Talking To: Salvation Jayne

On the day I sat myself down to talk with Chess Smith, the boundlessly energetic front-woman of Kent alt-rock outfit Salvation Jayne, I was at once comforted and amused by how the predicaments of an average day affect even the best of us.

After getting her assorted menagerie of pets settled, including a dog who seemed hellbent on terrorising a regrettably-located hedgehog, I was given an insight to the rare moments of peace which punctuate the chaos.

Chaos or no, however, a thrum of excitement surrounding Salvation Jayne as a collective is necessary. Alongside Chess, Holly Kinnear, Tor Charlesworth, Dan Lucas and Erim Ahmet create a boisterous and infectious sing-a-long racket evocative of Bitch Falcon, You Me At Six and even inflections of Fall Out Boy. With support from Kerrang! Radio and BBC introducing already under their belts, as well as the February release of debut album A Mouthful of Magnificent Spite and supporting headline UK tour which only concluded last weekend, Salvation Jayne are seeing their public profile set on a path to widespread acclaim.

Read on below to get a feel for the newest five-piece you’ve been missing out on until now.

Hi Chess, what's happening? How are you coping with life in general?

Right now, we're trying to put more than 100% in to the album and tour because so much has been invested in it. I suppose the first album to a band is a massive thing, because it opens more doors for you, at least one would hope. It's just a bit chaotic, trying to put 1000% in instead of 100%, knowing what we're up against. Saying that, it's great that all five of us want this to work. There’s a super high-levelled work ethic within the band.

My next question is about the name. Being totally honest, I typed it in wrong, and the search came back with results for a poisonous plant which seemed like some pretty cool inspiration. Is that where it comes from? Or am I wildly far-off here?

We've been saying for years now that we need to think of a better story for this, so I could use your plant theory. Unfortunately it’s really boring. Dan and Holly, our guitarist and bassist, needed a band name when they started out. I think they had a gig one night, so went to a café to discuss it, when they noticed on the wall was written something along the lines of “formerly known as Salvation Jane”. We really need some more hardcore tales to tell.

Who, or what, are your main audio influences?

As a band, all five of us are into different things. One of the songs on the album is actually all about not wanting to be pigeonholed - when we walk into a rehearsal space and make a sound, mashup of ours is what comes out, but all of us approach it with separate influences in mind. I suppose mine are Hayley Williams of Paramore and PVRIS. Holly absolutely loves Biffy Clyro, so we experimented with riffs in a similar style with her following my lead. On Violent Silence, Tor really ran with his love of Blink 182 as well.

I guess I really didn’t help myself with the obvious comparison to Hayley Williams in the video for that track, actually. I was channeling the whole ‘orange hair and front -woman of a rock group’ thing, but in reality I wasn’t even thinking about Hayley at the time. I don’t suspect it’s the ‘cool’ thing to say, but when I feel stuck during the songwriting process, I shut off my mind and think: what would Chris Martin do? It never fails to get me out of a musical vacuum.

And what does the songwriting process look like for you?

Dan, our bass player, owns a studio, so we’re super lucky in the fact that we have more than enough time to play with when composing a new track. We’ll usually start with Tor’s drum beat, or Dan’s bass line, or the other way around. Holly will then add guitars, and Erim will layer his keys over last. Apart from being stuck away from each other in the middle of the pandemic, and all of us having to bring our separate parts to the centre, every song has been written together. If we’d have had to carry on working apart as we had been before, then it would sound as if all of our songs had been written by five different bands. All five of us need to be present and have our hearts in it for us to sound like Salvation Jayne.

Are your lyrics based around certain sentiments? - Anger? Heartbreak? Resistance? Or is there a more streamlined message you try to bring home?

When I sat down and looked over all of the sets of lyrics as a whole, I realised there did seem to be a running theme of toxicity and toxic people. Violent Silence is all about recognising that there are poisonous, attention-seeking people in the world, but without giving them the attention that they crave they can’t affect us.

On the other hand, Apathetic Apologies was my way of staging a conversation with my anxiety. It was a really important topic for me to cover, and to just allow myself to acknowledge that so many of us have no control over our own thoughts sometimes. Anxiety has a lot to answer for. Why does it never apologise, or talk back? It’s not fair to be in a constant battle with yourself.

Gaining support from radio station such as Kerrang!, BBC Introducing and Radio X feels somewhat like an initiation for a project which is gaining momentum. Has it felt good to be getting noticed in the ‘right’ places?

I think the best thing that's happened for us as a band, press-wise, was getting our first curated playlist on Spotify. We’ve really been trying to ‘conquer’ Spotify, and I feel like we did that with our last single Diadem. It was quite an emotional time - something so small to the big bands, I’m sure, but to a grassroots band. like us it means everything. To build on it, though, we really need those people from Radio X or Kerrang! to take it to another level. We’ve worked our bollocks off! We’ve done our share of hard work! And we need all kinds of people to keep making it possible - the radio stations, the magazines, the fans. Any support really does mean everything to us.

What are your plans for after the tour, and what else can we expect to hear from you in 2022?

The album came out on the 18th February, along with the last single, Apathetic Apologies. After our tour with support from Venus Girls, we’ll hopefully be booked onto some festivals or snag a few big support slots. We’re just rolling with it at the moment. A tiny break, as a treat, would be great too.