EXCLUSIVE: I OH YOU Signs New Act Jack River

Melbourne tastemakers I OH YOU are welcoming the newest act to their roster — Jack River, a multi-instrumentalist, producer and singer/songwriter.

The alias of Holly Rankin, fresh off the back of the signing she'll be premiering her new single Talk Like That on triple j tonight. She says of the I OH YOU signing, "I first showed Johann my songs as a friend and he pretty much immediately came back to me saying he loved them. Fast forward a couple of months and I am super, super thrilled to be joining the I OH YOU family. It’s pretty damn rare to find a team who really get the heart of what you are doing. The artists on I OH YOU are making the exact kind of music I love and need — it’s real, gritty, alive and electrifying — there is no other home for Jack River."

The label's Johann Ponniah adds, "I first met Holly just over a year ago through a mutual friend, she’d just come back from a stint in NYC where she had been working on her music. I remember how her enthusiasm and passion for song writing made me immediately curious to hear her songs.

"A few days later she emailed me a private Soundcloud link to her demos and I became immediately hooked! Today I couldn’t be happier to officially welcome her to the I OH YOU family and am so excited to share her music with everyone in the future. We’re just getting started!"

Joining festival favourites DZ Deathrays and Violent Soho on the label, Jack River's music is hard to pin down, floating between indie rock, psych rock and plain old folk. "From a songwriting perspective, I always want to make something completely original to that song," Rankin explains. "I don’t ever reference what I did in the last song; that would be really boring. In our world right now a lot of things are so homogenised and repetitive that we almost expect things to be repetitive."