‘Twixt the burning beams glissade I
To beneath the kneading, bleeding oak
Intoxicated with the thickest liquor
(caught in the Wheel of Life’s spokes.)
This September marks a new chapter for East Coast musician J. Trafford. His first collection of lyrics, Why is My Heart in My Throat?: Selected Lyrics of J. Trafford, will be published on September 1, 2025. The volume spans two decades of songwriting, presented with an introduction by writer and comedian Megha Pai, and will be available in both hardcover and ebook formats.
Trafford began making music in Pittsburgh in 2002 and has since roamed through a wide range of projects. He fronts the punk-glam outfit Nowhere Wolves, recorded three solo albums of chamber pop between 2005 and 2008, and later guided the post-punk-pop group Suavity’s Mouthpiece from 2008 to 2019. More recently, he spent four years with the indie rock band Sommelier. Across these ventures, Trafford has maintained a reputation for pushing against the ordinary, balancing sharp pop instincts with restless experimentation.
The collection reintroduces his work in a new light. By gathering lyrics that cross projects, styles, and decades, Trafford offers readers a clear line through his creative life. The book also features reproductions of flyers from the Pittsburgh underground—many designed by Trafford himself—that capture the texture of the scene he came up in. This pairing of text and ephemera underscores not only the songs but the community and culture that shaped them.
On the page, Trafford’s lyrics move like liturgy with teeth—archaic turns perched beside modern cruelties. The stanza “’Twixt the burning beams glissade I” frames the collection’s thesis: love as intoxicant, idyll crossed by ordnance, the body snagged in history’s machinery. That tension ripples outward—body‑horror metamorphosis in “I Am A Goddamned Bird,” blasphemous glamour in “Rejected By the Denied” (“where archangels reign”), and gallows jokes that sucker‑punch tenderness in “Killjoy” and the acid meta‑lament “Let Grief Begin With Me.” Even the title phrase resurfaces mid‑song—“Plainclothes” asks, “Why is my heart in my throat?”—so the book reads less as miscellany than as one quickened pulse: moody melancholia meeting fiery anthems, a poet testing how confession, satire, and survival can share the same line.
Why is My Heart in My Throat?: Selected Lyrics of J. Trafford is available to pre-order now, ahead of its September 1 publication. The book may be pre-ordered here.
The release will be celebrated in Pittsburgh with a launch party at Poetry Lounge on September 4. The evening begins at 7 p.m. and is free to attend. Performances will include spoken word by Shockie G and Sara Bellum, and a set by Samurae. It promises to be a night where page, stage, and memory meet.
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