The contrasts in Jay Madera’s life and music couldn’t be more pronounced. He grew up in Cincinnati, the son of a liberal Jewish father and a conservative Catholic mother; his extremely faith-based upbringing led to his agnosticism. He’s a young man in his mid-20s, but his musical inspirations are the emotion-laden work of 1970s singer/songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, as well as ‘80s New Wave and Alt-Rock purveyors, particularly the dark, edgy angst of Elvis Costello. Those influences — filtered through his piano-centric creative prism — then suggest contemporaries like Joe Pernice, Low Cut Connie and Ben Folds. And his debut album, Anxious Armada, is a homegrown combination of Pop/Rock anthemics and heartfelt balladry that is being released by Los Angeles-based Indie label Pop Cautious.
“(Pop Cautious) heard my debut single, ‘Curb Appeal,’ in 2019 and (they) were interested in talking with me,” says Madera. “They were looking to expand their roster. The best thing that’s happened to me is some random playlist added one of my songs and people started to hear it. It’s interesting because it’s a Cincinnati project and now (a record label) that’s definitely not Cincinnati is taking part in it.”
Madera’s musical explorations began with Classical piano and guitar lessons in childhood, which he hated. In high school, he explored musical theater, choir and a cappella (“All the nerdy things,” he says). And then at Denison University, he took songwriting and composition classes and played in a variety of bands. After his 2015 graduation, Madera submitted his song “You Make Sense” to American Songwriter’s Lyric Contest; his whim paid off with a win for the November/December 2016 edition.
“It was this random thing that inspired me to keep going,” Madera says.
That validation led him to go all-in with his solo career. He continued to write songs as a way of expressing his views of the world and to cope with its injustices, as well as for therapy after various break-ups. By the time he sat down with Mia Carruthers, local scene wunderkind and eventual producer and contributor on Anxious Armada, Madera had recorded around 50 demos that had to be whittled down to a single album’s worth of music.
“Mia was like, ‘This is way too much. You’ve got to pare this down,’” says Madera. “It was a brutal process of, ‘Jay, this song is a four out of 10. It’s out.’”
With a cadre of Cincinnati talent, including Carruthers, multi-instrumentalist/engineer Adam Pleiman, former Bad Veins drummer Sebastien Schultz, R&B vocalist Lauren Eylise, and a host of University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music-affiliated musicians, among others, Madera and Carruthers arranged the songs that comprise Anxious Armada. Just as he had a very specific vision and intent for each song, Madera was also purposeful in releasing material. He carefully chose the three singles that would serve as the official introduction to his work.
The aforementioned “Curb Appeal” debuted in 2019 and garnered an impressive response. Like most of Madera’s songs, its seemingly obvious message is not always the intended one.
“It’s a classic break-up song, but it’s really about self-empowerment and recognition and redemption of the self that I was going through,” he says. “It wasn’t about anyone in particular, it was kind of a culmination of all the failed romantic relationships I’d been in to that point.”
Anxious Armada’s opening track served as Madera’s second single. Released late last year to coincide with the presidential election, “A House Divided” was not only a potent statement but also a successful fundraiser.
“It was meant to be a political call to arms,” says Madera. “I donated all the money I made on pre-sales to Get Out the Vote and other voting awareness causes. The goal was to do something good in a time when it felt impossible to do anything good.”
Madera’s third single is the just-released “OH-126.” The song achieves his goal of presenting as many examples of his sonic and thematic diversity as possible.
“I meant it to be a cross between a lo-fi Indie song and, if I dare say, a Dylanesque piece,” he says. “You’ll notice the lyrics don’t end at the end of the song. They keep going, as if the sound engineer brings down the master fader because he’s tired of hearing your 17th verse. The song is very personal and intimate — my rejection of our late-stage capitalism and consumerism. I’m talking about physical, tangible things that will outlast me and the recognition of how we’re poisoned by them. I collect things, I have a lot of things, but this is my personal statement against the lust over things in our culture.”
Anxious Armada’s defining moment is the cinematically majestic and orchestral sweep of “A Faithful Foil,” segueing seamlessly into the piano Pop/Rock dynamics of “Janus-Face. Madera identifies these two pieces of music, particularly “Janus-Faced”— named for the Roman god of beginnings, endings, transitions and duality — as the album’s foundation, in terms of their sonic eclecticism and conceptual nature.
“This album is marked by contrasts and dialectical viewpoints,” Madera says. “Every song has this one side of me and there’s this other side of me, and there’s one side of our culture and this other side of our culture. The album is talking about the Janus-faced deceit I present to my world, that you present to your world and societally and culturally we present collectively.”
The album’s title, Anxious Armada, has its own evolution. Madera originally intended “Janus-Faced” to be the title track but decided he didn’t want to unfairly elevate the song’s profile from the rest of the album. An anxious armada is, in itself, an interesting dichotomy; an armada is an intimidating and powerful force, but it’s made up of individuals who may nearly be incapacitated by the fear that their strength and mortality will be tested to the ultimate degree.
“It’s the idea that I am a powerful vessel in the world and, as completely meaningless as my life is, I make a difference. It comes from some of my personal struggles with anxiety,” Madera says. “When you think of an armada, you think of this empowered body and I’m flipping that on its head by saying, ‘I’m an armada but it’s an anxious one.’
“As corny as it is, that’s the reveal of the album. The way I make music and the way I see the world is the push and pull of everything we want and everything we fear.”
For more about Jay Madera or to listen to Anxious Armada, visit jaymadera.com.
This article appears in Apr 1-30, 2021.