Josaleigh Pollett music profile 

• PJ Guinto
• Josaleigh Pollett

Back in 2020, singer/songwriter Josaleigh Pollett released No Woman is the Sea, a beautiful, yet heart-wrenching album that she wrote during one of the most tumultuous times in her life. She considers this album her "divorce record," written during the time she was going through a break-up and had a ton of emotional baggage.

In the Garden, By the Weeds, however, is a completely different body of work, created with an entirely different approach. The theme centers around regrowth, starting fresh and healing. It also centers on everyday aspects of life, rather than the challenges we all inevitably have to experience at one point or another.

"The approach to this record is so different from anything I've done before," said Pollett. "This new record was really kind of an exploration in writing about the more mundane and day-to-day things, and trying to not base my ability to write a song on traumatic things happening.

"How about if we just find what's the basis for just being a regular person?" Pollett asked herself. "How can I find inspiration in that, and still be able to write about it, without relying on my life to blow up every three years and then I write an album about it?"

Not only was Pollett's mindset going into this album completely changed, the way it was put together was brand new to the singer/songwriter and her bandmate, Jordan Watko. "A lot of it has just been because I haven't put any hard deadlines on myself, or put any strict schedules together," she said. "It's just the two of us, and we recorded everything at our homes, so it never had to be anything more stressful than that. It's been a very chill, sweet way to make a new record instead of the panic that I used to feel."

In the Garden, By the Weeds is a beautiful sonic journey that's soaked in the peacefulness that Pollett and Watko felt during the production of the album. You'll feel completely at ease as soon as you press play. The opening track, "YKWIM," is light and airy, featuring soft acoustic guitar and delicate effects in the background, creating an atmosphere that feels so full, despite there not being a ton happening at the moment musically.

It's an album you can listen to anytime; you don't have to be in a certain mood to enjoy what's happening. "Very much both thematically and sonically, the goals for this record were holding a lot of nuance of everyday things that happen," Pollett said. "It's a lot of, I'm pulling weeds outside because I have to, going on a lot of walks and dealing with the day-to-day feelings of just being a human at this time, while also processing these big, huge nebulous existential life questions."

One of the main hopes for Pollett with this album is that it fosters a sense of peace and belonging for people. "I like to think of that as, there's this garden, and there's weeds in the garden, and the weeds belong there," Pollett said. "They are supposed to be it; they are not unnatural. The unnaturalness to them is just how we feel about them. It's not necessarily that they don't belong next to the vegetables and the flowers."

While some of the songs on the album were written during/reference the pandemic, they aren't consumed by the dread and complete uncertainty that was happening during that time. "There's a song that explores asking if that was another earthquake or just the garbage truck, because that was a feeling that I experienced for several weeks at one point in the early pandemic," Pollett said, referencing the track "Earthquake Song" on the album. "A lot of those feelings carried through from that point, because I know for so many people that the pandemic just really shook the foundation of what we understood the world was like."

In the Garden, By the Weeds will be streaming everywhere July 14, and this release will mark a change for Pollett's career going forward. In the past, Pollett has always written in a very reactionary way; very much, "You did this thing, and here's how I feel about it," she explained. She describes how this album is the most self-reflective she's ever been in her work, and how she'd like to not write from such an emotionally-charged place in the future.

"Writing this record and putting out this record and the way I talk about this record feels so different, and it feels so much more connected to me as a person than I have felt about my music in the past," she said. "I definitely think of it as this shift of, this is more making the really intentional music instead of just, 'I wrote a song yesterday, here it is.' Right now, it's like, I have an idea and I really want to explore it, and I want to make it into something that captures this feeling in a lot of different ways," she said.

More than ever, the future is looking bright for Pollett. As she continues to flourish, so too does her music. "I hope that I can continue to grow in that direction where I am making this art for a very specific reason for me. I don't want to be haphazard about it. I want to be very intentional with it."