jo from school – Chicken

“Chicken” opens on wine nobody can pronounce and a question about where the other person grew up, small talk with something sharper sitting underneath it. From there it turns into a list of ways to not have the conversation that’s obviously coming.

The list is oddly specific: an inventory of lungs and liver and toxins, a question about whether the family has been told, a plan to walk into town with the timing deliberately a little off. Her friends have already returned a verdict on what she did, and it wasn’t generous. What Jo settles on instead is passing a greeting along through somebody else, repeated until it stops sounding like manners and starts sounding like the whole plan.

Geller is twenty-two, from north London, and has been writing songs since she was nine. “Chicken” was the first one she released, and by her own account it nearly wasn’t released at all. “It’s not revolutionary, but I love the song and its many failed versions”, she says. It gets a second life this week on “Grace, Flair and Distance”, her debut EP for Chess Club Records, out Friday and named after a game her father invented to score her swimming on three counts.

Three singles in, the one she almost binned is still the one I’d put on for someone first.