Feature: Presence
Words by Angelina Singer
On the heels of his debut album premiere, I got to chat with upcoming emo alt-pop artist Jon Martinez (Presence) on his latest work, Tears in the Moshpit. This album is chock-full of deep ideas folded into catchy melodies and emotional poeticism. It’s also got lots of fun electronic effects, layered up against a strong vocal performance powered by personal growth and lots of insightful ideas.
Presence has gotten a lot of listens in recent years – and for good reason. Reaching upwards of 100 million streams on some of his recent work, Martinez has done well for himself at the young age of 22. He also started working with high-end names in the industry like Sweater Beats (with collabs like Lizzo and Woosong to his name), as well as Dillan Witherow (who worked with Lizzy McAlpine and Laufey, just to name a few).
Like many artists, Martinez pulls his inspiration from his struggles – in this case, chronic anxiety that developed in his childhood, as well as a toxic dynamic with someone in his life that he had to heal from. But instead of staying down and taking it, he fought to become his best self by healing through music. During our chat, he even admitted that the healing he got through making this album is what he’s most proud of and grateful for.
“Being a year removed from writing these songs, I know that I’ve changed as a person because of writing these songs. And people have told me, that have interacted with me – ‘oh man, like your energy is so much different than it was a year ago.’ It feels so weird [for that to be] because I wrote a song, but that’s literally why that’s the case. These songs to me were like a big therapy session. The record was really expensive, and even if it doesn’t do good though, I have no problem – because these songs were healing.”
After diving into to my personal favorite songs on the album, like “RUNNING BACK 2 YOU!” and “’TILL YOU DON’T!”, we talked a little bit about how he puts lyrics together with those catchy beats. Interestingly, Martinez explained about the way he takes a lot of his ideas to a simple pad of paper first – often as poetry. The idea came to him from his years in therapy to address his chronic anxiety, where he was encouraged to be present – that’s where he firmly identified with the name, Presence, as a rallying cry to help his younger self cope with the stresses of life. Not only is he a masterful musician, but he’s also got prose on lock. Looking back at his high school years, I heard about a TedTalk he presented online – a great conversation titled “The Power of Authenticity, and the Internet” (which I definitely recommend listening to).
I was interested to hear that aside from the melodic similarities of the hook during “I DON’T WANNA BE LIKE YOU!” to Good Charlotte’s “The Anthem”, that wasn’t one of his particular influences. Instead, Martinez cited Jean Dawson, Dominic Fike, and Teezo Touchdown as some of his favorites.
“These other guys, that are in this more alternative, but what genre are they really – that’s what I wanted to do coming into this as well. Show that maybe I’m not as one-dimensional as maybe I have presented myself as. And I think it’s also given me the opportunity, even just as a person — like at the release party last night — to talk more freely and not feel like I have to play so much as a caricature – and really to just be myself. These songs represent me a lot more truly, and that’s why the sonics are more up-tempo… as opposed to everything just being over a piano ballad.”
This album really does have a lot of different nuances to it – while you do get the piano ballads (like “WORDS I NEVER SAID RIGHT!” or “BAD FRIEND!”), none of them are strictly piano. Even those songs still have some great dynamics and variations in them to bring the whole song up a few notches. Then, you’ve got the more head-banging pop-punk-infused anthems like “PAST LIFE!” and “NO REMEDY!” that build on infectious drumbeats that build the energy even though the themes are a bit more serious, like questioning the problems around legalistic religion and the frustrations of finding your place in an established setting that never really fit you. This album has multiple different styles, and it’s got all the same angst of the latest TikTok-popularized sensations like Jaden Hossler and Huddy.
I’d say that perhaps that most relatable theme addressed on the album is “SCARED OF THE FALL!”. It’s all about the simple the idea that happiness is terrifying, because as good as things can get, they could also get that bad and it’s almost easier to just stay numb about everything in life.
“I had this experience where I was really happy for the first time, and then a bunch of people in my life around me just started dying. And I was like, maybe I should just neutralize myself. That’s where Gianni [Taylor – co-writer of the record, brought this idea] ‘am I afraid of getting high, or just scared of the fall? I was waiting for things to go wrong, end up back where I belong’. And that’s pretty much how every single song was built out”
Album Art (Photo by Ryon Seekins)
If anything, this album inspires listeners to not be afraid of happiness. While it addresses some heavier themes like loss, trauma, and anxiety – it’s surprisingly encouraging. At the end of it, maybe, just maybe, you won’t feel so alone in those struggles. I also appreciate the way that Martinez didn’t shy away from being brutally honest – even in the aesthetics of the album. I had asked him why all the song titles were stylized in all caps with an exclamation point, and he had an interesting answer about it:
“I don’t know. Honestly, the title of the album came after we wrote “I DON’T WANNA BE LIKE YOU!” and the themes of that song are sadder, presented with a lot of anger. We were listening back to the song that day when we wrote it, and we were like dancing around, and Gianni said something like ‘whole lotta tears in the moshpit!’ And then it was like one of those moments in a TV show where it’s like ‘hold up, what did you just say?’ And that’s exactly what happened to us.”
This very inventive title, sprung from Martinez and his team listening back to “I DON’T WANNA BE LIKE YOU!”. As he goes on to explain,
“Sonically, these songs get you moving much more than my older songs, but they have the same kind of sad undertones when you really listen to the lyrics… and I wrote it [the album title] down. As we kept writing more songs, I had a whiteboard that I was feeling them out on, and I had ‘TEARS IN THE MOSHPIT!’ written on the side… Since then, it’s just been the title. And I wrote it all caps when I wrote it here… with a bunch of exclamation points. So as every song kept getting written, we just kept adding exclamation points. It’s something that happened kind of naturally… It’s bigger, it’s louder, it’s more in your face.”
At first glance, the all-caps and exclamation points felt a bit like a trendy attention-grabber, but somehow, it just fit the moment as the album came together. Not only is the title of the album so clever in the way it portrays the angst peacefully coexisting with sadness, but it shows that not everyone is able or willing to let their guard down – and sometimes it takes a moshpit to break you out of your comfort zone just enough to let the light in.
In addition to the dual processing of darkness and light, I was also curious about the intentionality behind the order of the songs on the album. As I listened to them, I noticed that the brighter, faster-paced, more dance-able tracks were kind of front-loaded, and the much more angsty, sonically aggressive tracks were layered up toward the end.
“The last song we wrote on the album was ‘TILL YOU DON’T!’ and pretty much every session prior to that one, we had written two songs in one day. So we had written ‘SCARED OF THE FALL!’ and ‘RUNNING BACK 2 U!’, and the next day we wrote ‘I DON’T WANNA BE LIKE YOU!’ and ‘WORDS I NEVER SAID RIGHT!’ and we were pumping out all these songs and the sessions were spread out throughout that whole summer last year. And then finally we were down to eleven songs. ‘BAD FRIEND!’ was the only other song that took a whole session to write it… I was kind of prepared for us to finish the album that day – at least writing it… I told my dad, ‘Hey, come to the studio after we finish writing this song. I’d love for you to be a part of this moment.’ And then I called my friend who shot all the music videos for this, and social content – because I knew I wanted the aesthetics to be very consistent and coherent. I wanted it to feel like one big world… so we could all sort of brainstorm what this is and what we wanted it to be. We all listened to the songs, and then we sat in that room afterward, just this committee, pretty much… my manager was there as well. We knew ‘SCARED OF THE FALL!’ was the beginning, and ‘WORDS I NEVER SAID RIGHT!’ is the end. Everything in between, we need to figure out. We debated [about the song order] so it was super intentional.”
I’m so thankful that I got to talk to Presence about his debut full-length album and get to know not only a bit of the creative process — but also the healing and hope that comes from even the darkest of moments. If you find yourself in a similar place, looking to bring yourself to a new level of awareness and growth, listen to TEARS IN THE MOSHPIT! for an album that will meet you where you’re at, but then help you fearlessly level up into happiness that you never thought possible.