"I'm here . . . in LA" says Jessica Smyth aka pop star Biig Piig on the Zoom machine. "Look!" she says and points her screen out onto a sun-kissed California beachfront.
Strangely, once I stop grinding my teeth, I am not tempted to do the same and show her a watery tableau of Ireland’s monsoon summer.
Jess ("people only call me Jessica when I’m in trouble") certainly gets around. The singer, who has won critical acclaim and an impressive 2.5 million monthly listeners on Spotty with her sultry hybrid of pop and neo-soul, was born in Cork and then she and her family moved to Malaga to help with her brother’s asthma.
Then it was back to Cork, then Tralee, then London, where her parents continue to run a pub, and more recently, she’s been living in LA on and off for two years as she writes her debut album. As for that intriguing stage name, Jess has said it "puts no pressure on me to be a certain way - I can be a mess, and I can also be cute and put together."
This weekend she’s back in Ireland to take to the stage at the All Together Now weekender in Curraghmore House, Waterford, joining a bill that also includes Lorde and punk laureate Iggy Pop.
It’s no surprise that she loves coming home and her appearance this weekend will be a highlight of the year for the hard-gigging 25-year-old.
But does she plan to go full festival and stay for the weekend? "It depends. Things are so busy now that we’re kind of in and out," Jess says.
"The last time I did a whole weekend at a festival was, I think, Electric Picnic, and I stayed there and met some bands backstage who I hung out with. We had a great time, but I haven’t done it in a while. I will get to see Lorde and Iggy Pop at ATN."
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Jess began 2023 with a nomination for RTE Choice Song Of The Year with her track Kerosene and appeared on the prestigious BBC Sound of 2023 list. Along with her debut mixtape Bubblegum last March, it’s helped put her on a higher rung.
"You know when you get a feeling, and you don't know what to do with it? Your impulse is to run away from it most of the time and I think that the tool that music has given me is instead of running away, I run to it."
"It definitely was a turning point making it and when I look back on projects I’ve dropped I can definitely see eras where it’s almost an open diary of that time," Jess says.
"With Bubblegum it felt like I was adulting into something more mature or defined. When I look back, I still love the records I put out earlier but there was a nervousness in my voice. Now I feel like I’m coming into my own a bit."
Right now, it’s all about work on that debut album. She hasn’t got a title yet and is reluctant to commit herself to what fans can expect but she has started recording the new tracks in "an unreal" studio in Paris.
"I’ve been working in London as well and I have some tracks that I’m really excited about," she says. "I’m working with a lot of producers I’ve worked with before, producers whose ears I really trust on things, but it’s not locked in yet.
"Listening back to what I’ve got now, I think there are elements of escape in it, heavier and more confessional stuff but . . . I don’t want to define it until it’s done. It’s a work in progress."
Bubblegum was a decidedly languid, nocturnal, and ethereal affair, earning her more namechecks than a roll call in primary school, with names like Charlie XCX, Pink Pantheress and Billie Eilish being cited. When it comes to her own music heroes, she mentions, Erykah Badu, Leonard Cohen and Gabrielle.
For Jess, it’s all about making an impact on her audience. "I wanted to make something that feels good live, that it has an impact in a room full of people and it feels like the walls are shaking. You get a moment when it starts really subtle and indie and chilled and reflective and then you get to the chorus and the anxiety kinda builds with the drums."
She has described writing tunes as like a keeping diary, or "journaling" as they say in America.
"It definitely is," she says. "You know when you get a feeling, and you don’t know what to do with it? Your impulse is to run away from it most of the time and I think that the tool that music has given me is instead of running away, I run to it and let yourself feel all of it and put it down on paper and put it somewhere else, so it doesn’t end up making itself bigger.
"I think that’s definitely still the case with me. It’s brought me back to myself and the maddest thing is when you go into a session and you haven’t even checked in with yourself, all of this stuff spills out and you think of course, this is what’s going on. There’s always a subconscious way of getting in touch with yourself so I love it."
The last time Jess was in Ireland was last March for shows in Limerick, Cork, and Dublin.
She says Limerick was a highlight for her on that Irish tour. "There’s are some great collectives in there, people making music and clothes and they made an outfit for me for the show in Dolan’s," she says. "My aunty came down to that and she was shocked `what the hell is going on!,’ she said. Hahaha. I hadn’t seen her in years."
As one of Jess’s earliest songs says, she’s a big fan of the sesh and some of her many Irish cousins will be coming to see her at All Together Now this weekend. "Yeah, they will, they will," she says, sounding delighted.
"There’s a bunch of family. Ellen lives in Waterford and the rest are in Kerry and Leitrim and there are some in Dublin."
And, of course, her mother is one of her biggest fans. "My mom came to see me in Dolan’s, too but the first time she saw me was when I supported Princess Nokia in Kentish Town in London," Jess recalls.
"Mom came with a friend, and I don’t think she knew what to do. I gave her a shout out from the stage. It was incredible to share that part of my life with her."
Alan Corr @CorrAlan2
Biig Piig plays All Together Now this weekend
