In the very first episode of HBO’s erotically campy
True Blood,
telepathic ingenue Sookie initially encounters rogue vampire Bill when
he enters the rural Southern diner where she works. As the undead
chemistry is alchemized, “The Dreaming Dead,” a slow-burning ballad by
Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter, plays in the background.
The track is barely
audible, and the scene is over in less than a minute, but the resulting
payday helped cover Sykes’ living expenses for the better part of the
next two years as she and guitarist Phil Wandscher recorded Marble Son, their ambitious fourth full-length (and sixth release) together since forming in Seattle nearly a decade ago.
When Sykes met
Wandscher in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood institution Hattie’s Hat in
2002, they quickly became both romantic and creative partners, weaving
together her somber alto and his tightly coiled, reverb-thick guitar
lines with their shared love of dark subject matter and heavy,
atmospheric arrangements. Their debut, Reckless Burning, had a
bewitching charm and focus on broken spirits, lost souls, and a sweet
undercurrent of the fresh infatuation that was its impetus.
Sykes, a former
art-school student and lifelong classic-rock fan, had recently become
fascinated with Seattle’s burgeoning Americana scene, and it was
reflected in those early works. “The whole alt-country thing was pretty
huge, and the epicenter was here in Seattle,” explains Sykes over
cocktails at Hazlewood, a bar just up the street from Hattie’s. “It’s
not that I was trying to jump on any bandwagon. I was coming out of my
20s where I was sort of in a refrain from heavier music and got into
singer-songwriters. And that was kind of liberating. I was obsessed with
Townes Van Zandt.”
Wandscher’s distinct
twang and preceding history as a founding member of Whiskeytown marked
him and Sykes with the country-noir tag for the first several years of
their careers, but over the course of the next two albums, they tread
more deeply into artful, psych-rock territory inspired in part by the
couple’s fateful collaboration with doom-rock acts SunnO))) and Boris on
2006’s Altar.
“Our bassist, Bill
[Herzog], was friends with [Southern Lord label owner and SunnO)))
member] Greg Anderson,” explains Sykes, and Anderson eventually asked
Sykes and Wandscher to collaborate. “I would have thought they would
have wanted something with a voice modulator or something silly, but
they really did just want me. They told me to treat it like one of my
songs.”
Drawing inspiration from author Joan Didion’s heartbreaking widow’s memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking,
and her own brewing discord with Wandscher, Sykes wrote the lyrics and
melody for “The Sinking Belle,” the eight-minute dirge that would become
Altar’s centerpiece. She went on to perform the piece with
Wandscher and Anderson at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival and a
handful of East Coast dates.
When her and Wandscher’s romantic union ended in 2009, Sykes was unsure of whether they could continue with the Sweet Hereafter.
“Part of me really
thought it was going to all fall to shit,” she says. “I figured there’d
be no way he’d tolerate me [dating other people], and there’s no way the
band’s going to stay committed to something that feels this
wishy-washy. Initially, it was like pulling teeth. He was in a very dark
spot.”
They prevailed,
however, and ended up in a spot that was unexpectedly fruitful. “Long
story short,” she adds, “I think feeling like I was about to lose
everything I’d worked so hard for—on some bizarre level—freed me up. I
didn’t second-guess shit. We just went for it.”
Marble Son is
the band’s strongest record to date, and one that will no doubt
permanently remove the alt-country label, thanks to Wandscher’s
sprawling, majestic leads and Sykes’ fearless, larger-than-life vocal
presence. “I wanted this record to reflect that direness and the
magnitude of what was happening in our lives” she says. “It felt epic
and it felt like a serious transformation, emotionally, so the music
just had to mirror that. It couldn’t just be us in our comfort zone any
longer. It had to have fury.”
SEE IT: Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter play
the Pickathon festival at 4:15 pm Saturday and 6 pm Sunday, Aug. 6-7.
See pickathon.com for more information. All ages.
