j solomon’s Jesse Moldovsky sits down for a track-by-track interview with Atwood Magazine on his latest EP, ‘KILL THE ROCKSTAR,’ and an exclusive video premiere of the project’s second track, “RUBBER BAND.”

Stream: “RUBBER BAND” – j solomon

When I think of the word rockstar, a million images paint a feverish kaleidoscope of the greats in my mind’s eye.

Jim Morrison wandering the desert at dusk, or staring off into Hollywood bungalows. Elvis Presley laying his career on the line in all leather. A warm breeze slipping through Robert Plant’s outstretched fingers atop the Riot House. To me, embodying a rockstar is toeing the line between buying into the joke and being it, balancing extremes with some level of semblance and wit, and being an archetypal muse of mass proportions. A rockstar walks into the party, and every other light in the room seems to cower to the strength of their glow.

If history has taught us anything about rockstars, it’s that knowing when to leave that party is just as important as making a smooth entrance into it. For Jesse Moldovsky, the brains behind j solomon, that exit has culminated in KILL THE ROCKSTAR, a six-song EP that puts a frantic, final stake in the heart of his time as an indie rocker.

Today, Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering the music video for “RUBBER BAND” and share an exclusive interview with the musician as he prepares for a set of release shows in New York City and Los Angeles.

“RUBBER BAND” enjoys the royal treatment in its visual counterpart, and showcases some of Moldovsky’s finest, most effective lyricism yet. “By the time the smoke clears / Your twenties are halfway passed,” he sings, tracing a tender star-shaped wound across his chest as he heaves himself up and out of bed. It’s a physical scar symbolizing a larger, more internal one, mirroring Pete Suski’s album art imagery and the EP’s overall feel. “I initially had this idea to paint the cover, just a canvas painted red with messy paint strokes and thick texture,” he says, and the EP’s second track matches that imagery to a T.

Give a little ‘til you get what you want
But you’re only getting older til all at once
Everything you ever wanted is out of your hands

Saving all your money just to give it all up to the man
Feel it falling through your fingers like a grain of sand
Can you hold it all together like a rubber band?

– “RUBBER BAND,” j solomon

Moldovsky bandages the star, possibly symbolizing his light and hopes, otherwise representing a decaying of his rockstar persona, and gets ready. Quickly, we’re left with an empty bed and the camera stuck on his absence from the shot. “I ask if you still love me like you’re getting bored / I swear there’s something burning on the ballroom floor,” he sings, “burning” acting as a brilliant double entendre for passion and deterioration. “If a spark ignites / It’ll all burn down tonight,” he continues.

A series of coast-to-coast moves from Moldovsky’s home state of Pennsylvania gave him a unique perspective, and KILL THE ROCKSTAR is both an homage to his time in each place, and the person he was at the onset of each transition.

“I was raised in Bucks County, PA, eventually moved into Philly when I was 18,” he says, “and in Philly was where I first encountered indie rock music, which shook my whole world,” as he had been writing mostly folk songs up until that point. Suddenly, a whole other world of storytelling opened up.

From there, he made the trek to New York City. “My time in NYC was all about community, meeting people who make cool art and having this collective life experience,” he shares, and navigating pandemic times in the city was part of his inspiration for this latest collection of tracks. A final move to Los Angeles served as a time of introspection and self-discovery for the musician, and together, the three places of residence began to seep into his writing and artistic identity in their own ways.

The last collection j solomon released was 2023’s Sleeping In The Garden, and looking back on those songs is already tinted with pride and nostalgia. “I wouldn’t change a thing [about it], honestly,” he says, pinpointing “Shoes” and “Gravity Control” as favorite tracks in hindsight. “I’m one of those people who believes that everything happens for a reason, good or bad. Sleeping in the Garden was such a special time in my life; recording that project when, where, and with whom I recorded it with all felt so good and so right.” Moving on to this new project had to be different, but not for a lack of assuredness in what came before it.

KILL THE ROCKSTAR opens on “LYING AROUND,” and the EP’s introductory lyrics are a literal and figurative bloodbath. “I took a shot at the motorcade / Hopped over the barricade / Aimed right for the magistrate / And I took him down,” Moldovosky sings, bass accompanying him through the fictional confession. “[It’s] one of the few non-autobiographical songs I’ve released,” he jokes. “I grew up playing a lot of FIFA with my brothers, and I really wanted to write a song that felt like it belonged on the soundtrack of that game.”

“LYING AROUND” finds its make or break moment in its chorus harmonies. Here, the guitars and vocals reach a stunning highpoint, made stronger by how complementary the main melody is to Moldovsky’s natural cadence and tone. When he returns to the first verse right afterwards, this time with an army of electric guitars backing him, the words take on a new meaning. The significance of the term “lying around” quintuples, and in the most horrifying, hilarious way.

And I can’t help but lose it
I’m losing all the feeling in my fingers
When I say that I can’t do this
When I think about
where you’ve been lying around

Stop with all the excuses
Every time I say that I don’t doubt you
I just end up feeling useless
When I think about
where you’ve been lying around

– “LYING AROUND,” j solomon

As we delve further into the mindset of the EP’s main character, “GLASS” provides a look at the frailty of dreams in the face of financial struggles. The concept of hunger is used gorgeously: “Running out of cash or an appetite for dinner / Getting real skinny / But you don’t look like a quitter to me,” he sings. As simple as that lyric is, it summarizes the project’s main themes perfectly – being broken down, and learning to either take the hit or send it back twice as hard. “GLASS” is the transition from flight to fight: “City life, it really did a number on you / Turned you from a runner into a fighting machine.”

“‘GLASS’ is one of the tracks from the EP that I started back on the east coast, with Erik Kase Romero at his studio near Asbury Park, New Jersey,” Moldovsky shares. “Lyrically, the song tells the story of a young person moving to the city to make it big, I guess inspired by my own experience and the experiences of the people around me at that time. When I moved to Los Angeles, ‘GLASS’ was still unfinished, but Garrett Hall and I got it to the finish line at his garage studio in Van Nuys.” Sonically, it’s deceptively happy, but one could argue that’s the whole point.

As one of KILL THE ROCKSTAR’s singles, “DAMN RAT BASTARDS” was an initial glimpse into the world Moldovsky was simultaneously building and burning down. The song is akin to that, switching recklessly between self-deprecation and critique of those in power. “[It] originally came out around the time of the last election, so it must’ve struck a chord with folks,” he says, yet the EP’s rollout was organic: “I was kind of deciding what to release based off what was ready, and I think I got lucky that it all makes sense.”

Well, overall I’ve been a mess
A self-reflective retroflexion,
mirrored image of my past
I’d sooner drive across the country
than go backwards towards that gap
Swore I was anarchist,
then I found out what that meant

– “DAMN RAT BASTARDS,” j solomon

On “FISHBOWL,” Moldovsky’s move to Los Angeles comes front and center. “I actually wrote the chorus before moving, but I guess I was already in the transitory headspace where nothing felt solid,” he says, and that lack of foundational certainty is a lyrical centerpiece: “Now I’m looking at a version of myself in the glass / Shaved my head again, baby / Tried to relive my past / And I learned the hard way / There’s some things you just can’t get back.”

Around midway through “FISHBOWL,” it becomes clear that KILL THE ROCKSTAR is not the story of a natural death – it is a burial alive. It is the death of an overgrown past self, of a botched Pet Sematary rebirth, of the parts of ourselves that grow hard like calluses to protect us from harm, and in turn numb us to joy. It is very much a rock song, but the guitars are in service of the story, rather than being the story, no doubt a product of Moldovsky’s penchant for singer-songwriters and folk artists. As the EP begins to brace for its end, our rockstar stumbles into the bargaining stage: “I’d come back a hundred times if you’d have me again / Oh, I tried my best to see if I could claw my way back in.”

Just give me a reason
I’m sick of all this waiting around
Let me dig my teeth into something
I can hold
Yeah, something real

I’m tired of all this nothing
I’m tired of being tired
I’m wide awake
Pinch me if I’m dreaming
Dreaming
Dreaming
Hit me hard, I love that feeling

– “FISHBOWL,” j solomon

“I can hold / Yeah, something real,” he sings, a lyric that comes to define the EP as a whole. Over the course of the six songs, the concept of a rockstar begins to represent smoke and mirrors, illusions, and grand visions. Here, there’s a spark of possibility – something tangible can grow from that one line. Something real can come from the very act of believing it can. There’s a bittersweetness to the placement of “FISHBOWL” in the EP, however, because this optimism happens like a desperate prayer in the eleventh hour.

“‘SPARK’ is a full cathartic release after a pretty hard hitting and heavy project,” Moldovsky says of the EP’s final, climatic installment. “It felt like the ultimate ender, but also leaves on a somewhat incomplete note, sort of similar to ‘Quality Control’ off Sleeping in the Garden.” The lyrics read as a series of sleepless thoughts on an endless replay, a hazy yet deafeningly loud carousel of ‘what if’ and back-and-forth theories on whether it’s too late to start again.

These are the days of our lives
You whispered, too embarrassed to speak
Too weak to will it into existence
Too caught up with it to sleep
Too late to go back and change it
Too light to call it the night
Too long to act like it never even happened
Too short to call it a life

– “SPARK,” j solomon

For fans looking to experience KILL THE ROCKSTAR live, there are two upcoming j solomon shows on each coast: June 27th at Stone Circle Theatre in NY, and July 17th at The Goldfish in LA. Along with live performances, Moldovsky will be premiering an accompanying short film to better immerse listeners in his world. “The short film uses the EP as a soundtrack to tell the fictionalized story of the demise of the niche indie rockstar. Creating it was awesome– back in April, Pete Suski, Chloe Ma, and I spent four sleepless days filming the whole thing,” he says. “It was painful and exhausting and frustrating, and it was an incredible experience. At the time of this interview, the film is in Pete’s hands, but trust me that it will be a really special viewing experience by the time you see it.”

Ultimately, KILL THE ROCKSTAR served as a stress test for the ages.

“As a fully independent artist, it really put to the test what I’m capable of, not just from a musical perspective, but in terms of business, marketing, planning, coordination… all the boring stuff you don’t see in the final product,” he continues. “I definitely learned what I’m good at, and what aspects I wouldn’t mind delegating to others in the future.”

“The sun left the window’s glass / Turning shadows to creatures on the ceiling,” he sings on “SPARK,” “And like splintered wood of a split guitar / A voice spoke, “I am the night / I killed the star.” The casket is kicked closed, mending grief with a lingering sense of unease and eventual forward motion. His guitar is broken, thoughts are still raging like the fire it’s about to be thrown into, but there’s a warmth to the ending that suggests something bigger and better on the other side. After all, Moldovsky says, creating the project was “the necessary final project for [him] as this indie rocker character, if you will.”

“I think this whole EP process has revitalized my love for the art, and makes me so excited for what’s to come,” he concludes, calling KILL THE ROCKSTAR “a labor of love, and a pain in the ass.” It brought him “closer to quitting” than he’d ever been before, but coming out the other end with something cohesive was all the reward he needed: “It feels special, and I’ve got butterflies thinking about how it belongs to you now.”

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:: stream/purchase KILL THE ROCKSTAR here ::

:: connect with j solomon here ::

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Stream: “RUBBER BAND” – j solomon

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 © Peter Suski

KILL THE ROCKSTAR

an EP by j solomon