Rose Hotel’s label debut A Pawn Surrender sees Atlanta-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Jordan Reynolds claiming her agency with a 10-song set of nuanced indie-rock songcraft that pulls from a palette of psychedelic shimmer and folk influence via her Southeastern roots. With a drive to pay homage to the legends of the art form, she uses the trappings of psychedelic rock not as source material, but as ornamentation, as she explores relationships, feminine rage, lust, temptation, blissful ignorance, frightening apathy, delusions, and illusions.

Where 2019’s I Will Only Come When It’s a Yes presented a coming-of-age tale, A Pawn Surrender nourishes the garden of adulthood with a cohesive but genre-spanning approach that Reynolds was empowered to achieve through a chess metaphor:

“I was playing a lot of chess when I wrote this album, so I started to think about these songs as if they were all different pieces on the board representing varying aspects of my songwriting, personality, and experience. Each piece has its own specific purpose and its own strength to utilize, but you can't play the game with only your queen or your knights, or whatever. That became such a comforting idea and ethos to operate within – not just accepting variety but finding its inherent value. I went into the studio without any fear of being all over the board. I wanted to be limitless in letting my influences shine through the music in different ways. The throughline of Rose Hotel is my lyricism and my voice, but musically, I wanted to stretch out.”

Reynolds co-produced A Pawn Surrender with Atlanta-based engineers Damon Moon (Standard Electric Recorders) and Graham Tavel (Mirror Mirror Recording) and tapped acclaimed Athens, Georgia producer Drew Vandenberg (Faye Webster, S.G Goodman, Kristine Leschper) for mixing and additional production. The group of studio musicians she assembled nods to her time spent in DIY scenes throughout the Southeast, collectively known for their work with Margo Price, S.G. Goodman, Caitlin Rose, Orville Peck, Rich Ruth, Neighbor Lady, Night Palace, CDSM, and more.

From her hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky, Reynolds started her music career playing keys in psych-rock band Buffalo Rodeo when she was 19. “We bought an Econoline van that didn’t even have seats in it for like $1,500. We fixed it up, and I learned how to be in a band,” she says. “I learned how to communicate with sound guys, how to fix a pedal board on the fly, how to be the only girl on a tour with 10 dudes. It was a super formative time for me. When rubber hit the road, I was like ‘oh, this is actually what I really want to be doing.’”

Those formative years paid off as Reynolds has since built a career as a side musician playing keys and guitar and singing for acts like Neighbor Lady, Susto, Faye Webster, and She Returns From War — all while continuing to record as Rose Hotel. Her 2017 collaboration with Rich Ruth resulted in Rose Hotel’s first EP, Always a Good Reason, which she followed with her self-released 2019 debut full-length, I Will Only Come When It’s a Yes. Paste Magazine listed Rose Hotel among “25 Atlanta Indie Rock Bands You Need to Know in 2019,” praising, "It's a miraculous mix of psych-rock, pop and jazz that shouldn’t work, but Reynolds and her band knit them all tightly together for a full, bold sound."