Jaywood

During the second half of the 2010s, JayWood, the Canadian singer, songwriter, and producer, began issuing understated bedroom pop that mixed jangling indie rock, R&B, psych, and funk. Operating from Winnipeg, he issued the self-released 2019 LP Time before signing to Captured Tracks and introducing himself on the label with the well-received 2021 EP Some Days. The music developed further on his stylistically broader second album, Slingshot, which surfaced in 2022. Jeremy Haywood-Smith, who grew up in Manitoba’s capital, first took up music as a teenager by learning drums and then guitar. His earliest influences spanned reggae and classic soul through Daft Punk, Beck, and Outkast. In 2015 a cluster of personal events led Haywood-Smith to scrutinize his self-identity, so he began writing songs to work through his reflections. Equipped with a borrowed laptop and basic tools, he mastered elementary production techniques and laid down enough material for an EP under the JayWood name. Although those initial recordings were later shelved and redone, they pointed him forward; across the following years he refined a singular DIY aesthetic on projects such as the 2017 Somber > Summer EP and the 2019 full-length debut Time. After joining Captured Tracks, JayWood returned to the unreleased 2015 tracks and re-recorded much of the material as the 2021 EP Some Days. Concurrently, his newer songs began moving in fresh directions. Following his mother’s death in 2019, Haywood-Smith explored the particular character of his Black experience growing up in a predominantly white Canadian city. That inward turn strengthened his links to cultural roots and produced the more expansive sound of the vivid 2022 album Slingshot.