Multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, vocal coach, notable quilter, and The War on Drugs member, Eliza Hardy Jones, will release her sophomore solo album, Pickpocket, on April 19th, 2024. The ten-song LP explores “surviving grief, birth, death, and the innate humanness surrounding a challenging and personal journey to becoming a parent.”
It was written, recorded, and produced by Eliza with Production assistance from Producer, engineer and instrumentalist Nick Krill, who also mixed the record. Other musicians recorded their parts in bedrooms “across space and time.”
With a sonic palette including Folk coupled and Indie Rock, Pickpocket also features Charlie Hall, Dave Hartley, and Anthony LaMarca (all of whom are collaborators in The War on Drugs), Daniel Hart (St. Vincent, Dark Rooms), Matt Musty (Grace Potter, Train), Brandon Beaver (Buried Beds, mewithoutYou), Severin Tucker (Nightlands, Silver Ages), Benny Yurco (Grace Potter), Tim Deaux (The Whigs, Grace Potter, Kings of Leon), Jordan West (Grace Potter, Cam) and Ben Alleman (Dr. John, Grace Potter, Jenny Lewis) are also contributors.
The album opens with the track “This is the Year.”
Eliza shares:
I wrote this song at the bottom. I was recovering from the loss of a pregnancy that had come at the end of many years of fertility treatments. I found myself at the end, lost in grief, and trying to find a way forward. I only sang the lyrics to this song once. What you hear on the album is the demo vocal. I couldn’t bring myself to sing it again. It’s also the only song on the album where I stepped foot in a studio. I laid down the guitar, piano and vocals at home, and Dave Hartley (my longtime collaborator in Buried Beds, Nightlands, and now The War on Drugs) sent a killer bass track, and then I went into the studio with Charlie Hall (The War on Drugs) and Nick Krill, who added drums and guitars and some beautiful mellotron shimmers. It was loose and fun – a joyful jaunty little romp through my despair.
Eliza Hardy Jones began her professional career in the Philadelphia music scene with her band Buried Beds and in addition to her solo output, worked with a number of notable artists. She has been a touring member of many bands, including Grace Potter and Iron & Wine, before joining The War on Drugs in 2022.
Following the release of her first debut solo album in 2016, Because Become, Eliza focused on a large multidisciplinary art project interviewing women in the U.S. and Russia, in which she recorded Folk songs, and then transformed them into a series of ten handcrafted quilts that are now part of the permanent collection of the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska.
She also co-wrote the musical Lashed but not Leashed (2019) with Philadelphia drag queen Martha Graham Cracker and lent her vocal coaching skills to members of the NFL Philadelphia Eagles aka The Philly Specials, for their Christmas albums A Philly Special Christmas (2022) and A Philly Special Christmas Special (2023). She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and infant son.
Eliza will play select dates in celebration of Pickpocket and will continue to perform with The War on Drugs throughout 2024.
