Tag: sondre lerche

RSVP HERE: Shadow Monster live streams via The Footlight + MORE

Welcome to our weekly show recommendation column RSVP HERE. Due to live show cancellations we will be covering virtual live music events and festivals.

Photo Credit: Michelle LoBianco / @brooklynelitist

Shadow Monster is the solo project of Gillian Visco, a staple of the Brooklyn music scene since 2007, having  played in bands including Photon Dynamo and the Shiny Pieces and The Glitch. Since 2012 Gillian has played solo under the Shadow Monster moniker, writing introspective tunes until she paired up with drummer John Swanson (also of Sic Tic and The Glitch) in 2017, evolving their sound to heavier, moody (yet minimal) grunge. Shadow Monster is an exercise in exploring your shadow side and exorcising inner demons through songwriting. Their debut record Punching Bag was released in October 2019 via Dadstache Records, they played a ton of shows in 2019, and had plans to tour to SXSW this year (which were unfortunately canceled due to Covid-19). You can still see Gillian of Shadow Monster from the comfort of your quarantine on Saturday, playing a solo set live streamed from The Footlight Instagram alongside sets by Nathan Xander, and Kiril of Bears. We chatted with Gillian about her quarantine routine, the effects of isolation on her creative process, and what to expect from her live stream performance.

AF: You’ve been in NYC since 2007, and I’m sure have seen it change a lot. Have the changes in NYC affected how you’ve written music and performed over the years?

SM: It’s true – New York is always morphing and venues that I thought would be here forever are already gone. I tend to be a nostalgia-hoarder, so the art of letting go has been the most valuable lesson I’ve learned while living and playing music here. When you strangle the past like it’s the best thing that’s ever going to happen to you, you leave no room for the unexpected. The years I played solo I wrote quiet fingerpicking songs, and now I thrash around onstage and scream. But the root of it remains the same. I think an artist’s entire career is like chasing after something you remember vaguely from a dream. Maybe we never get it perfect – but perhaps the value lies in the passion for going after it at all. New York has taught me that patient joy in reveling in the rollercoaster and allowing myself to evolve into the most authentic version of the artist I am at this moment in time.

AF: What was the process for writing and recording your debut album Punching Bag?

SM: The songs on Punching Bag were written over a two year period while I was dealing with a bad breakup. I lost myself in a cave of turmoil and felt completely disconnected to the world around me. John Swanson started playing drums with me in the summer of 2017. Playing shows and arranging these songs with John was the main thing that pulled me out of the dark place I was writing them from. In March of 2018 I lost my job and we decided to spend every day working on getting our best seven songs recorded. We recorded everything on our own in John’s room and once finished, we brought the tracks to Brian Speaker at Speakersonic where they were mixed and mastered.

AF: Do you have a quarantine routine? What albums, movies, and shows have you been getting into?

SM: The first thing I do every morning since I’ve been in quarantine is try to get out of bed. This usually takes around an hour… It’s a habit I’m going to break… next week. So after I climb that mountain, I start my day by having a coffee, watching some news, drinking lemon water and meditating. I meditate before bed too. I find it’s a really great way to bookend the day, especially during times of high stress and anxiety. I’m a Virgo so naturally I have an ongoing list of things I’d like to accomplish during this time at home. Something that has stuck is a quarantine art series I’ve been posting on Instagram featuring a character I call NoName. I normally never have much time to devote to visual art so I’m just diving in head first now. Drawing is great for anxiety.

Shows I’m watching: Tiger King, Sex Education, High Fidelity, Preacher, 30 Rock

Shows on my list: The Sopranos, Sons of Anarchy, Dexter

AF: Has being in quarantine helped or hindered your creative process?

SM: Being in quarantine has been interesting to navigate creatively. There’s a whole aspect of my personality that loves being locked in my room, working for hours on a song, writing poetry, playing records, lighting candles, enjoying my space. But then there’s this other half of me that loves people and music and loud bars and dancing and staying out too late and escaping the confines of my mind. I’m figuring out how to adapt. We have essentially lost our social life so everything feels a bit off-balance to me. But feeling off is a great place to make art from. It’s the cabin in the woods trip I always talk about taking. And I don’t even need to pack.

AF: What’s your livestream set going to be like?

SM: I’m super excited to do a livestream show on Saturday through The Footlight’s Instagram page. I’ve done a couple of livestream sets over the past two weeks, (000ze.digital, Left Bank Magazine, Bands Do BK) but this one is going to be a longer set. I plan to give a couple brand new songs a shot that I’ve written during quarantine. I’ll play some songs from our album, and I’m working on a cover. I’m implementing a drinking game in the set too. Get your quarantine drink of choice ready and bring your pets.

AF: What is the first thing you’d like to do if and when everything goes back to normal?

SM: I WANNA GO TO A SHOW. So bad. So so bad.

RSVP HERE for Gillian of Shadow Monster, Nathan Xander, and Kiril of Bears livestream on The Footlight’s Instagram 8PM EST. Every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday tune into to their page for an hour long show. Donations accepted through the link in their bio to help support the artists and the staff of The Footlight. 

More great live streams this week…

4/3 Big Freedia via Facebook. 9pm est, RSVP HERE

4/3  Rick from Pile via Instagram. 8pm est, RSVP HERE

4/3 Francie Moon, Moon Bandits, Tejon Street Corner Thieves live stream via Coping with Dystopia Instagram. 6pm EST RSVP HERE

4/4 Cam Tony (Mac Demarco) via BABYtv. 8-10pm EST $5-50 RSVP HERE

 

4/4 25 Hour Comedy Fest via Socially Distant Improv Instagram. 11am EST RSVP HERE

4/5 Carrie Anne Murphy of Clapperclaw, Huh, Bad Credit No Credit, and The Sundae Fantastique show will be live streaming every night at midnight EST. RSVP HERE

4/5 Sunday Silent Film: Salome w/ live accordion music via YouTube. 2:30pm EST RSVP HERE

4/8 Sondre Lerche via Facebook. noon est RSVP HERE

4/9 Dolly Parton bedtime story live stream via YouTube. 7pm est, RSVP HERE

Daily: Lauren Ruth Ward coffee chat via Instagram. noon-3pm pst, RSVP HERE

ARTIST INTERVIEW: Sondre Lerche

Sondre Lerche

New York-based Norwegian troubadour Sondre Lerche has been making melancholic pop since 2001 – songs full of heartbreak and lo-fi melodies. Lerche’s last full-length came out in 2014; Please was called his self-proclaimed “divorce album,” a solemn look back at a difficult time. To contrast the album, Lerche released a more uptempo, dancier, remix EP called Despite the Night.

While there’s no set release date for Lerche’s forthcoming LP Pleasure, the singer-songwriter dropped pop-fueled “I’m Always Watching You” in October and a darker, alternate version called “I’m Always Watching You Too” in December. It’s a hazy dream that was a catalyst for the track.

Before Lerche goes on tour this year, we caught up with him about his forthcoming release, how New York has influenced his music. and the most important lessons he has learned as a musician.

Audiofemme: Are you releasing a new album?

Sondre Lerche: I will eventually, yes. I’m just sort of easing into it, I suppose. I released this song “I’m Always Watching You” in two different versions. I’m also releasing probably some more songs and doing this tour in April. By the time we’re doing a year-end tour, there will be a new record.

Can you tell me what the new record will be about?

It’s sort of a liminal-themed record. I feel like all the songs, one way or another, relate to being in limbo or being between two realities or two personalities. It’s definitely some sort of aftermath after some sort dramatic events where you don’t quite know what’s what and you seek to only live in the moment because you can’t stomach to look too far ahead or look back. It’s pretty desperate, joyful, confused and explosive type of record where you seek to only be in the moment. That’s why it’ll be called Pleasure. For better or worse, it’s about things that give you pleasure in the moment and also knowing full well that’s not a place you can live or stay. For the existence of the record, it’s where you are held captive in a sense.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned as a musician over the years?

One of them definitely is that it pays to be stubborn. It’s hard to navigate a world where you see yourself as an artist, but you have a lot of contract elements and you’re exposing a lot of different sides to your personality that are sometimes in direct conflict with each other. I both have an outgoing entertainer and more secretive artist inside of me, and they both want to win. I think the one thing I’ve learned is that it’s okay to be stubborn and somebody needs to be stubborn on your behalf. It’s probably going to have to be you. Everybody else can go either way. Nobody is going to feel as passionate about what you do as you. I think in the long-run that kind of stubbornness and focus is what builds character, and that character reveals itself over time. Maybe not in the moment, but you’re building some sort of stamina and character at the audience you cultivate as you go along that you can believe in and trust even if you make some u-turns and left turns. You’re not always going to make everybody happy, and it certainly isn’t the artist’s obligation to do so. But I think over time, character wins…I hope.

Can you tell me about the meaning behind the song “I’ll Always Be Watching You?”

It’s a song from my perspective about someone who has rejected a lover that he can’t get over. It’s navigating that feeling where you have no entitlement: you’ve rejected this love – this relationship. But at the same time, you long for it and regret turning away from it. The only thing you have is social media and spying on the object of all this affection through all of these different vehicles that we have at our disposal. It’s really sort of pathetic because it’s someone who has rejected the real thing but has been left with some pale replacement for real love or intimacy. That feeling intoxicated by the picture on an iPhone and knowing that you don’t even deserve that because you turned it away is what it’s about.

What’s the hardest part of making music for you?

The hardest part is staying at it because we want to feel creative all the time, and you can’t. So, it’s frustrating when you can’t be productive when you want to be productive. I think the hardest part is believing you will write something good again. It’s pretty black and white. Sometimes when I write I feel like nothing good will come of this or I won’t write something I’ll feel motivated to share. When you’re in that part of the process and not really feeling inspired, it just feels like there’s no possibility of inspiration ever hitting you again. The biggest challenge is stay at it. Of course it helps a little bit to have done it over time because then you see the ebbs and flows of the process and you see that the inspiration will return. In the meantime, it’s your responsibility to work, write, stay focused and be diligent and disciplined in your work: that’s the job.

Is there anything you would ever change about your career thus far?

I take great pride in a lot of the songs I write, so it means a lot to me when I see it means a lot to people. It’s not something to take for granted that it will even reach anyone. I’ve been lucky enough that I’ve had audiences across the world. Last year I did some bigger shows at festivals where I dared to think bigger in a sense for the first time in my life and create a show that was made for a bigger audience. That felt really scary to me because there’s really nothing to hide behind if it doesn’t reach a bigger audience or if it doesn’t please a particular audience. It was called “Performance Please”. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. It made me think how cool it was to communicate with a bigger audience and create a big show. I don’t really have a big, mainstream audience anywhere, and I come from a more intimate world of communicating through specific music to a very specific audience who appreciates it. That’s my core: my home. Sometimes I think it would be cool to paint with a really big brush on a stage – to make a big show on a big stage in front of a big audience if someday I have a big enough audience to justify that kind of work. We’ll see.

How did moving to New York influence a shift in your music?

I didn’t really notice such a big shift. As a musician, I’ve been traveling ever since my first record came out. All I know is moving around – I’ve lived here and there, but moving to New York gave me some space to land and get away from everything once the tour was over and once any kind of trip I was on was over. I’m sure it’s opened my eyes to different music than I would have played in Norway or anything else. In New York, you see as a musician the world is yours in a weird way. The only thing you know is that everything is going to change no matter what you do. Everything will move, change, you will seek different inspirations and find different ways of expressing your emotions and you will feel new things that will make you question the work you did before. It’s hard for me to pinpoint how New York specifically plays into that, but I do like how it feels like the center of a certain kind of world. I also like feeling like I can reject it and be alone with my writing. New York combines those things well.

ALBUM REVIEW: Sondre Lerche “The Sleepwalker Original Soundtrack”

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Sondre Lerche‘s shadowy soundtrack to the Sundance contender The Sleepwalker opens with a love ballad turned inside out: “You Sure Look Swell”, is a familiar melody of lullaby arpeggios, touched with a creepy distortion that becomes more prevalent as the album progresses. Picture an empty gas station with flickering lights, at a nowhere intersection in the middle of the night, with an old radio behind the counter playing Skeeter Davis, the song slowly being overtaken by radio static. That’s the effect.

The track—one of a minority of vocals-heavy songs on the record—ends with a total disintegration into the white noise that has been threatening it from the very first chord, the initially sweet lyrics melting into something sinister. The vocal lines recall the balladry of sixties country pop, and their incongruency with the surrounding music defamiliarizes their warmth. The contrast is further accentuated, in the three subsequent vocal tracks on the record, by silvery female vocals. Ably handled by Marit Larson, Nathalie Nordnes and Sylvia Lewis, the mournful prettiness of the singing offers relief against the instrumental tracks, where the album is at its bleakest.

Spooky ambience and chaotic classical influences mark a sharp departure for the Norwegian musician and composer, whose discography since his debut in 2000 has circled around friendly indie rock melodies flecked with jazz, lounge and eighties pop influences. Sleepwalker is his second soundtrack (in 2007, Lerche recorded a pop collection for Dan In Real Life that bore his musical signature so strongly it could easily have been released as a standalone album). This was a credit to Lerche: his music framed the film without deferring to it, and although the album shifted gracefully into the role of chronicling for a visual storyline, the album was still essentially a collection of songs.

Not so in Sleepwalker. Lerche wrote the music for the soundtrack with Kato Ådland, an actor and composer who had an acting role in Dan In Real Life. The result—Lerche’s first collaboration—is a far-reaching, textured soundscape with elements of spiny, jumbled classical and jazz. Particularly on the less linear second half of the album, the songs don’t feel so much like songs as they feel like one large, shapeshifting piece of music. The guitar arpeggios that predominate in the first track fade in and out of the less melody-driven back half of Sleepwalker, but feel farther away, as if they’re emerging out of a thick fog or through a dream. A common beat—a foreboding, clock-like rhythm shared by strings, electronics, and percussive instruments—recurs as the tracks wear on.

The Sleepwalker soundtrack may come as a surprise from Lerche, but it’s perfectly in line with the aesthetic of the film, which tells the story of Christine, who makes an unexpected appearance at the estate where she grew up as her sister Kaia is in the midst of renovating the property with her partner Andrew. It soon becomes clear that Christine’s grip on reality is growing progressively looser, and the unraveling of family grudges and relationships that ensues is heightened by the uncanny element of Christine’s sleepwalking. Themes of night and obscurity loom large, both visually and in this soundtrack. Moments of ambience serve as blank spots, unrevealed secrets.

And Lerche more than does justice to the creepiness of the mysterious stranger trope on this album. Flanked by warmth—pretty songs, lines of gentle pop harmony—Lerche bottoms out the murky depths of the story, and ends on the ambiguously resolved “Take Everything Back,” a gorgeously harmonized duet between Larsen and Lewis. In the song’s chorus, the bass line descends into a surprising minor modulation, diverging subtly from the predominant thread of the music. At its end, the album’s resolution is ambiguous, retaining a lot of the mystery that it started with.

“Not bringing what I’ve learned through this process into my future songwriting and albums would be impossible,” Lerche has said of creating the Sleepwalker soundtrack. “It’s been so fucking liberating, I can’t turn around now.” Many of the new directions the music takes in this album do, indeed, feel like revelations, most visibly in the way Lerche plays with time, ambience and rhythm on the soundtrack. Will this mean a permanent shift in Lerche’s work? We’ll have to wait and see. For now, enjoy the Sleepwalker soundtrack, which comes out next Tuesday, January 14th via Mona Records.

Listen to “Palindromes,” off The Sleepwalker Original Soundtrack, and watch the trailer for The Sleepwalker  below!