Dunedin duo Jagger x Lines make music that has one foot on the dancefloor and the other on a therapist's couch, as heard on their debut Burn Cycle. Singer Eliana Gray covers a lot of serious issues in her lyrics, including her own past trauma - a process which has helped her heal and move on. The pair discussed this and more with Tony Stamp during their last Auckland visit.
Jaggers x Lines Photo: supplied
Content warning: this story discusses sexual assault.
In 2018 Dunedin has continued to export some of our country's most exciting music. Permutations of Flying Nun-style jangle-pop still exist, but increasingly the city’s output is finding exciting new forms.
Jaggers x Lines, a duo consisting of vocalist Eliana Gray and producer Morgan Smillie, make music that doesn't have a clear equivalent. Nineties trip-hop is a touchstone, but the sound is more expansive than that, and clearly the duo's own.
"Labelling ourselves 'trip-hop' made me uncomfortable," Eliana tells me.
"As a white person I didn’t feel that hip-hop was my space to take up. And I didn’t think that’s what we were making and I wanted to make that distinction."
So 'alt-pop' is the descriptor. But talking to Morgan it becomes clear where the influence comes from.
"In the nineties I was listening to [British trip-hop label] Ninja Tune. That’s when I started making music, so I guess it kind of sticks."
There's an interesting tension at the heart of the songs on Jaggers x Lines' debut album Burn Cycle. Eliana has said in the past that she's "all about getting people to dance and have a fun time", and the music is clearly geared that way. But listen closer and you’ll hear some serious topics being discussed.
Alcoholism, OCD, and mental illness all get a mention, and Eliana is clear that the main engine driving her lyrics is her experience as a survivor of sexual assault.
"There’s a lot of power in taking experiences that have been really painful and traumatic for me, and turning them into something that is not only empowering and nourishing for me on a personal level, but makes people get happy and smile.
"That’s a reclamation. That’s me taking my power back from those experiences.
"I was still carrying a lot of pain with me. My therapist and I had talked about a ceremony that would help let the pain go, and then I realised that’s what this album is."
Jaggers x Lines first EP Letters was explicitly about sexual assault, but Burn Cycle, says Eliana, is "partly about the raw pain of that, but mostly it's more inwardly focussed on how I feel about healing. About my own resilience".
"And the songs we’ve written but haven’t released yet aren’t about trauma at all. It just naturally happened. Even in my poetry I’ve started writing about stuff that isn’t mental illness, or is from a more hopeful angle.
"Looking back, I can see it as a very clear progression.”
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