As the cannabis industry continues to grow, so do the options for products and services. This can be great news for patients and recreational users alike, but it can also mean higher costs. It’s important to be mindful of your budget when it comes to cannabis, and there are a few easy ways to save money without skimping on quality. Here are a few ways you can save money on your cannabis needs:
1. Grow your own cannabis
This is often the most cost-effective option, as you’ll only need to purchase seeds or clones and then invest in some basic supplies like soil, pots, and grow lights. If you’re not sure how to get started, there are plenty of resources available online and at your local dispensary. You’ll want to find good online seed banks or reputable dispensaries in your area that offer quality genetics. Once you have your seeds or clones, you can start growing your own cannabis at home. It’s important to do your research beforehand and make sure you’re familiar with the basics of cannabis cultivation. This way, you can avoid costly mistakes and ensure successful growth.
2. Join a cannabis collective or cooperative
Collectives and cooperatives are groups of cannabis growers and/or users who band together to grow, process, and/or distribute cannabis. This can be a great way to get quality cannabis at a lower cost, as you’ll be buying in bulk. It’s important to do your research before joining a collective or cooperative, as some may require membership fees or have minimum purchase requirements. You’ll also want to make sure the group is reputable and that you feel comfortable with the people involved. It’s always a good idea to meet in person and ask plenty of questions before joining.
Many dispensaries offer discounts and promotions, so it’s always worth asking if there are any deals available. Some common discounts include student discounts, senior citizen discounts, military discounts, and first-time patient specials. Many dispensaries also offer loyalty programs that give you points for every purchase, which can be redeemed for discounts on future purchases. Some companies also offer coupons or promo codes that can be used online or in-store. When looking for the best deals and promotions on cannabis products, locals in Canada can explore the offerings of various weed stores in Kingston Ontario where they can find competitive prices and special discounts. By comparing prices and checking the promotions of different stores, customers can make informed decisions and maximize their savings. Be sure to do your research and take advantage of any deals that can help you save money on your cannabis needs. It’s also a good idea to follow your favorite dispensaries and companies on social media, as they often post about sales and promotions.
4. Shop around for the best prices
With the vast array of options now available, it’s important to shop around and compare prices before making a purchase. This is especially true for higher-priced items like cannabis concentrates and edibles. You can use websites like Weedmaps or Leafly to find dispensaries in your area and check out their menus to see what products are available and at what price point. Additionally, many dispensaries offer daily, weekly, or monthly deals on specific products, so it’s worth checking back often to see what’s on sale. When shopping for cannabis, it’s important to remember that price isn’t everything.
5. Purchase cannabis in bulk
If you know you’ll be using a lot of cannabis, it’s often cheaper to purchase it in bulk. This is especially true for Prepaid Bulk Purchases, where you pay for your cannabis upfront and then receive it over a period of time. This can be a great way to save money if you have the budget to do so. It’s important to remember that when you purchase cannabis in bulk, you may not have as much flexibility in terms of strain selection. Therefore, it’s important to choose a strain (or several strains) that you know you’ll enjoy and that will meet your needs.
6. Make your own cannabis products
If you’re looking to save money on higher-priced items like edibles and concentrates, one option is to make your own cannabis products at home. There are plenty of recipes available online for making everything from cannabutter to cannabis tinctures. This can be a great way to control the quality and potency of your products, as well as save money in the long run. Of course, it’s important to make sure you have a good understanding of cannabis before attempting to make your own products.
There are many ways to save money on your cannabis needs. By following the tips in this article, you’ll be sure to find the best deals on the products you need. Remember to do your research, take advantage of discounts and promotions, and shop around for the best prices. With a little effort, you can easily save money on your cannabis purchases.
Before Elvis Costello found success with the Attractions, he joined fellow Liverpool musician Allan Mayes to form a band called Rusty in early 1972. Though the rock group toured for a year, they never made it into a studio. Last year, Elvis Costello received a letter from his former bandmate, which led to them resurrecting the band and recording six songs that used to be part of their setlists. Costello has shared a lengthy statement about the collaboration, which you can read below.
Today, Rusty have announced their debut record, The Resurrection of Rust, which is out digitally on June 10 and will also be available in CD format at Costello’s shows and events. It features Costello and Mayes backed by Costello’s band the Imposters and includes two originals, ‘Warm House’ and ‘Maureen and Sam’, as well as covers of tracks by Nick Lowe, Jim Ford, and Neil Young.
Last year, Elvis Costello and the Imposters released their album The Boy Named If.
The Resurrection of Rust Cover Artwork:
In 2021, my pal and singing partner in the Liverpool clubs, Allan Mayes wrote to me from his home in Austin, Texas.
He wanted to remind me that it would soon be fifty years since I joined his band, “Rusty”, just after our first meeting at a party on New Year’s Eve, 1971.
The group was then a quartet, with Allan’s school friend, Alan Brown ‐ who would play bass until he left for university later that year ‐ and there was also another vocalist called “Dave”, whose main credentials as a singer were the ownership of a microphone and tambourine.
A month later, after a couple of pretty ragged gigs, Allan and I became the only vocalists and there was not a tambourine in sight.
Show business is a cruel game.
We would rehearse in my bedroom in West Derby or at Allan’s house in the shadow of Walton Gaol, where his father was a medical officer, working our way through two pretty similar stacks of mostly American albums, looking for songs to sing.
Our repertoire did include a few of our own compositions ‐ lyrics written in various shades of purple ‐ but they were often put in the shade by the songs of Neil Young, Van Morrison and two Bob Dylan tunes; one made famous by The Byrds and the other co‐written, by Rick Danko of The Band. We played tunes by Randy Newman, John Martyn and the psychedelic band, Help Yourself.
One of our early duets was David Crosby’s epic, “Wooden Ships” before which Allan would jokingly ask if I had my lucky rabbit’s foot about me, as I was about to venture into an unsteady guitar solo on my amplified Harmony Sovereign.
Our secret weapon was certainly a stack of Nick Lowe’s songs written for Brinsley Schwarz, which were not so very well‐known then. I think some casual listeners might have actually imagined we’d written them and I can’t say we always corrected this misapprehension but I suppose we’d acted as unpaid pitchmen for Nick by the time we met him, when the Brinsleys came to play “The Cavern”.
For the next year or so Rusty played the folk clubs and pubs on either side of the Mersey, acting as a musical interlude at poetry evenings organized by Harold and Sylvia Hikins or provided background music to nervous conversation at a lonely hearts gathering held in the RAF Club on Bold Street.
We were paid exactly nothing for playing “Mary Help Of Christians” ‐ a Catholic girls school, known locally as “Mary Feed The Pigeons” ‐ and opened up for the Natural Acoustic Band at John Lennon’s old school, Quarry Bank High and then for the Irish duo, Tir Na Nog, in the little recital room at St. George’s Hall, where Charles Dickens had once given a public reading. That show was on the eve of my rainy departure for the Bickershaw Festival at which I contracted something close to trench foot while watching the Grateful Dead in a sodden field.
We even took one fairly disastrous booking as a wedding band on Cantril Farm for which we hired a drummer and had to rescue the night with an impromptu medley of Chuck Berry songs.
When teenage girls at our Friday night pub residency, in nearby Widnes, demanded the hits of Slade and T.Rex, we tried to ease their hunger for Marc Bolan with a couple of Lindisfarne songs, which were at least in the pop charts.
It was all part of learning your trade as we were certainly only earning enough money to put petrol in Allan’s Ford Anglia and, failing this, ran our own musical evenings until the club owner of “The Yankee Clipper” realized that our Tuesday night crowd only nursed one pint of beer all night and didn’t put enough in the till to pay either the barman or the electricity bill and we were sent on our way to find safer harbour at “The Temple Bar”.
Nevertheless, by the summer of ’72 we were playing up to five or six nights a week. I was still at school, supposedly studying for my A‐Levels. Once I got a job, we had to schedule our Rusty gigs around my shift work as a computer operator until early in 1973, when I decided to leave Liverpool looking for something and took to this long and crooked road.
I asked if Allan wanted to come with me but I had a place to live with my Dad and he had a steady job to give up and I suppose I thought we might travel lighter and further alone.
Allan had always been the more accomplished, presentable performer ‐ even then, I looked like a sack of spuds that had been left out in the rain. He continued to play the local club circuit after I left town, took over a group he re‐named, “Restless” (formerly “Severed Head”) and even made raids down from Merseyside to hit the London pub circuit of 1975 and found themselves playing the same venue and same week as my own semi‐pro band, Flip City. Allan recorded a solo album in the early 80s before traveling the world, playing on cruise ships in the Pacific and in oil worker bars in Alaska, before settling in Texas, where he still plays other people’s songs that other people want to hear in a strong true voice.
Allan Mayes has been a hard working musician for more than the fifty years since we met.
So, when he asked me if I wanted to celebrate this anniversary by getting together to play a few songs that we used to know.
I said, “Absolutely not!”
“Let’s make the record we would have cut when we were 18, if anyone had let us”.
And this is what you will hear on “The Resurrection Of Rust”.
The E.P. contains new renditions of songs from our 1972 club repertoire; our duets on two Nick Lowe tunes from 1972; “Surrender To The Rhythm” and “Don’t Lose Your Grip On Love”‐ and closes with an arrangement incorporating Neil Young’s “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” and “Dance, Dance, Dance” which marks my recording debut on the electric violin.
The stand out for me is Allan’s touching rendition of “I’m Ahead If I Can Quit While I’m Behind”, a song written by the Kentucky songwriter, Jim Ford, who wrote hits for Aretha Franklin, P.J. Proby and Bobby Womack.
Most of our own early compositions from the Rusty days exist only in lyrical form, scrawled in our old notebooks, the tunes long forgotten but we did have a reel‐to‐reel demo of “Warm House”, a song which I began when I was 17 and which could be found in nearly all of our set lists and found here with full vocal and band arrangement driven by mandolin.
Remarkably, Allan still has an old school exercise book in which he kept a record of all the venues we ever played. “The Resurrection Of Rust” record sleeve is decorated with a collage of flyers, posters, playbills and diary entries of the time along with some of our setlist from that exercise book which also acted as an accounts ledger for our rather modest earnings, hitting the heady heights of £17 ‐ our largest fee coming at our very final gig, opening up for Cockney Rebel ‐ but frequently amounting to no more than a couple of quid and with several dispiriting entries which read: “Paid: Nil”.
The second original tune is a co‐written portrait of a struggling cabaret act called, “Maureen and Sam”, the verses are taken by Allan with very spare accompaniment before I arrive in the bridges with a distorted electric guitar, piano, bass and drums, all of which I recorded in the basement of Sentry Sound.
Keen listeners may recognize the theme of this song as one I re‐wrote as “Ghost Train” and recorded in 1980, changing “Sam” to “Stan” and setting my new lyric to an entirely different melody.
Allan and I quickly re‐discovered the vocal blend that convinced us that we might conquer the world (or at least Widnes) when we were teenagers but to bring Rusty into the 21st Century, I enlisted the talents of The Imposters and we were delighted to invite our old pal, Bob Andrews, to revisit his signature Hammond organ and piano parts on the Brinsley Schwarz showstopper, “Surrender To The Rhythm”.
Like most things today, these sessions connected Sentry Sound, Vancouver with Austin, TX, Santa Fe, NM and Los Angeles, CA by the magic of the musical telegraph.
“The Resurrection Of Rust” was produced by Elvis Costello and Sebastian Krys.
Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler have shared a new song titled ‘Footnotes on the Map’, which features guest vocalist Sam Lee. It’s the latest offering from their upcoming album For All Our Days That Tear The Heart, following ‘Seven Red Rose Tattoos’, ‘The Eagle and the Dove’, and the title track. The pair also performed the song on Later with Jools over the weekend. Take a listen and check out their performances below.
According to a press release, ‘Footnotes on the Map’ was inspired by Robert McFarlane, whose writing explores the way walking reinforces our spiritual connection to the land around us. “In Aboriginal lore, there’s a belief that people mapped their immediate environment in song,” McFarlane recently said. “Each step was a note in a song that represented a journey. And that’s a hugely powerful idea.”
For All Our Days That Tear the Heart is set for release on June 10 via EMI.
Throughout the week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with the new releases that caught our attention the most, be it a single leading up to the release of an album or a newly unveiled deep cut. And each Monday, we round up the best new songs released over the past week (the eligibility period begins on Monday and ends Sunday night) in this best new music segment.
On this week’s list, we have Sky Ferreira’s first new song in three years, the gleaming ‘Don’t Forget’, which is set to appear on her long-delayed album Masochism; Alex G’s new single, which is at once eerily noisy and strangely confident; Ganser’s propulsive, chilling new track ‘People Watching’; Tallahassee band Pool Kids’ irresistible ‘That’s Physics, Baby’, which blends nostalgic guitar pop with elements of math rock; ‘Dog Song’, a dynamic standout from Sweet Pill’s debut LP Where the Heart Is; Momma’s latest song ‘Lucky’, which feels both earnestly emotional and anthemic; and Rosie Carney’s ‘chihiro’, an enveloping highlight from her new album i wanna feel happy.
Ronnie Hawkins, rockabilly star and mentor to the Band, has died at the age of 87. Hawkins’ wife Wanda confirmed that her husband died after a long illness to the CBC, stating: “He went peacefully and he looked as handsome as ever.”
Hawkins was born in Huntsville, Arkansas in 1935 and was raised in Fayetteville, where his family moved when he was a child. He began performing in local bars in 1953, and a few years later future the Band member Levon Helm joined him as part of the Hawks. On the advice of country singer Conway Twitty, Hawkins relocated to Hamilton, Ontario, where he put together a band that included Helm, guitarist-songwriter Robbie Robertson, keyboardists Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel, and bassist Rick Danko. These musicians went on to play backup for Bob Dylan and later recorded as the Band.
After finding success with his rendition of ‘Hey, Bo Diddley’, Hawkins put out a self-titled LP that featured his versions of ‘Forty Days’ and ‘Mary Lou’. He achieved his biggest hit with a cover of Bo Diddley’s ‘Who Do You Love’. The energy of his live shows earned him nicknames such as “Mr. Dynamo” and “Rompin’ Ronnie,” and his trademark dance move became known as the “camel walk.”
Hawkins appeared in Martin Scorsese’s 1978 documentary The Last Waltz, which chronicled the Band’s farewell concert at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. Other special on-stage guests included Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and Neil Young. He also portrayed Dylan in the 1978 film Renaldo and Clara, which Dylan directed.
In 1989, Hawkins published an autobiography called Last of the Good Ol’ Boy. A 2004 documentary about Hawkins, Still Alive and Kickin, was narrated by Dan Aykroyd and featured a cameo from Bill Clinton. He was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Junos in 1996, and, in 2013, was named a member of the Order of Canada for “his contributions to the development of the music industry in Canada, as a rock’n’roll musician and for his support of charitable causes.”
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has been adapted for the screen many times, but the 2011 film adaptation is perhaps the most successful in capturing the Gothic moodiness of the novel. Mia Wasikowska portrays the titular character, imbuing Jane with a sense of innocence despite her rough childhood. When Jane becomes the governess at Thornfield Hall, she is thrust into an environment of isolation and secrecy. The mysterious Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender) who owns the property is rarely present, and when he is, he is alternately reticent and remarkably perceptive. Nevertheless, or perhaps because of his enigmatic nature, Jane feels drawn to him.
The film is distinguishable from other adaptations of classic Gothic novels because of its beautiful cinematography, which focuses on Jane’s surroundings – the moors, the wilderness around Thornfield, the gardens within its walls, and the shadows inside each room and hallway. Jane’s internal conflict – or the occasional moment of contented peace – is reflected in every image the viewer sees throughout the film’s runtime. Similarly, here are nine other moody period dramas for viewers who enjoyed Jane Eyre.
Wuthering Heights (2011)
Andrea Arnold’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel draws on similar material – another Brontë sister’s work published in 1847 whose female characters are troubled. Like Jane Eyre, the setting of Wuthering Heights is an isolated, weathered place surrounded by moors. Wuthering Heights follows the life of Heathcliff (James Howson and Solomon Glave), an orphan adopted by a farmer named Earnshaw (Paul Hilton), whose daughter Cathy (Kaya Scodelario and Shannon Beer) grows close with Heathcliff. Gradually, their relationship becomes romantic, but this angers Cathy’s brother Hindley (Lee Shaw). The isolated property is home to butting tempers, interpersonal conflicts, and subtle discrimination. Outside, the weather is miserable and the grounds perpetually muddy. This adaptation of Wuthering Heights is a visually gorgeous companion to 2011’s Jane Eyre, sharing many stylistic and story-related similarities.
The Piano (1994)
Jane Campion’s Palme d’Or winner The Piano is set on the wild coast of nineteenth-century New Zealand. A mute pianist (Holly Hunter) arrives on the country’s shore with her young daughter (Anna Paquin), their possessions, and a piano, ready to marry a man she’s never met (Sam Neill). Instead, the woman rejects her fiance’s advances and falls in love with a Maori man (Harvey Keitel). The Piano is rife with stolen glances, restrained emotion, and enigmatic characters. The diverse natural setting makes for a suitable backdrop to the characters’ drama and reflects their inner conflicts. Even though she doesn’t speak, Ada is a compelling character who maintains her autonomy and makes decisions for herself. She may not express her feelings through language, but she finds many other means of communication, including her precocious daughter. The Piano is a must-watch for fans of moody period dramas.
Anna Karenina (2012)
Frequent collaborators Keira Knightley and Joe Wright teamed up again for his screen adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Like the novel, the film follows Anna (Knightley) as she grows unhappy in her unfulfilling marriage to a high-ranking aristocrat (Jude Law). Anna meets the much younger Count Vrosnky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and feels drawn to him even though he’s supposed to be courting Princess Kitty (Alicia Vikander). Meanwhile, Kitty is the object of another man’s affections – Levin (Domhnall Gleeson), an aristocrat who prefers country life over the city, and is thus disparaged by his peers. Levin is a friend of Anna’s brother, Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen), whose wife has just cast him out after learning of his infidelity. This overlapping circle of aristocrats is laid out for the viewer like a tableau of players on a theatre stage, which happens to be the literal framing device for many of the scenes in this film. Highly stylized, Anna Karenina will appeal to fans of period costumes, set design, forbidden romances, and Dario Marianelli’s scores.
Atonement (2007)
Another Wright and Knightley project, Atonement is an adaptation of the novel by Ian McEwan. Set in England before and during World War II, the story is set into motion when thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) tells a lie that incriminates the family’s groundskeeper Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) and prevents him from being with Briony’s older sister Cecelia (Knightley). The film is as moody as its characters, who are irritable in the summer heat of the first act when the crime is committed. Cecelia and Robbie are pained by their restrained emotions and frustrated that they haven’t acted on them sooner, while Briony acts with a disturbing determination and lack of remorse. The war sequences are just as emotional and impactful, heightening the stakes of what begins as a contained family drama.
Les Miserables (2012)
Though steeped in tragedy, Les Misérables is an epic tale that does offer some moments of levity. Victor Hugo’s classic novel has been adapted for the screen many times, but the 2012 adaptation leans most heavily into melodrama, which will appeal to fans of Jane Eyre and other moody period dramas. Directed by Tom Hooper, this musical adaptation remains true to the original story, plot-wise, but adds more dramatic flair through its musical numbers, which effectively accentuate the emotional beats. Hugh Jackman stars as Jean Valjean, a prisoner who escapes parole to lead a new life in Paris about twenty years after the French Revolution. However, he’s closely pursued by Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe), a ruthless police officer. In his quest to become a new man, Valjean is tormented by his past, but he tries his best to help those in need, like his worker Fantine (Anne Hathaway in an Academy Award-winning performance) and her illegitimate daughter (Amanda Seyfried).
Spencer (2021)
Pablo Larraín’s Spencer follows Princess Diana’s struggles during the Christmas of 1991. She feels like an outsider in her own family, especially because her marriage has become little more than a formal arrangement, and she must adhere to the royal family’s strict rules around ceremony and decorum. Diana, however, simply wants to live freely and express herself as she pleases. The film beautifully captures Diana’s internal conflict, taking her to her dilapidated childhood home in the middle of the night, or driving along empty roads with the wind in her hair. Kristen Stewart’s nuanced performance in the titular role scored her an Academy Award nomination.
Carol (2015)
Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara star in this romantic drama set in 1950s Manhattan. Therese (Mara) works at a department store, where she serves a classy customer named Carol (Blanchett). The two instantly strike up an interesting connection, and Therese decides to pursue it when she realizes she has feelings for Carol. Both women work hard to restrain their emotions, knowing that their mutual attraction would not be accepted by wider society, and also because both have relationships with men. Carol in particular hides a deep pain, and Blanchett’s award-winning performance is a standout aspect of the film. In addition, the cinematography brings the darkness of the characters’ surroundings into sharp focus, utilizing mirrors, cab windows, raindrops, muted colors, and shadows to their full potential.
The Power of the Dog (2021)
Another Jane Campion feature, The Power of the Dog is set in 1920s Montana, where a boy named Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) lives with his single mother Rose (Kirsten Dunst). When Rose meets and marries a kind but submissive man named George (Jesse Plemons), Peter moves with her to the ranch George shares with his brother Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch). Overshadowed by mountain ranges, the ranch and plains below are perpetually haunted by an intangible darkness. Phil himself is a menacing character who taunts Peter and his mother, with either words or alcohol. Beneath the bubbling tensions between the characters is something deeper – oppressed emotions, which threaten the tenuous thread of peace holding the family together. The Power of the Dog is a brooding slow-burn in tune with the social setting of the time period, the characters’ moods, and the effect of their natural surroundings.
The Revenant (2015)
Loosely based on a true story, The Revenant is a different kind of period drama. Following the survival journey of explorer Hugh Glass in nineteenth-century Montana and South Dakota, the story begins when Glass is attacked by a bear. His fellow hunters abandon him and soon believe him to be dead. However, he survives and vows to take revenge on those who betrayed him. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Glass spends much of the film in solitude, brewing over the ways he can exact revenge and connecting with his natural surroundings, as brutal and bleak as they are. With gorgeous cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki (shot in chronological order), the film may look gloomy, but the story is fuelled by intense emotion and a desire to use a second chance at life to avenge lost loved ones.
Jenny Gillespie Mason, aka Sis, has shared a remix of her single ‘Double Rapture’ by producer Matthew Herbert, who is known for his work with Radiohead and Björk among others. Listen to it below.
Mason said of the remix in a statement: “I wanted to work with Matthew Herbert to remix Double Rapture because I knew he would be able to take the romantic and tender essence of the song and stretch it into something even more cinematic and lush.”
Maria BC treats music as both an unguarded space of intimacy and a tool for emotional discovery. Growing up, the Ohio-born, California-based artist, who was classically trained as a mezzo-soprano while their father played music in the church, came to associate singing with strong religious feeling – euphoria, adoration, forgiveness. Though this kind of faithful reverence is now absent from the hushed, contemplative atmosphere of the music they compose, it retains a quiet intensity as they explore, conjure, and transmute emotions and memories that are deeply rooted in the self and its interaction with the environment. Following their first release, last year’s Devil’s Rain EP, Maria BC has today issued their debut full-length, Hyaline, which presents these interconnected snapshots through sparse, mesmerizing arrangements and lyrics whose poetic resonance can be both evocative and abstract, untangling itself from personal experience. The result is at once haunting and inviting, a remarkable work of patience, trust, and care that revels in the magic of the moment but travels far beyond it.
We caught up with Maria BC for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about music as a source of comfort and darkness, their earliest musical memories, the ideas behind Hyaline, and more.
Talking about the making of your first EP, Devil’s Rain, you said that nothing about it was comforting, and that “music just seems necessary for whatever reason.” Has it always been that way for you? And does it feel different with Hyaline?
I still don’t think that my songwriting is comforting to me. I do hope that it brings comfort of some kind to other people. I think that writing songs offers me the opportunity to explore emotional spaces, modes of feeling that I kind of forbid myself otherwise. It allows me to say things that I feel like I can’t say in real life. And a lot of the songs on this record, I went to kind of a sinister place for them. [laughs] I don’t think I’m like evil in my real life, but I allowed myself to go to an evil place lyrically and in terms of the arrangements, the mood of the music. And that was there on Devil’s Rain for sure, but here it feels more intentional. On Devil’s Rain, on tracks like ‘The Deal’, for example, I wrote the song and afterward I was like, “Wow, that sounds so dark and sinister. I wonder if I’ll do that again.” And for this one, it felt more like I was consciously giving myself permission to go to that place. And so, with that in mind, it’s actually uncomfortable in some ways. It’s therapeutic in the sense that I can get some catharsis out of it or say something that I needed to say on an unconscious level, but it’s not soothing.
When you started making music or even just listening to music at an early age, was it something that brought you comfort? And was that feeling what led to you pursuing it later in life?
I think it was comforting. I remember starting to write songs as a way of keeping myself company. As a kid spending a lot of time alone, I would sing to myself, make up little stories in song. And in my adult life as well, I do have plenty of music that feels comfortable, that feels like being wrapped in a warm blanket or something. But it also tends to be music that at other times is uncomfortable, that is very dark or sad. I think I’ve always been attracted to that kind of music to some extent.
Could you share any fond memories that you have of connecting with music early on?
One that I share a lot is fond memories of my dad’s cassettes that he kept in his car. He had this collection of ‘70s trucker songs by this artist who actually died recently called C.W. McCall, and he had Andy Gibb. I just remember listening to that music in the car over and over and over again and getting to the point where I knew it so deeply that it felt like a natural extension of the paths that we would take driving. That was very important.
Also, I started singing in a focused way at a really early age. Singing at church in a spotlit kind of way – my church used a high school space and they used the theatre, like a big stage, and I would sing on it really often. And that was a way that I felt really… included, at the time? I don’t know, I guess a lot of people’s relationships with music start in church, and it just puts you in that place of associating ecstasy and really extreme emotions with music because you’re singing in a space where there are all these other people going through so much emotionally, cycling through grief and guilt, and then feelings of redemption and forgiveness all while you’re up there singing your song, and they’re often singing with you. I think that’s left its mark on my relationship to music in an indelible way, as it has for so many people.
You said that you would also spend a lot of time singing alone, making up stories. How did that feel different?
Yeah, it was more comforting in that context because there was no pressure on it. Whereas I would get really nervous before performances at church and elsewhere – I still get a lot of stage fright. But there was less reward, also. At the end of the performance, you get the relief from all of the nerves and your adrenaline is still pumping and you feel kind of high afterwards. But just singing to myself alone – it’s more just romantic and calming. It’s a very different place.
On the new album, ‘Betelgeuse’ is a song about a specific kind of loss, but it goes back to an experience you had in middle school when an astronomer said it was our only hope of seeing a star explode within our lifetimes. I was curious if learning that at the time had a strong effect on you, or if that was something that came later. Did it take time for you to think about the cosmic nature of that kind of destruction and compare it to something more human, like the desire for a certain kind of grief to be noticeable in a similar way?
I think a lot about how memory always surprises you. So often the things that you remember are things that in the moment didn’t seem that impactful; so much of life is just being surprised by things. And nevertheless, I do think that what filters up to the top of your memory, especially childhood memory, is of some significance. That’s all to say, no, I don’t think I was thinking about it all that deeply in seventh grade when that astronomer was speaking. But still, it was a memory that kept coming to the top of my mind for some reason. Especially when I would look at the stars at night, I wonder whether anything is going to explode. And that’s really one of the few things that I know about the stars, is from that one talk that this one astronomer gave so, so many years ago.
Both that song and ‘Keepsaker’ deal with that theme of being haunted by memories, while another track, ‘The Big Train, adopts the perspective of the father figure who abandons his family on ‘Betelgeuse’. What appeals to you about approaching this theme through different characters and perspectives?
I love music that is written in kind of a confessional mode or is highly autobiographical. I’ve listened to a lot of music like that. But for my own work, I am not really interested in drawing from actual life. Of course, I always want my lyrics to be describing some sort of truth, like an emotional truth, but I’m not interested in having a song that’s about something that happened to me. So what ends up happening is I write songs from the perspective of these characters that embody some set of emotions that I need to process. And sometimes it’s highly accidental – I write a verse and I’m like, where’s this going? And the story, the heart of the song, comes after; I interpret it after the fact.
In relation to that, you’ve mentioned that the album was inspired by the idea of the dreamer and the watcher archetypes, and that one way of embodying the latter, for you, is through music. Do you have any other ways of practicing that sort of presence?
Totally, yeah. It’s funny, I think interpreting dreams is one way of doing that. That’s taking the term dreamer literally, which is not what Louise Gluck was really intending. But in the same way I think sometimes my music or my lyrics speak to me after the fact of them being written, dreams, I believe, have something to tell you about what’s going on in your inner world and the outer world that you are recognising at a level that is pre-verbal. So yeah, I’m trying to do more dream journaling. I love talking to other people about their dreams. I like writing, I like reading. I’m trying to learn more about birds and plants, learning more how to be in the place that I live in.
What do you like about hearing other people’s dreams? I feel like that’s quite different from dream journaling, where you’re connecting more with your own self.
Well, it’s a way of getting intimate with people really quickly. [laughs] Sometimes to feel intimate with people you need it to be mediated by something else, and talking about dreams is one way of doing that. And it really interests me how people shared dreams in an eerie and accidental way. Before I knew that it was a common dream, for example, I had the recurring dream of all my teeth falling out. And I told that to someone and they were like, “No, I think everyone has that dream.” And it’s like, where does that come from? It’s not really rooted in language. I was reading this essay where someone was saying that since the onset of the pandemic, there’s been, like, endemic dreaming in the US, of people having nightmares about bugs, like locust infestation and stuff like that, because another way of saying plague or illness is “bug”, it’s like a pun. But that doesn’t extend, really, to like your teeth falling out. That’s not rooted in language. So where is it coming from?
And my friend did this – sorry, I could talk about this forever – but my friend was part of this group in Vermont where she lives. She was going to meetings with this group of, like, social dreamers, and they would all gather in a circle and share their dreams and interpret them in a group context. And very quickly, they found over the course of these meetings that they were all starting to dream about the same things. And it’s a very common phenomenon that people within each other’s orbits will have the same imagery in their dreams. And not something that they’ve all seen together or something, but very random things will appear in patterns. It’s so interesting. That kind of stuff just interests me – I don’t know why, but it does.
You’ve said that, when you were making the song ‘April’, you were listening to artists like FKA Twigs and Bonnie Prince Billy at the time. I don’t know how much you think about genre in those terms, but how do you feel like alternative pop and folk music intersect, whether in your listening habits or during the music-making process? What do you think these artists have in common?
I don’t think what attracts me or what inspires me in music has to do with genre so much as mood. Generally, I’m not that interested in music that doesn’t have some sort of darkness to it. And what, to my mind, FKA twigs and Bonnie share, if they share anything, is intense darkness, and, at times, just abject nihilism. [laughs] But also, their music respectively is rife with sexual energy. You know, like Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy has that one song where’s he like, “Death to everyone is gonna come/ It makes hosing much more fun.” And then, FKA twigs has this song about wanting to be fucked while she’s staring at the sun. A lot of her songs are like that. There’s like a death drive, I guess is really what I’m getting at, in both their music. And that’s what interests me, really, more than I’m inspired by the instrumentation or something like that’s genre-defining.
I wanted to bring up a line from ‘Betelgeuse’ that I’ve been fixating on quite a bit: “I can’t tell you/ If loving alone will be/ Anything that becomes.” I hear the phrase “loving alone” a few different ways: only loving, loving aloneness, and loving in your aloneness. Is there any meaning to it that resonates with you the most?
I’m so happy that you picked out that line because when I play ‘Betelgeuse’ live, I’ve been slightly changing that line almost every time. Singing it sometimes as it appears on the album; sometimes I say “love on its own” instead. Because the meaning, for me, I think does change all the time. There’s the verse that comes before it that’s, “All the good people so nice in their loving.” So when it moves to the line, “I can’t tell you if loving alone will be anything that becomes,” I think actually what I was thinking about when I was writing it was how love means different things for different people. And what to some people is a satisfactory level of care, or kind of care, isn’t what I would call love. So, I guess I’m kind of interrogating, is just love enough to actually care for people if it’s defined in such an ambiguous way? And for some people, it’s bound up in so much inherited knowledge that I think is worth exploding, if that makes sense.
I understand there may not be a response to this, but has something helped you find your own definition of love that works for you in a meaningful way?
I think it changes all the time and it changes with different people, but… Oh my god, this is such a good question. What is love? Baby don’t hurt me! [laughter] Um, I just think it’s being sensitive to people and attentive to people and their needs, and being available to others teaching you how to care for them. For so many people, that’s not intuitive. But for that reason, I think if there is some sort of encompassing definition of love, it would be just being open to constantly reinterpreting it.
You were talking before about music and solitude and those two being bound for you. Is there a recent moment that you can talk about where music brought you joy in a social context?
Oh, totally. I love live music and going to concerts, standing there with all these sweaty people, your knees are kinda hurting and everyone’s uncomfortable, people are crying. I love that. [laughs] And I love dance music, too. Dancing with my friends is such a joyful activity. And over the past year or so, I’ve been playing music and working on music with other people more often I think than I ever have. And I felt so much less precious about exposing myself, exposing my creative process, and exposing my lack of – I’ve been playing with a band and practicing with them, and the first few times we practiced, I could barely sing properly because I was just so nervous to show it all happening in real time. But I think I’ve broken down a lot of those barriers and I’m so grateful for that, because it is a very different thing, to make music with people, but it’s also a really wonderful feeling.
Does breaking those barriers reshape your experience of writing and playing music alone? Does it make you more comfortable exposing certain parts of yourself to yourself?
Yeah, it’s rebuilt my confidence in some ways. I think I had to risk exposing myself as a fraud in order to realize, actually, my process is legitimate. So, then – following a bad practice or sending my friend a melody that I had written for their song or something, hearing their feedback – then I can go back to my private space with my guitar and feel like, actually, yeah, I kind of know what I’m doing. Because otherwise, if you spend too much time alone with your own work, you can get really paranoid about it and start to not hear it right, just not know whether it’s good. But taking breaks from that is healthy.
Do you feel like that realization started to happen while you were recording this album, or is it more now that you’re practicing these songs with a band? And how do you think you might channel that confidence going into the future?
Hyaline was kind of the beginning of my inviting other people into my little music world. Because whereas on Devil’s Train I did everything myself, on Hyaline I did 99% of things, but I invited a friend to record some drum samples for me. And my friend, Nell Sather, who has the best voice, she sings on the songs ‘Hyaline’ and ‘April’. My dad recorded some organ samples for me at his church. So there were other people involved in the recording process, and that felt very new to me. And then at the end of making Hyaline, I started practicing songs with a band of two other people in preparation for SXSW. And that was good because at that point, I had felt so sick of my own arrangements and heard so many sounds with myself that it was cool to bring it to these two other people and be like, “Don’t listen to the recordings, just do the arrangement that you want to do and then we’ll work from there.” And it just made the song sound so fresh to my ears. That was awesome.
But moving forward, I don’t anticipate songwriting with a band in mind. I think I’m going to continue to do most of the things on my own. I like having that kind of control, I guess. [laughs] But I’m going to also write knowing that there is always the possibility of me bringing other people into it for a live performance or something.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
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