By day, Jordan Hunter Hyland works as a doctor in Auckland. By night, for years now, he’s been writing songs nobody’s heard, working through things in private the way some people keep a journal. WASTE, his debut EP, is the first time any of that’s actually made it out into the world.
It’s four tracks: ‘Waste’, ‘Amphetamines’, ‘Open Air’ and ‘Tryna Drive’, built around grief, addiction, isolation and all the things that are easier to write down than say out loud. The EP grew out of the lead single ‘Waste’, produced by Chris Perry, with the rest of the project sitting in that same understated register rather than trying to build to something bigger.
Hyland wrote much of WASTE during a two-year stretch in which he lost, then slowly found his way back to, his enthusiasm for medicine — and to his own voice as a songwriter alongside it. Of the title track, he says:
“I didn’t really know how to talk about what was going on, so I wrote songs instead. ‘Waste’ is the first one because it doesn’t flinch, it just says it. I don’t know what people will get out of it. I just needed to get it out.”
Sonically, it’s deliberately small: tape hiss, hushed vocals, barely-there instrumentation. There’s no reach for a chorus that explodes, no attempt to dress the songs up as something more polished than they are. It sounds like you’ve wandered into the room while Jordan’s still working something out, rather than a record that’s been shaped for a big finish.
That contrast, a job built on precision and composure by day, unguarded and unresolved songwriting by night, is part of what makes WASTE feel so unforced. He’s spent years writing without much of an audience for it, and that shows in how little the songs seem to be performing for anyone. They’re not chasing a reaction, they’re just honest.
Jordan’s own description of the record says plenty about where it’s coming from: “No happy songs until the sad ones pay rent.”
WASTE is streaming now.
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