is obvious: “If the song itself isn’t catchy without the vocals, then it’s not a good song to me. For my standards, at least,” said Grace. For the songs that Grace had yet to assign lyrics to during the album’s recording sessions, she describes spending a lot of time in her front yard, pacing back and forth, listening to her mixed tracks, assigning lyrics to the songs in her mind.
Last fall, Grace participated in Emerson’s Berklee Valencia program, where she lived in Spain alongside classmates and students from the Berklee College of Music. Hauling their instruments down the Spanish streets to the coastline, Grace and fellow musicians played some tunes along the sunny shores of the Platja del Cabanyal in Valencia. Here, Grace was able to shoot her first music video for her single “Feel Alive.” Grace confirmed the video will be released sometime in March. At Emerson, Grace has performed on WERS’s Wicked Local Wednesdays and is scheduled to perform on NBS’s Musicians Wanted.
“I was never really sitting down being like, ‘I’m going to make an album with nine songs.’ That’s not really what happened,” said Grace. In high school, Grace primarily spent most of her musical talent playing guitar in local cover bands. She only recently began utilizing her vocal ability.
The songs on “Diaries & Daydreams” span the beginning to the end of Grace’s teenage years. The album contains songs that originate from the dawn of Grace’s musical passions—she began playing guitar when she was nine—to the months leading up to the album’s release.
“It’s an homage to my childhood, my upbringing, what I’ve been through, and where I’m going,” said Grace. “It’s almost like my goodbye to adolescence.”
After realizing the number of original songs she had accumulated over the years, Grace and her father made their way down the steps to their basement to fine-tune the tracks that made up the sum of Grace’s musical youth.
She describes working on the album with her father as a meaningful experience. Not only did her father act as a session guitarist for the album, but he sang backup on almost every track.
“It is something I will always share with him,” said Grace. “My dad, he really got me into my love for music, and I enjoyed working on [the album] with him. That is the best part. Whenever I think about the album, I think that it’s something we did together. He helped me bring the songs to life. It was magic.”
