JESSE SYKES & THE SWEET HEREAFTER
SHARE “DEAD END POOLS“
FOREVER, I’VE BEEN BEING BORN
TO BE RELEASED ON 28TH NOVEMBER
Today, Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter share the beautiful video for “Dead End Pools“, taken from Forever, I’ve Been Being Born, their first new album since 2011’s Marble Son and fifth since 2002. Forever, I’ve Been Being Born arrives on the 28th November on LP/CD/DL via Ideologic Organ in Europe/UK/Asia/South America. Southern Lord to release the album in North America and Australasia.
Forever, I’ve Been Being Born is a suite of masterful, emotive songs from an open heart, dwelling in a brightness yet deep in the ethereal and melancholic, steeped in themes of magical thinking, emotional dislocation, death and transformation. In the making for ten years, the album centres around the power of Jesse’s transcendent voice, which has never been more beautiful, evocative, and hauntingly intimate. Guitarist Phil Wandscher‘s playing masterfully frames these songs with classic and fractured tones, a duet of vulnerability and strength frequently on the edge.
About “Dead End Pools”, Jesse Sykes comments;
Dead End Pools was written as a love song, a testament to the “endurance test” that is my musical partner Phil Wandscher and our relationship. I always say, we share the same heart.
There was a documentary airing on PBS one night, where they were talking about Pacific salmon spawning in “dead end pools”, before swimming up steam to die. I grabbed my guitar… At the time, Phil was living out of his van, and dare I say, I was holding onto my life and to our musical “apparatus”, for dear life. I think I may have written from the perspective of being dead already, because a part of me was at that time. It had been a tough decade for us both. I wanted to pay homage to the notion that you are what you leave behind. In this case a song. The struggles are just part of the eternal cacophony of existence.
The divine spark, the love, the friendship, always overcame the darkness and difficulties of those days and continues to nourish us. Despite ourselves, we were once again saved through song. Whatever that entity that lives inside music “is”, it found us again, and led us back to each other and ourselves.
About the video, Jesse adds;
The video was shot by our friend, musician Mike Antone, who lives and grew up in the mountains and rivers of North Bend, Washington. He brought us into his world of Rattlesnake Lake. A town had once thrived where we now frolic in this footage, that had been overcome by a massive flood at the turn of the last century, most of the building’s remnants submerged beneath the lake. But the mighty tree stumps remain, and seem so alive — ancient and magnificent wonders. I love how the video brings them back to life as they are witnessing us, while we search for each other among the ruins.
WATCH THE VIDEO FOR “DEAD END POOLS” BELOW:
“This album is our attempt to create elegant folk and sometimes ragged, cosmic, heart rendered songs full of eulogies and laments. Our sound is still familiar enough, but unrecognisable at times—we’ve gotten older and wearier, the music more fragile…
…When we started recording this album, I remember saying, “Play the songs as if the edge of a butterfly wing was brushing against your cheek in the dark while you’re holding a small child.” I wanted to connote tenderness and a state of grace in the wake of resolution—paying homage to the creeping knowledge of an emerging, menacing undertone forming in our collective psyche. In hindsight, the delay in releasing this record has been a bit of a blessing, as the lyrics seem more poignant now, transcending our own internal voices and psyches. As the world shares its collective crisis, so we too, share our songs.” – J. Sykes
On Forever, I’ve Been Being Born, Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter have crafted a work which feels “very much like a eulogy”, a collection of tracks which see Sykes exploring the idea of mortality with a calm acceptance.
Whilst Sykes’ voice has already acted as a guiding light through dark times for others, for Jesse herself, that presence is felt in the form of a chaperone on this record. More specifically, Jesse’s childhood babysitter inspired a motif on the record, “She truly was the person who taught me love,” muses Jesse, “When I think of the moment of death, I often think that it would just be going to her.”
Recording a new album was delayed for years, in the wake of two band members unexpectedly leaving after Marble Son. “Losing our rhythm section was heartbreaking,” she reflects. “It sounds cliche, but we had to grieve that loss, and in doing so, we had to separate ourselves from making music for a while, because dare I say, music was painful at the time. It reminded us of what we’d lost. Bands are like family and I’d lost my family. So yes, I had to give up music in order to fall in love with music again.”
The album title, Forever, I’ve Been Being Born, hints towards this sense of cyclical surrender – “I’ve felt I’m constantly being born and constantly having to die. Or constantly dying in order to be reborn.”
We live in a time of collective mourning, and to Jesse, “the lyrics make more sense now than when I was writing them. I think there was some kind of premonition going on… juxtaposed to what’s happening in the country, the emotional climate – this music speaks to the times we are living through.”
The emotional feeling of the record can be summed up in a single line from the title track – “Eternities, they will crumble.” A quiet sense of acceptance runs through the record like a stream meandering towards the sea.
“It is with great pleasure and humility that we bring you, Forever, I’ve Been Being Born.
Listen in the dark.”
“It’s that ancient light that wanders,
Rapt in the splendor of your form,
And to this I will surrender,
Forever, I’ve been being born,
Beneath an overarching,
Melody, so forlorn.”
Forever, I’ve Been Being Born album cover
Photo credit: Anita Nowacka