Review Fix chats with singer/songwriter Hermitess who discusses her new self-titled album, as well as her new album, Blood Moon and more.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Hermitess: The creative process for this album was a bit unique, I wrote most of it in total isolation while on a residency. I had given myself both a fairly specific concept and some rules before I went into the woods. It’s the first time I’ve done an album with that kind of single minded intent, and it was gratifying to discover how well that worked for me. Maybe it’s because I’m both generous and very creative, so I’m always getting involved in all sorts of interesting things, but at the expense of my own creative goals at times. While there is no doubt that having a beautiful isolated cabin in the woods was a pretty ideal situation, it was also a challenge to myself, not to just float around and wait for inspiration, but to set the stage for the work, and then get it done. Maybe it’s because I have worked in a number of creative fields, I used to think it was no problem to just add more projects to my plate, that I could keep filling it. The most important thing I’ve discovered is that there needs to be space made for a new work, often allowing for that void feels a bit scary just before you begin to fill it.
Review Fix: How did the band get together?
Hermitess: This project is the first official release I have done “solo” and it’s been some time coming, I’ve done lots of very collaborative work in the past, and been in a succession of great bands. But as the name perhaps implies, it was important that this work belong to me as an individual in in a more explicit way, a more exclusive vehicle for my creative ideas. That being said, the sound of the Hermitess is very much me playing with other musicians, who I could not have made this record without. The band is flexible from show to show, there are some characters that are pretty regular and others that come and go, I’m so super grateful for eveyone who’s willing to share in the process of bring these tunes to life. I have a choir of women who have been singing with me for shows, and I hope to have singers from different places join me when I tour. The logistics are not always ideal but I love working this way, it means no two shows are the same, the songs belong to me but they are also constantly being reinterpreted by other musicians, that’s exciting.
Review Fix: What makes Blood Moon special? How was it written?
Hermitess: I actually wrote the bones of this song during a blood moon event, so the lyrics are quite literal – these thoughts were the ones going through my head as the eclipse was happening, as I was trying to see the moon on a cloudy day. What for me is interesting is that the moon seems hard to be objective about, that’s a testament to it’s potency as a symbol, one assumes that when we talk of the moon we are always talking in metaphors. Just telling the story of waiting to see the blood moon as it kept being hidden by clouds, of remembering a scientific explanation of the blood moon’s colour as being the refracted light of sunrises/sunsets. That telling is just one door, wrapped up in a few observations are all of the moon myths we have told each-other for centuries. The video was made to reflect that, to be a door into a constellation of peoples individual interpretations.
Review Fix: What are your goals for 2017?
Hermitess: Doing an album was part of creating a path for myself where I might get to do more of that, it’s been a few years getting this work to this point, and I’m just happy that I’m not the only one listening to it. I’m in the process of putting together some tour dates, so hopefully that comes next.
Review Fix: How do you want your music to affect people?
Hermitess: I wrote this album thinking about incantations, spells, things that unmoor us from the reality you assume is fixed and predictable, that open us up to a different way of experiencing. I’d like for people to have the same experience listening to it as I did writing and recording it. If they are able to just let go of all the other things they could be giving their attention to and for a few minutes just get lost in it, that would be wonderful. I think we are loosing the pleasure of being lost in our over-connected society, I’m for learning how to get lost again.
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