‘I DON’T think we should run away from grief or sadness or the complicated nature of things that can be good and bad at the same time,” Jo Mango says. “But I believe that there should be a safe place where we can navigate that together.”
We’re speaking ahead of the release of Mango’s new album, The Lightswitch, which marks her return after a 12-year break from releasing a solo record. “I would like the album to feel like a safe place to feel things and explore them, and to live with them for a while,” she adds.
A mainstay on the Scottish music scene for more than two decades, Mango is known for her enthralling storytelling and the generous warmth of her alt-folk sound. For 12 years, however, her solo career appeared to be on pause. While she continued to compose, collaborate and teach, a new solo album never arrived. But now with The Lightswitch, she’s back with a record that not only explains her absence but transforms it into art.
“It became a collection of love songs to music,” Mango says of the album. “Some of the songs are just love songs about how much I love music and the brilliant power of it. Some of them are a bit obsessive, because that’s the way my brain works, and that’s part of the reason why I make music. But then others are songs about a more damaging or abusive kind of love, but they’re all related to music, and that was my way of processing it.”
That complex relationship sits at the heart of The Lightswitch, a record that explores what happens when the thing that has always sustained you also becomes a source of pain. Across 12 songs, Mango provides an insight into her very personal journey, and how common it is for women in particular to be made to feel as though a career in music is not worth the heartache.
“My dad was a minister, so I was always doing some kind of music, I suppose, in a church context,” she recalls, explaining how she was drawn in by music from early childhood. The turning point came through her twin brother Jim, who formed a band with friends, including the man who would later become Mango’s husband. When the group struggled to find a singer, they reluctantly turned to her.
“As a last resort, they asked me if I would sing,” she laughs. “I obviously really wanted to be in the band.” But the experience ignited something for Mango – it was where she found a love of playing pop music. “And that’s when I really started writing songs,” she says.
Fast forward to present day and Mango’s career has seen her write with the likes of Teenage Fanclub, Karine Polwart, and Admiral Fallow; tour worldwide as part of Vashti Bunyan’s band; and perform alongside artists like Devendra Banhart, CocoRosie and Roddy Woomble. Her last solo album, 2012’s Murmuration, was praised for its exquisite beauty and transfixing arrangements. However, despite a growing reputation, the years following Murmuration proved unexpectedly difficult.
Mango began recording new material while pregnant with her first child, expecting to return quickly after maternity leave. Instead, family responsibilities and caring duties delayed those plans. Practical circumstances were, however, only part of the story.
“I had PTSD-related stage fright that was getting worse,” she says. “I wasn’t enjoying playing on stage because I was panicking a lot, partly because of bad experiences I’d had in the past.”
These experiences were related to her past treatment within the music industry, which had left an evident mark. Over time, her anxiety about performing began affecting her relationship with music itself. For someone who had always relied on songwriting to make sense of life, the impact was profound.
“Music’s always been the way in which I process things,” she explains. “I got into this horrible bind of feeling the effect of some bad experiences that the music industry can throw up, and wanting to write music to cope with it, because that’s my coping mechanism, but then music being part of the picture that caused it in the first place.”
At one point, she genuinely questioned whether she would ever return. “I thought, actually, I’m not going to be able to play anymore. But that couldn’t last either, because the force of the goodness of music in my life was just too big.”
As she began discussing her experiences with other artists, she discovered how common they were. Stories from musicians including Vashti Bunyan and PJ Harvey helped her realise that many artists, particularly women, have struggled to separate their love of music from difficult experiences within the industry. That revelation became the foundation of The Lightswitch.
The album is built around the metaphor of a house. Mango was inspired by a songwriter who described writing an album as building a home for his late mother in the afterlife. The idea fascinated her.
“I kind of got a bit obsessed by this thought of albums becoming like a shelter for people somewhere,” she says. “I thought, well, that’s quite often how albums function for me – they are like a little place for me to go and hide away in, or to shelter in. I wanted people to feel that, but I also wanted the album to be like a house where we could all go together and shelter together.”
The title track explores the temptation to abandon something you desperately want when pursuing it becomes painful.
“It’s about the feeling of wanting to switch something off,” Mango explains. Elsewhere on the record, images of water and waves appear repeatedly. The symbolism is intentional.
“Music is made out of waves,” Mango says. Like the sea, music can be both healing and destructive. “Sometimes it sweeps away my troubles, sometimes it brings me more troubles.”
That duality is perhaps best captured through another image that recurs throughout the album: the record player needle. A needle is what makes a record sing, but it also gradually wears it down.
“I know that a lot of artists feel a bit like that,” Mango says, “that they’re being slowly eroded somehow by what it takes to go out and perform.”
Yet The Lightswitch is ultimately a hopeful record. The years away from releasing solo material brought experience, confidence and perspective. Now back on stage, she is rediscovering the joy of sharing songs, both with the wider music community and her audience.
“I think when you’ve been out for a while, you forget how good it is to feel connected to the other people who are working in the scene, and just to be in a room full of people,” she says.
“It’s just not alive for me, songs, until you’re playing them in a room full of people. Music does connect people in a way that nothing else does, and it feels magical when it’s happening.”
After 12 years away, The Lightswitch isn’t necessarily a comeback, but more a reconciliation; it’s a record about finding a way back to the thing you love. For Mango, it’s safe to say that the music never really disappeared – it was simply waiting for the moment when she was ready to turn the light back on.
The Lightswitch is out now.
