Over a decade since launching IAN SWEET, songwriter Jilian Medford is still managing to eke gossamer indie-pop tunes out of new life experiences. On her fifth and latest album Shiverstruck, the artist reflects on a move away from her hometown of LA and the end of a relationship, though perhaps its biggest impetus was the experience of watching kids process music for the first time at a job she took during her time in New York. “[T]heir faces lighting up completely unselfconscious,” she shared ahead of the record’s release, “it rewires your brain as a songwriter and steers you more towards honesty. Everything felt immediate and real.”
Listening to Shiverstruck, it becomes immediately clear how such an experience might inspire a factory reset for her sound and the way she approaches lyric-writing. The album’s 10 tracks mirror the same balance of wispy dream pop and glowing new-wave accents she’s always explored—all expressed with an elevated sense of drama—yet it still feels divorced from the project’s early material, when Medford’s curious nature translated to songs that were a little more uncertain of themselves. Rather than channeling uncertainty into a compelling narrative, these songs feel confident by comparison. It’s clearly the work of someone who’s lived enough lives since she started documenting them that her earliest chapter begins to feel unfamiliar.
With the record out today via Polyvinyl, stream along and read Medford’s track-by-track breakdown of the album’s themes below. You can also grab a copy of the LP here, and catch IAN SWEET on their fall North American tour at the dates listed here.
1. “987”
“987” is unraveling in plain sight, for the whole world to see. I tried to capture contradiction in this song—I know it’s all headed toward destruction, but I keep performing anyway, maybe out of habit or maybe even out of need. I keep smiling, keep lighting up the room even as everything inside might start to dim. Striking a match in the dark just to be able to see, even for a second, even though it might be fleeting. I wanted to open the record with this song because it feels super raw and exposed.
2. “Criminal Kissing”
This song is a snapshot of that middle ground between nostalgia/longing and self-sabotage and how memories get tangled up and mixed up over time and you’re caught between wanting to move on and wanting to relive the chaos all over again. “Criminal Kissing” is about the thrill of repeating something you already know will crash, burn, and fall apart. When I wrote it I was thinking about how memories can kind of trick you and how your brain can edit out the bad parts to leave you with just the good stuff sometimes. The “ha ha” refrain feels almost nervous, like trying to laugh off how close I am to giving in again. It’s about the ritual of returning to something familiar, even if not healthy, even if you’ll be paying the price later on.
3. “Silver Screen”
“Silver Screen” is a song where I’m really taking inventory of my life and the way it all unfolded and the moments I never expected from it. It’s about longing for clarity and control while accepting that some things will always just remain elusive. Sometimes you have to just let go. I was living in New York and really longing for California while writing this song. I was missing those simple things like driving in the rain and zoning out watching the windshield wipers. This song feels really intimate in its reflections about chasing what I want out of life. Life has unfolded in all these unexpected ways and it’s led me here and I’m figuring out in real time how to accept it.
4. “Jilian”
Sad singer, such an idiot. Bad sex, cigarettes: This song is about all the little mistakes that make life feel cruel and hilarious at the same time. I know I sound dramatic—and maybe I am (yeah, I am). This song was a chance to look inward and really reflect on my patterns and behavior that contribute to the heartbreak, the joy, the longing, etc. in my life. This song is messy and full of contradictions that make me who I am. I’ve really struggled to get to know myself these last few years; moving to New York was a beautiful step in my life, but a really difficult one emotionally. This song is like I’m calling myself out, shaking myself awake, and climbing out of the depression hole I’ve dug myself into—because I really have more living to do.
5. “Deadweight”
“Deadweight” is about being so stuck in your own head that you start feeling like you’re dragging everyone down around you. I wanted to write about depression in a way that still had some humor to it, because that’s honestly how I experience it a lot of the time. I’ll joke about how much of a mess I am while also knowing there’s something really intense underneath it. There’s a push and pull between wanting to be seen and wanting to keep people at arm’s length—which felt really true to where I was when I wrote it.
6. “Shiverstruck”
“Shiverstruck” is both an apology and a confession. I know I can be fragile, intense, and hard to reach sometimes, but I want to find someone who loves those parts about me and doesn’t leave when things get messy. When I sing “My heart’s a tightrope walker,” I’m saying that I’m always trying to balance between wanting to be loved and being terrified of it/shutting down. The song isn’t really about losing someone, but about finally seeing yourself clearly in the aftermath of a relationship. Being not easy to love doesn’t mean you’re unworthy of it.
7. “Hired Gun”
This song is about someone I thought I’d never write a song about again. I hadn’t heard from this ex in five years, and then suddenly he texted me. He was in talks with my same record label to put out his music. This song is me processing the shock and rage and the strange mix of fear and disbelief (I wrote it the same day I got his text). “Hired Gun” is about how I had to show up for myself like I never have before, set boundaries and finally flip that power dynamic. There’s extreme truth in this song that I feel really proud of in exposing the absurdity of someone thinking they could casually re-enter my life. All these years of growth has made me someone unrecognizable to him, and that was something I’ll forever fucking love and be proud of. It was a really important moment in this album-writing process, because I had to kind of recenter myself after being shaken up a bit.
8. “La La Love”
This was the first song I wrote for the album! I was on tour with Caroline Rose and started putting this song together in the back of the van. “La La Love” is definitely the most hopeless romantic song on the record. It’s about getting completely swept up in the idea of someone and knowing you’re probably making them a bigger deal in your head than they really are. I wanted it to feel a little over-the-top and hyperbolic, because that’s what falling in love feels like sometimes. There’s this lyric, “Even when we think we’re dying, we keep livin’ just the same,” which feels like the heart of the song to me. We have these moments where everything feels like life or death, but the world just keeps turning and you wake up the next day and it’s the same shit. I think there’s something strangely comforting about that.
9. “Wild Heart”
This song is about what it feels like to fight for my place in the music world—to constantly be my own advocate, to keep showing up while doors close, and no’s pile up. I don’t cry like I used to about it. The things I once cried for don’t hold the same weight anymore, because I’ve been learning to let go of control (a tiny bit). I used to define myself by sadness, and would wear the “saddest girl in the room” superlative like a badge of honor. But I’ve let that go and I exist beyond that narrative, even while still feeling deeply. The “wild heart” idea is that I can’t be contained or stopped. It’s what keeps me moving through life: when money is tight, and when I’m singing to babies just to make ends meet, and when I feel small and insecure.
10. “Speed Demon”
“Speed Demon” is kind of the song that ties the whole record together for me. It’s looking back on this really chaotic period of my life and realizing there were all these beautiful moments mixed in with the really hard ones. I think a lot of this record is about searching for something or some version of myself that felt a little more figured-out or a little more grown-up. Through the process of writing it, though, I think I actually grew into myself more than I ever have before. This song feels really visceral to me. Driving full speed down a dead-end street, screaming at the top of your lungs, windows down—not really knowing where you’re headed, but refusing to hit the brakes.
