Miles Jenson returns North Star to its voice-and-piano foundations in a live session filmed at Swan Dive Sound, bringing its harmonic tension and stark political perspective into sharper focus.
Written in Austin against a backdrop of deepening division in America, the song connects economic deprivation and the mythology of the American Dream with fear, racism and manufactured scarcity.
Its companion release, Against My Best Interests, turns that scrutiny inward, using jazz-informed harmony to examine the uneasy space between personal growth and self-destruction.
Both singles were arranged and produced by Vincent Ott, extending the cinematic language of Jenson’s debut EP, Sunshine Goldmine, while pointing towards his forthcoming debut album with Grammy-winning production duo King Garbage.
In this FM PRO 10Q, Jenson discusses translating political systems into emotionally immediate songwriting, Tyler Graham’s observational approach to the live video, and how orchestration, harmonic tension and room ambience shape the expanding world of his music.
When we were telling the truth, even if it was grim, we wanted it to hit hard. — Miles Jenson
Q1. Why did North Star feel like the right song to capture through a live performance at Swan Dive Sound?
As I compose all of my songs, North Star was originally just me and a piano, and I wanted to preserve that version of North Star alongside the single with the orchestral accompaniment.
I made very specific choices regarding chord modulations that were eerie, diminished, augmented, or dissonant as narrative devices while exploring the themes of the song that I feel are emphasized in a performance with just me and a piano.
Q2. What did performing the song in that room reveal that the studio recording could not?
Swan Dive Sound’s live room is warm and peaceful and I felt like it held an energy of steadiness that would provide a useful apparatus to perform a heavier, somber song.
I also perform the song without any accompaniment, and at my core, I always want to be able to perform with just my voice and a piano, so stripping the song back to its bones offers a more derivative version.
Q3. How did you and director Tyler Graham approach the video so its visual language supported the song’s political weight?
Because the song is inherently serious, we discussed a stripped down approach to the video that let the performance speak for itself. He did an excellent job of shooting the video in an observational way, mirroring the POV of the song itself regarding its perspective of America.
We didn’t talk about that thematic parallel specifically, but we did make sure that we distilled the video to something beautiful but also simple.
Q4. North Star connects economic deprivation with fear, racism and division. How did you turn such a complex argument into something emotionally immediate?
While the concepts could be considered either divisive or complex, they are real and affect our lives and fester inside everyone whether they acknowledge it or not. In that way, it’s actually quite simple. My point isn’t in trying to convince anyone of anything, it’s anchored in calling upon the inevitable truths we all carry.
Q5. Was there a particular moment in Austin that unlocked the song’s central image or opening line?
North Star is inspired by the United States’ socio-cultural division in conversations regarding Charlie Kirk’s assassination. I was in a hotel room with a view of the Austin skyline when the news broke, and as I looked out over the city I noticed flags at half mast.
As the days unfurled we saw racist, transphobic rhetoric imbue debates, and the juxtaposition between class consciousness and fear mongering kept bringing me back to considerations over manufactured scarcity. I imagined how we are all navigating the woods, in the night, utilizing the North Star as our guiding light, but as we feel we grow closer, we are never close enough to actually reach out and touch it.
I think of the American Dream in a similar way-its almost close enough to touch, but out of reach because of manufactured scarcity. We are fooled into blaming one another for this deprivation. I wanted to say something about this.
Q6. How do you write about political systems without losing the individual people living inside them?
If my music was informed by fear of interpretation, then I feel like I’d be making a product first instead of art. I feel as if it’s my duty not to compromise on what’s on my heart when I am writing songs.
If I write from an honest place, I feel as if any divisiveness is par for the course and supposed to happen instead of a negative consequence.
Q7. Against My Best Interests turns the focus from collective dysfunction towards personal contradiction. What do these two songs reveal when heard together?
I paired them together because I wanted to take an orchestral approach with both, but when you consider the themes in relation to one another, it explores the symbiotic relationship between our inner landscapes and our external conditions. If our interior world is chaotic, this undoubtedly expresses itself in our shared reality, too.
Q8. As you move towards your debut album with King Garbage, how representative are these orchestral and jazz-informed arrangements of the wider project?
The album is such an amalgam of different influences and styles, but the freedom and dynamics of both jazz and orchestral music are constant throughout. Sometimes what I take from a genre isn’t necessarily its more obvious calling cards, but what it implies about approaching music in general.
Jazz is complex and earnest, and I try to hold those attributes in my own work. Orchestras are powerful and create their own sonic ecosystems, and I aim to carry those lessons in the album, too.
Q9. FM PRO TECH: Vincent Ott’s arrangement gives North Star a cinematic scale. How did you decide where the orchestration should intensify the message and where it needed to leave space?
Lyrically, the verses center around the illusion and trickery of the American dream, and the choruses are where the curtain is pulled back. The orchestra approaches this cloak-and-dagger narrative through building anticipation in sparser texture in the verses, and swinging the hammer down with a swell of the full ensemble in the choruses.
When we were telling the truth, even if it was grim, we wanted it to hit hard.
Q10. FM PRO TECH: For the Swan Dive Sound performance, how were the musicians, vocals and room ambience captured to preserve the immediacy of a live take without sacrificing clarity?
It was just me and the piano, so in that spirit we kept it simple and didn’t want it to be busy.
I think if I was performing a less contemplative song it would’ve made sense to incorporate other players and other visual elements, but because we wanted to say what we had to say in an undiluted way, we let the music speak for itself.
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