Buffalo Music: New releases out from Yellow Jack, Jason Pfaff

(Above: Urge Surfer. Photo by Jacqueline Csiga).

By Chloe Kowalyk & Elmer Ploetz

Urge Surfer

Unique electro-pop beats and passionate vocals define Buffalo-based duo Urge Surfer, composed of Jordan Maelyn Smith and Chelsea O’Donnell. 

The group has new music set to release on Sept. 30 with a three-song EP titled “Misnomers.” 

The new EP is as unique and captivating as the story behind it. 

Both O’Donnell and Smith were enthusiastic about music and have backgrounds as musicians.  

Smith began playing as a teenager and starting out in pop punk bands, and later moved to hardcore, then ran a record label, Vega Vinyl. 

She then transitioned into working in film, but later began working on music more following the pandemic in 2020. 

O’Donnell also has a deep history in music, taking inspiration from her father who was a musician as well and who gifted her her first guitar when she was 14, and she has continued to perform in various solo and group projects. 

Smith and O’Donnell both studied in the same program at SUNY Fredonia, but later got to know each other as they both worked in a public library in Buffalo.

The duo reconnected after O’Donnell saw videos of Smith performing on social media. 

“I was like, ‘Wow, I really like how she plays and her sounds are really awesome … I want some of that on my music,’” O’Donnell said. 

O’Donnell then reached out to Smith, and the two came together to form the Urge Surfer project in 2021. 

At first, the idea for Urge Surfer was for it to be a hardcore-type of sound. 

“I was always attracted to doing heavy music,” Smith said. 

However, the duo discovered that the screaming-style of music was harder for O’Donnell to healthily maintain vocally, and they shifted their focus. 

“When she [Smith] first sent me a synthesizer track, that’s when things clicked into place because we’re such pop music fans,” O’Donnell said. 

O’Donnell also explained how she and Smith have different ways of processing music — O’Donnell’s thoughts are more structured as traditional songs (verse, chorus, etc.) while Smith’s thinking is very free flowing. 

“I feel like those two things kind of coming together, plus our mutual appreciation of pop influences and stuff, made this really cool end result,” O’Donnell said. “It felt right to keep experimenting in that direction.”

As a team, Smith handles the modular synthesizing and programming which composes the song’s main body, while O’Donnell comes up with a melody and the lyrics. 

The two remained in constant communication (and even had an email thread with over 500 emails in it ranging from music collaboration to checking in on each other’s lives), and eventually, Smith began sending O’Donnell words that came to her in a separate thread. 

O’Donnell began using those words to help compose ideas for songs.

This thread became known as “Alphabet Archive,” which shares a name with a 2024 EP the duo released. 

The duo feels that this new release is less linear than the past ones. 

For instance, about a year ago, O’Donnell had come up with a guitar part, which she sent over to Smith. Within 48 hours, Smith had helped produce an idea for the sound and the duo loved it. 

This song became “Responsible,” which is the leading track on the EP. 

“So that was like a backwards construction … for once, I came up with the musical element and the melody, but then Jordan’s production really brought it back into the synth space,” O’Donnell said. 

“Responsible” also features guest vocalist Sheena Ozella of the band Lemuria. 

The duo got connected with Ozella after she moved back to Buffalo and began working for the same company Smith’s wife co-owns. 

“I’ve always loved her voice and to be able to even have that opportunity to ask somebody who you really adore their music to potentially collaborate is both exciting and intimidating,” O’Donnell said. 

Smith added, “I think both of us were a little shocked that A, she would be even vaguely interested and then B, to actually come into our personal recording space and really do something that we both feel very wonderful about.”

Smith felt that Ozella and O’Donnell’s voices fit together well within the song. 

“I think they work incredibly well on a recording, so it was really fun for me to play with the recordings, to get them to blend really well,” she said. 

After deciding to release new music this summer, O’Donnell and Smith felt that the three songs — “Responsible,” “Public Exists” and “A-Line” were the most complete. 

“Weirdly, they feel like a whole,” Smith said. 

“They work together, even though they’re so different from one another,” O’Donnell added. “So it definitely feels like somehow they flow, one after the other, even like Jordan said they are all very individual in their own way.”

As a whole, Smith feels that the new EP represents “our personal responsibilities to each other as individuals and to society at large.” 

She touched on how “Responsible” is “much more about personal relationships, but also kind of always bringing it back to your own perspective on how you interact with other individuals.” 

O’Donnell said that the song “Public Exits” hits the hardest. 

“I think all that pent up frustration is evident, not only in the words, but also in the music, which is something that’s kind of cool about this project,” she said.

For the third song on the EP, “A-Line,” Smith initially titled the track, and within five minutes, O’Donnell had created a poem that she put to the song. 

O’Donnell explained how she feels a sense of responsibility to her creative relationship with Smith. 

“I feel like Jordan’s being so vulnerable. When she writes words, she’s being really vulnerable too, but you’re also being incredibly vulnerable when you’re showcasing these pieces that mean a lot to you,” O’Donnell said. 

The EP’s cover art is done by artist Sarah Jane Barry, who has also done the art for the group’s other releases. The art is hand-painted.

“She’s just an amazing painter who has this very imaginative and intuitive style of painting that I really think taps into this sense of unconsciousness,” Smith said. I really appreciate Sarah’s take on painting, because you’re able to look at it and draw your interpretation out of it.” 

In the age of AI, the duo finds it to be incredibly important to collaborate with other creators and maintain an “organic artist element.” 

While it is challenging to bring a synthesizing performance to a live stage, the duo hopes to make this a reality sometime in the future. 

Although Smith and O’Donnell work together on Urge Surfer, the duo are also in Stress Dolls, another Buffalo-based band more in the indie/alternative rock genre. 

Stress Dolls has one final show of the year and will be playing THEYFEST IV at Amy’s Place on Oct. 4. For more information, check out Urge Surfer on Instagram @urge.surfer and on Bandcamp here.

Yellow Jack releases ‘Canawlers, Captains and Con-Men’

Yellow Jack released its fourth album in the past five years on Sept. 19, with 10 songs plumbing the songs and history of the Erie Canal and surrounding environs. You’ll no doubt recognize some of the songs, such as “Low Bridge, Everybody Down,” from school music classes; they’re delivered with energy that takes them out of the history books and puts them securely into your brain.

The band, comprising Alaina Reed (fiddle), Andrew Gianni (mandolin);  Warren Namingha (drums), Keith Thomas (bass) and Dennis Reed Jr. (guitar), celebrates its “two centuries of rowdy roots.”

Jason Pfaff’s releases ‘2025’ record

Jason Pfaff calls his new record a “full-circle return to my genre-bending diary of love and madness style of writing.” Produced by Pfaff and mastered by Anthony Casuccio, the record is an atmospheric piece with echoes of 1980s synth bands.

Borderland video recap

The Borderland Festival has released its own video recap of the recent event. Nice drone shots!

Robby sings a song from the Goos’ first album

Robby Takac sang “I’m Addicated,” one of the songs from the Goo Goo Dolls self-titled first album from 1987 at Saturday’s Music Is Art festival, performing it with the Urban Achievers. We’re not sure who Goochick22 is, but she posted the video.

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If you’re a Western New York performer or band and you have a new release or video, drop us a line at editor@thebuffalohive.com and we’ll help you let the world know about it … with a side helping of opinion, of course.