Jana Pochop: “Throats are Quarries”

In San Marcos-based singer-songwriter Jana Pochop’s inventive mind, throats are the quarries from which we mine the words that build solid relationships. While most of us cough up fragile and rather pedestrian sandstones, Pochop has rich veins of fine Carrara marble to draw upon, as the five robust and beautifully sculpted songs on her Throats Are Quarries EP demonstrate. Produced by Daniel Barrett, with whom she also worked on the first two legs of her impressive three-EP trilogy (The Early Year and For & Against), Pochop’s latest release serves as another solid foundational building block to her burgeoning career. “When Your Soul Leaves Your Body,” the heavenly anthemic, alleluia-graced opening track, finds Pochop pondering letting go and living on. Her sensuous, strong-suited vocals — both sweet and determined — are as captivating as her perceptive yet enigmatic ways on “Throw You Forward” (“My fist is small and mighty, same substance as my heart/one tries to open kindly, one always keeps its guard.”) There is much talk and confessional singing here of expressing worry and seeking sanctuary. “Deepest Fear,” with its juxtaposing of Pochop’s bouncy banjitar and Barrett’s slashing electric guitar work, expresses her concern that “my deepest fear is that my fears are not that deep, they are just simple things.” Susan Gibson lends backing vocals to “Middle of My Chest,” with its bridge that neatly sums up what seems a recurring theme throughout the EP: “I’ve got people I could love but the fear that I’ll get it wrong keeps coursing through my veins like a ticking time bomb.” Forunately, Pochop doesn’t let that fear get in the way of making great music: quite the contrary, she sounds positively emboldened by it. — D.C. BLOOM