Joana Serrat is a singer-songwriter and composer from Vic, Barcelona, in Spain. She is associated with folk, indie and pop, and her early musical interests include folk music and rock with American roots.

Early influences and first releases

She grows up with a large family record collection that shapes her tastes, with artists and groups including Roy Orbison, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Xesco Boix, Grup de Folk, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. Dylan becomes a key reference point for her for a period. After a period in Dublin, she releases Liffey in 2008 under the name J.S.T. The record is made up of stark acoustic songs, and she performs it in countries including Portugal and France.

She later records one further release as J.S.T. with The Sofa Dreams before moving on under her own name. This marks the beginning of a more personal phase in which she looks for a clearer sense of her own artistic identity.

Work under her own name

Her first release under her own name is the self-edited double album The Relief Sessions. The record is intimate and wide-ranging in tone, moving through folk-pop, 1990s indie rock, country and touches of jazz. It brings her greater attention from specialist media and from the public.

That profile leads to a nomination as an outstanding artist on the Nashville-based web portal Noisetrade. One of her tracks is also included in Liliana Torres’s first film, Family Tour, in which Serrat appears performing alongside Núria Gago. She also performs at the catwalk presentation of the Catalan fashion brand YERSE at 080 Barcelona Fashion.

Later recording work

While building that profile, Serrat works on material for a new album. In January 2013 she sends demos to three international producers, and two of them respond quickly with interest in collaborating. She chooses Howard Bilerman, the Canadian producer and musician known for work at hotel2tango and for producing Arcade Fire’s Funeral, as well as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Vic Chesnutt and Wolf Parade.

Her next album is recorded at Paco Loco’s studios in Cádiz with Bilerman. The band includes musicians from the Barcelona scene such as Edu Martínez, who has played with La Habitación Roja, Pumuky, Partido and Clem Snide, David Soler on pedal steel guitar, and Canadian musician Gavin Gardiner of The Wooden Sky. The sessions are recorded live with the whole band playing together, and the album is later mixed at hotel2tango in Montreal and mastered by Harris Newman, who has worked with Tindersticks and Arcade Fire.

Label and collaboration context

Before that release, her signing to El Segell del Primavera Sound is announced. Across this period, her work moves from the acoustic material of her J.S.T. years towards a fuller band sound while keeping the folk and American roots influences that run through her earlier music.