Jordi - Sorry I'm Late

Once known as a prodigious drummer, Jordi is more like a prodigious everything. A true one-person band, the 20-year old singer-songwriter played every note on her 2023 debut Sorry I’m Late, a punchy rock album recalling the glory days of Weezer and the Breeders, with hooks worthy of your favorite Y2K era teen movie soundtracks. After years of drumming around the L.A. scene as a teenager, Jordi takes centerstage on Sorry I’m Late. “Being a front person is a really vulnerable thing for me,” Jordi says. “I graduated high school in 2021, so with the pandemic, having those last two years of high school gone and starting college has been nerve-wracking.” Jordi makes up for lost time across the ten tracks of Sorry I’m Late; she drives all night and sheds her skin several times over, chasing what it means to feel alive.

“It all started with ‘Escape Route,’ my first single, which I wrote when I was 15,” Jordi says. After fleshing out the bulldozing track with producer Ken Sluiter (Heart, Veruca Salt), “Escape Route” began to take on a life of its own. It spent three weeks at No. 1 on KROQ’s tastemaking Locals Only show, and 10 weeks in the top five. “That was a surreal moment because I grew up listening to KROQ,” Jordi says, thinking back to nights driving around her hometown of Monrovia, California. The “Escape Route” ride continued to escalate in early 2023, as the single soundtracked a Coach New York Fashion Week ad featuring the likes of Ice Spice and Lil Nas X. Not too shabby a first look for an album overflowing with highlights.

Pulling influence from Hayley Williams’ charisma and Beabadoobee’s dreamworlds, Jordi comes into her own on Sorry I’m Late. With the help of producer Joe Reinhart (Algernon Cadwallader, Hop Along) Jordi pours her coming-of-age story into a rock album that connects early and often. There’s the jailbreak chorus of “Nightlife” and all its let’s get out of this town energy, the next-morning reverie of “Odd Day” and its moody soft grunge. “Bittersweet,” a glistening, harmony-laced slice of breakup pop, might be the most striking song of all.

On “Clear,” the irresistibly catchy lead single, Jordi openly struggles with “figuring it out,” and all that might entail between the end of high school, the start of college, and living through it during a pandemic that stripped away the catharsis of playing live and just simply seeing other people. The album’s emotional peak is closer “I’ll Never Know,” the last track written for the project, after Jordi began her freshman year at USC. It’s one the artist likens to breaking up with herself: “It’s getting past my inner turmoil. The lyrics, I’m over you, you’re over me, now let’s move on and be happy – I finally caught my breath.”

While Jordi promotes Sorry I’m Late, she’ll continue to fuel her passion behind the kit, touring as drummer for alt-pop artist Tessa Violet in Spring 2023 (following a 2022 tour drumming for Chloe Lilac). It’s in stepping up to the mic on Sorry I’m Late, where for Jordi, the possibilities seem endless. “The life of a drummer is in the back, it’s so low key, even though it’s very important,” she says. “I’ve always been insecure about my voice, but I think I’ve come into my sound as a singer and an overall songwriter. I’m always searching. That’s the beauty of it all.”