Jeremy Zucker

Jeremy Zucker’s new album Garden State speaks to this; the record’s titular track is a sparkling ode to the people and places he once knew, that now feel like a fever dream. “hometown” opens the record, but closes on a repeated thought: “watching the world turn round.” It’s those moments, when you gain a higher and farther perspective, that make you realise how much time has really passed. For Jeremy, “home” is as much a place as a feeling. It was once his childhood home in New Jersey, and then with his college friends. Now, as he reaches a new chapter of his life, home is wherever his partner is.

Longtime fans of Jeremy feel peace with him, whether that’s because of the nuance he delivers through his lyrics or the inherent earnestness that shines through his being. It’s no wonder that his music has soundtracked so many lives. For his Garden State tour, he designed a stage that replicated the inside of his childhood home, inviting the audience inside like a restored relic, as if they could smell the Japanese Maples, their leaves falling slowly and creating a pillowy maroon pile.

We chatted while he was on the last leg of his tour, after a morning of mentally mapping his childhood bedroom. He’s a quiet force to be reckoned with. As he recounts the last few months, he reflects on how the record, like the definition of “home” itself, has taken new shapes since its conception. From writing, release, to performance, what perhaps makes this most special isn’t just the personal reconciliation with his inner child, but that he’s preparing to welcome a little one himself. “Home” is definitely about to change again.

Jeremy's album, Garden State, is out now.

How's the tour been so far?
It's been great. I don’t know the exact number, but I think we’re twenty shows in. It’s been awesome, but we’re definitely ready to get home. We’ve been out for five or so weeks, and the shows have been incredible. I've noticed this time around, everyone in the room knows the words. There's been a lot of support for the album, which I really love. I also got to make all the tour visuals, because we have this big LED screen. Performing with that was pretty awesome.

What is it about the crowd that makes it feel different this time?
I would say I’m fairly used to the crowd singing along really loudly with almost every song, but usually, the crowd is split into pieces. Half the room would be diehard fans screaming every word, and then you could tell the back half are people’s friends who came along. That is cool because I get to introduce my music to a ton of new people that way, but this time there was a familiarity amongst everyone, which is a great feeling, especially for someone who isn’t the most outgoing. To get on stage and feel accepted is a really awesome feeling.

What’s been the best moment so far?
Honestly, every show has been better than the last. Everything is sort of a blur! Two shows ago, people requested a song that we weren’t going to play. We played it at the encore, and it was the first time we played a song we hadn’t planned to. They were so stoked.

I love that! I go to a lot of gigs, and I feel like there's something so satisfying when the artist takes requests. It’s just very exciting to feel like the artist is engaging with your city specifically.
Yeah, it was really easy to just dial in and have my in-ear monitors. I used to just have them in so I could hear everything that’s going on and really focus on making it good. But as the tour went on, I got so used to doing all the songs, and it was muscle memory, so I just started to pop an in-ear out and just really try to look at the crowd. I was kind of being a robot in the beginning, but now I really like making the distance between me and the crowd smaller. Some people just yell random shit. Someone will be like, “How are you doing?” And I’m like, “I’m good.” [laughs] Those moments are so fun to be able to tap into.

You’re rehearsing it so many times, and then you go out and play the same show every single night. I can imagine staying in the moment is something you’d have to be quite intentional about. Is there a song from the album that maybe has taken on a new life since being on tour?
Yeah. I would say there are two in particular. One is “letting go,” which is really a personal song about growing up and ending up where I am. For a lot of these shows, my wife is in the crowd, and the last part of the song is a verse specifically dedicated to her. I’ll find where she is in the crowd and make eye contact, and just sing that to her at the end. By the end of it, everyone in the crowd is like, “Where the fuck are you looking?” And then they see her. It’s a really beautiful moment. The other song is “splinter,” which is about the house that I grew up in. It’s a really emotional song about home falling apart. That one really goes crazy on stage, too.

I also wanted to ask specifically about “surprise” and “hometown” because I know those were released first. I think they’re symbolic in terms of the overall messaging of the album; the line that stands out is “You don’t always need to know exactly what the future holds.” Do you feel like, through making this album, you’ve been able to let go of that future-fearing mentality a bit more?
I think the more I figure out, the less scared I am. I started [music] in high school, and I was definitely like, What the fuck is life gonna be? Then, as soon as I started making music, feeling confident in it, and getting positive reinforcement, I was definitely a lot less scared. But looking back, there were still so many things to overcome. My dad wasn’t the most supportive of me being a musician, and I didn’t really know where I was going to live, and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to be successful.

I was still studying biology and thinking that I was going to have to go to medical school. I didn’t know if I wanted to do that or not. I was quite existential in that way. I was really lonely, and I wanted to have my person, and I was such a lover at heart. But there were seven years where I didn’t date anyone, and I just couldn’t get close to anyone. Every time I figured out one piece of the puzzle, I became a little less scared. For some reason, we’re not playing “surprise” on this tour. It was the hardest thing to pick the set list, and I couldn't make “surprise” make sense. I wanted to have a good spectrum of emotions and feelings and vibes. “hometown” is the first song that we play, though. The stage is set up to be like my house I grew up in.

Oh, that's beautiful! In the spirit of “surprise,” is there anything you surprised yourself with when you were writing this album?
In the beginning, the concept was definitely a surprise. The first song I wrote was “hometown,” and at first, I thought it was just going to be a song about growing up and how that affects my life now. I never really talked about that before. Then I made “garden state,” and that's when I realised. The second I started talking about my house, I was like, Okay, wow, I spent twenty years of my life in this house, and I've only written one song that even talks about home. So after that, I decided to make an album about home. This was the first time that I made an album with a theme in mind.

With Crusher, I was getting out of a pretty difficult and toxic relationship where I felt like the world was ending. The album is very angsty. My next project was Nothing Sacred, a time in my life when I was really searching for things that were honest and true. I was really trying to reestablish a connection in my life and have my relationships be deeper and more meaningful. I wrote both of those, and then got that together in my life. Now I was like, Okay, I’m in a good place. What do I have to say now? What do I need to talk about?

That’s so interesting! So writing music helps you resolve those questions in your life.
It’s therapy before I had a therapist. You know how it feels when you’re a teenager or in your early twenties and your problems are just swirling around your head and you're trying to think through them all the time? I would make music. I wasn’t thinking about the logic of my problem, but ruminating on the emotion behind the problem, and expressing it in that way, helped me have it outside my body. It was really visceral and helped me to let go. I wouldn't even really know why I was upset until I’d make a song about it. That's how I got through a lot of my emotions.

I imagine the relationship you have with those feelings also changes throughout the process of writing to touring. It’s a beautiful thing to have those records as testaments to that, for yourself.
Oh, my God, yeah. Especially going back to the music I made during college, so much of it was just fuck boy energy. I'm so surprised when I look back, and I'm like, That was my attitude? I was really like, rise and grind, let’s chug some beers. [laughs]

On that note, do you have a song that feels the furthest away from who you are now?
Beach Island is the farthest away from me. That's an EP that came out in 2017. I think it was my second EP ever. Even my first EP, West, was more relatable than Beach Island. West is about me being sad about this long-distance relationship that was tearing me apart. I can relate to the angst and sadness and loneliness, which I think is universal. But Beach Island was about chilling in the summer, picking up girls, and just being fratty. It was very “I’m the shit” music, you know?

I feel like it is also representative of the teams. That feels very 2017.
Society is way more self-aware now.

Has the meaning of home changed for you over time?
It's a big question. My perspective of home really changed when I started living with my friends in college during my junior year. It was the first time that I really felt like I was in a community of people who cared about each other. It was my first time living with friends where I felt like I could be myself. We would wake up on a Saturday, and if we had nothing to do, we’d just watch movies all day. I miss waking up and being down the hall from my best friend. I think people who go to college miss that for the rest of their lives - the proximity you have to your friends and that newfound individuality. That’s the first time I felt at home outside of home.

It was different in my childhood home in New Jersey. It was my home, and it was familiar and it was comfortable, but it didn’t feel like “home” in my heart. I’d go to camp for the summer or go back to college, and I wasn’t like, Oh, I’m really going to miss it here. I was always looking for the next thing. From college onwards, I always lived with friends. I was lucky enough to always be really close with the people that I lived with. I moved in with [my wife] Mathilda two years ago, and that was my first time not living with a buddy. That became home very quickly. We bought a house in January.

Oh, congrats!
Thank you! We’ve been able to put our very personal touches on the place. Now the feeling of home is really accompanied by where we are making memories. Scrolling back in my camera roll at all the different memories we’ve already made in these seven months has been amazing.

After these life experiences and writing this album, do you feel like you’ve gained a sort of vantage point in terms of your relationship with your childhood home?
In the album, my resolution has been: This is the place that shaped me, and it was safe, and I feel really lucky that I grew up in the same house for twenty years and never had to uproot my life. Now, when I go back, I appreciate the beauty so much more. After living in Brooklyn and Bushwick for a couple of years, I really started to appreciate the greenery in the area. But I felt quite alienated in New Jersey, and maybe it was the culture of the people I grew up with. I never really found people that I clicked with.

It wasn't until I started going back home quite often to write the album that I really started to reconnect with it and see it in a totally different light. Going back with my wife puts a whole new perspective on it. When I get to bring someone home for the holidays, it’s a whole lot different from going back to Thanksgiving alone, you know? I get to bring my home with me to the place that used to be home, you know?

There’s also a line in the album that speaks about how things always look perfect from far away. We’ve kind of been speaking about that longing for something else, but to flip that a bit - what’s something that your younger self might have thought looked perfect, but you now know is not the case?
When I was a lot younger, I definitely was like, “I want to be in a band, and I want to be famous.” Having some friends who have had that really big dip into fame and celebrity, I now think it's a really difficult thing to go through. I'm really happy that I've never fully experienced it, because I had such a steady rise. I can go places without being stopped. But I definitely used to idealise fame, and I think we all do, as a country and culture. We hold celebrities to unrealistic standards. It's taken me a while to realise I actually don't want that.

I think it’s quite an alienating experience. Then, on the other side of it, is there anything in your life or career right now that you wish you could gain a bird's-eye view of?
I wish I had a little more enlightenment on where to live. Right now, I have a lot of friends in LA, and a lot of my work is there, but I just hate the car thing. You need a car to get anywhere, and there’s traffic everywhere. It feels like an unfriendly place. I love the weather, but the lack of seasons makes it feel like a purgatory in some way. I want to be near things and have fun things happening, and that's all in the city. But in the city, you don't get space or greenery. We are still trying to figure that out.

You've also said that writing this album unlocked a lot of memories for you. Is there any memory that you forgot about that maybe came up while writing?
I got to look back at a lot of old pictures, and I digitised a lot of old cassettes from my childhood. I saw a lot of videos that I've never seen before of me, as a baby. It was really interesting to see the era that I was in, and the way people talked and how different my family was back then.

Was it really emotional to go through those videos?
It was pretty surreal. I put a lot of the videos into the live visuals for the songs. It was kind of healing to see myself as a child. Especially with having a baby on the way, it was healing to think about our baby looking like that. It really just made me appreciate how full circle it is - to really connect with myself as a child, knowing that I’ll have one.

That’s beautiful. You mentioned the film, Garden State, which has this iconic quote - “Family is a group of people that miss the same imaginary place.” Did you have a moment like that when you were writing the album?
Yeah, that became apparent when my parents sold the house. I still dream about it…I can fully map out the interior of the house and the colours and furniture. This morning, I was remembering my bedroom versus my brothers’ bedrooms. I didn’t have any say in what was in my bedroom. I'm sure if I wanted to, I could have, but it's really interesting to even think about. It’s weird and sad to know that the house doesn’t exist like that anymore. But it's life, you know?

Are you more of a decorator now with your own house?
Oh, yeah. That's something that I learned in college.

It’s weird. I feel like the most creative people never decorate their rooms.
That’s a red flag. Doesn't someone creative have any individuality or uniqueness in their space? I follow a lot of interior designers on TikTok, and I see the millennial white interior where everything's just whited out and grey. Some things make me want to throw up.

[laughs] I know what you mean. Okay, so if you could decorate your album to give it a colour or a scent, what would it be?
Green trees and pine cones, maybe. Maybe a pile of leaves. Halloween vibes. For colour…I want to say maroon. I say that because, yes, there’s a lot of greenery, but we had a lot of Japanese Maple trees in my neighbourhood. Some of that’s on the album cover, and that colour really strikes me.

What would you say this album represents to you in the trajectory of your career?
To me, it's kind of like a turn. It’s not a left turn, but a turn to the right. I’ve split and gone towards something else, but I’ll definitely come back to the centre. I already have ideas of where I want to go next sonically.

In your YouTube comments, a lot of people talk about how your songs have brought comfort. Now, having heard from you personally, I know that your songs often stem from places of discomfort. So what’s it like to have your fans give this feedback?
It’s a perspective to get wrapped up in. There are songs I get sick of and songs that I'm like, Oh, everyone must be sick of this one by now. Then I'll happen across it on YouTube, and it just makes me feel really good. It makes it less about me to see that other people have found so much comfort in it. It’s also affirming to me that I’ve done something right.

What is something that listeners have taken away from the project that you feel the most proud of?
It makes me feel good that people relate to the music because I know there are people on both ends of it. Some people have made it through the story and find comfort in the familiarity. There’s the other side of the music telling you everything’s going to be okay, for people who are going through it and can’t imagine how to get out of it. If they can imagine themselves in these stories, that’s the most gratifying thing for me.