Artist Interview: Damper
Posted: by The Editor
Damper
Thom Stone
When you released the Skin Whispered Bark / Year After Year After Year single on Bandcamp, you wrote a little note at the bottom of the page where you said that you were finishing up your first full length record. Now, that came out two years ago, so is Personal Fable the same full length record that you were working on and you’ve been sitting on that, or did something happen in between?
No it’s not at all. And there are a variety of reasons for that – I mean the most obvious one is that COVID happened and that’s the wrench in a lot of our plans. So we were planning to go on tour in June, all the way out to Colorado and back, and we were planning to go back into the studio like at the end of March. So we were gonna do a bunch more songs. Basically, how it worked out was we just released what we had recorded over time until we could like figure out what we were going to do next, and then the second like double single release, The Three Lives of Thomasina / When You Finally Come Up for Air, that was October 2020 and I put it up on a bunch of pages on Reddit and stuff because I’ve been told that was a good thing to do and sure enough it reached Old Press Records and Tom from Old Press reached out to me was like, “Hey have you been offered a record deal? If you’re interested, let me know,” and I was super down. I already knew about Old Press. We started talking about like what exactly that would entail, like okay, record deal, cool, never had that before, so please explain what does that actually mean you know, because that can look a lot of different ways and he’s basically like, “I’m not going to do promotion, social media, any of that stuff – you’re going to have to do that yourself, but I will cover recording and I will help you do the distribution as well,” and I was like, “Well that sounds great,” so we started getting into the nitty gritty of like, “How do we want to do this album idea?” So, we had already just been releasing stuff without like a real plan for what was going to happen afterward. He was like, “So are you interested in keeping those songs and putting them on some kind of record like you would plan to, or do you want to just start a new record and go with that idea?” We were like, “I think those songs are good and maybe we should just see if we can come back around, and maybe re-record them a different way,” and I think at that point he kind of weighed in with, “You guys should just do a new record.”
Okay, interesting.
That is kind of crazy to think about – it’s 10 songs on an average record, unless it’s like a prog metal album with like four songs. But he was confident that we could do it, and so we just started meeting up more regularly trying to write a lot of it came together through like jam sessions and then just separately like working on parts remotely. And that’s kind of how the split with Slow Disco happened, because we’d start writing – we started writing a bunch of songs that kind of had like a similar sound, but those two songs were a lot more skramzy and stuff so they didn’t really fit with the rest of the record – there just was no place for that, and that is about the time when the rest of the album started to come together. And we talked about, like, who we should recording with. We wanted to go with the guy we’d recorded everything with. But he was still not comfortable opening the Mine studio to other people because, like it’s like literally like this little shack side of an abandoned mercury mine. And so then I brought up Jack Shirley who did recording for all of Deafheaven’s records pretty much and he mastered the most recent awakebutstillinbed EP so – a lot of stuff that we already knew and liked a lot. We reached out and he was down. We kind of scrambled to like get our shit together within that like three month window. Like started writing lyrics where there were no lyrics for songs. I guess, I should say too, that I wrote a lot of it by myself and when when things started to get a little better we played them together, but for a long time it was just songs that I came up with during like these songwriting challenges and then started to like piece together later. That’s a very long winded way of explaining why it was a different record completely. It kind of had to be.
Since you mentioned the Slow Disco split songs, I’m curious about “This Is the Forest Primeval” from your split with Sloth & Turtle. Was that one part of these sessions too?
Yeah, I forgot to mention that one for some reason – that was another one that we recorded with Jamie when we thought it was going to be on the full length record, so it was the same session that we did “Skin,” “Year After Year After Year,” “Three Lives,” and “When You Finally Come Up.” That whole batch we did in October. I think that was when that all those songs were around so so then. That one was definitely very influenced by Sloth & Turtle. I look up to those guys a lot, like, a lot. Man, they’re on another level and they’re also just great people, like, some my favorite memories are from the last five years of doing this project was our tour with them. We bonded a lot over the course of the last few years especially and that’s kind of how that song came together, and it made the most sense to like do a split with them.
So if the songs that made it onto Personal Fable were all written together, was there an attempt to ensure that they all occupied the same sonic space for a sense of cohesion?
I think it’s really – it is so all over the place, in a way, I think. A weird mix of genres and influences, I think. All those others releases we talked about, they all sound different but I think it all exists in the same sphere.
I wanted to point out a couple of songs in particular – “This Is Not Enough,” first off, of course, is probably the heaviest song you’ve put out, and I’m very curious where that one comes from.
That was for a long time just called “Pitchfork Song” because it’s just a pitchfork pedal, you know, doing the fifth interval and that was Nick’s idea. And that’s part of why it like didn’t have lyrics for a long time. Yeah, I don’t know why, but that just kind of instinctively came out one one jam session, it was like, screaming something random, like what I was feeling at the time, and now I guess looking back I kind of see it as an expression of life in quarantine. Trying to find meaning, you know, without all the stimulation that we’re used to having all the like different avenues for connection with other people, and just feeling overwhelmed by like the scale of the problems – like, no matter what I do it’s not enough, never enough. I think that’s the reason that it sounds really different from everything else is that it was like. Basically, the only thing that was like set in stone from the beginning was that opening riff, that pitchfork riff , and then the rest of it was just hitting it over and over and over. And yeah I think it is one of the heaviest for sure. I don’t know if I agree that it’s the heaviest. I guess only because I just wrote a write up about second to last track, where I said, like, this is the heaviest track that we’ve ever written. I think they’re both up there, just different feelings that are being expressed – one’s exasperation and the other one is anger.
Actually, I want to ask you about that one too because the first line of that song stands out – you know, it’s pretty pretty striking. That’s a very violent image at the beginning of the song and just curious where that comes from.
Yeah, that’s one that Bella wrote and I think she would have more to say, explain on that topic, but I know what she’s talking about because we’re talking about the same person in that song, just different experiences, like similar experiences with the same person and so that’s just like an example of the way that this person interacted with others. It, I agree, is very striking to start that song – it’s a attention getting line for sure, but she and I approached it in a different way where it’s like more of like a scene, you know, described through this like narrative, whereas I felt like I just wanted to dive into the way that it all made me feel, like just the sum of my experiences until it comes together in the end and we’re both just kind of like this is our experience of the person. I think that’s part of the reason why it’s one of the heaviest songs is that we’re both channeling it our different experiences with the same feeling.
Then that’s probably the first time that someone other than you wrote lyrics for a Damper song, right?
No, “Necrocene” is Bella’s song, and “Stunt” is Nick. It‘s very collaborative record overall – so much stuff didn’t get written in a bedroom alone like a lot of other songs were. When we were able to come together and practice like we wrote together in the same room and talked about it outside of practice a lot.
So was that like an intentional thing? Did you go into Personal Fable hoping to make a more collaborative LP?
I kind of want to rewind a bit to like where I started playing music in this particular scene like six years, seven years ago. I was playing a band called Brave Season and I highly recommend checking out that stuff. Unfortunately, the lead singer and main songwriter Palmer’s no longer with us, but he was a really important person in my life, but he ran things very differently from how I think a band should be run. It’s you and a crew and you have to make joint decisions with each other, even if, like the band is is basically like a solo project under a different name. I think it’s still very important to, like, share responsibility and ownership with other people in the band, so I don’t want to, like, paint him as like a bad person – he just had a very different philosophy about how things should be done in a band setting you know, in a band context, so this this was a joint decision but also something that I value a lot just in general. I always want. Everybody to feel included, to be proud of what they contribute and just have it be like all me. I don’t want to ever be that way – that’s so limiting you know. I think sharing that – I want to say burden – sharing the responsibility of songwriting I think is a really special thing about a lot of bands, like obviously Beatles maybe i’ll sort of double.
I also wanted to ask about “Sword & Sorcery,” because that one gets very heavy too. I’ve heard a lot of emo bands blending a lot of genres, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a black metal emo song. I’ve never heard blast beats under math riffs.
I think the content works well with it, like the meaning of the whole song is basically like, “Okay it’s fun to like play tabletop RPGs with each other and, like, tinker around on dungeon crawlers online together like Diablo – but what are we really doing? I compared what’s going on the world – like climate change and the influences of mega nation states like Russia
creeping in – and we’re not doing more to help each other, to make a difference. And that’s what it really comes down to and so it’s supposed to be sort of terrifying but also sort of beautiful, like we have this moment where there’s music and we can go and connect with each other. And it goes back to an essay or a lecture that Tolkien gave. I’m a huge Tolkien fan. And he talked about how like in Beowulf, he’s – he compares the Mead Hall, where everyone gathers when they sing and they revel in their achievements, boasting about the Hydra but it just – it doesn’t, doesn’t diminish the danger and darkness. That ending is supposed to be scary and beautiful, at the same time. At least I hope it has that effect on people, all the terror and the beauty of existence.
That’s one of the dominant themes of the record if I’m understanding correctly.
Definitely. We make these myths about ourselves, that we are making a difference, like what I am doing is meaningful and without it, it’s hard to find that sense of like contribution. But that’s all like a projection – that’s not what makes me me; it’s just this persona that iIve constructed around myself. It’s a personal fable. And I think when Bella and Nick have their songs too it’s also expressing similar things about themselves and the things they feel represent them and their choices in life.
I was gonna say – for being the product of a couple of different songwriters, it has a sort of consistent throughline, a sort of narrative arc that all the songs contribute to together. For the cover of the record I get very heavy Dungeons and Dragons sort of vibe.
Yeah absolutely.
What is the vibe you’re going for there?
I wanted it to look like – I used some like old Aesop’s fable covers as a point of reference for the artist. And I also showed him like some Neil Gaiman stuff that I liked, Troll Bridge. I showed him a picture of the troll. Just like all these different aesthetic styles, but I told him to try and listen to the record and pick up on some of the imagery and try to include some of it. And there’s just like this little bit of light despite all that decay and darkness. So it’s a mix of things, but yeah basically it’s aesthetically drawing from Dungeons and Dragons, that kind of stuff, but the actual images themselves are based on the lyrics, yeah.
I wanted to ask what we can expect for the rest of 2022. I know the record is not out for another month or so, but still.
That’s a good question. I don’t really know the answer to myself –probably just going to keep playing shows. Go back into the studio with Jack Shirley again because we have a couple of new songs we’re working on. There’s that cover that we’re going to start playing, and we’ll play it on tour.
Who’s your dream tour?
I mean, Empire! Empire! doesn’t exist anymore, but.
That would be rad.
Or The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die. Trying to think who else – Stay Inside used to be an Old Press band so it’d be I think that’s more within reach, because it’s like there’s already that connection, even though I have never met them. I think they’ve listened to Damper before. I don’t know but we know a lot of the same people anyway, so that probably be the most realistic.
What do you think is who are some of the artists that someone who’s listening to you music would be surprised to hear you like?
Type O Negative. That’s my background though. I used to play in a metal band in middle school and high school. In college, I had a post metal band called Pilot Light. So that’s definitely like a big part of my developing as a musician, and a lot of the shows that I used to go to were metal. The I feel like I like stuff at the opposite end of the spectrum. I‘ve been listening to a lot FKA Twigs lately, especially her first two. I didn’t really like the new one, as much I liked a few songs on there, but it’s just a lot of like voice overs, like a lot of like samples of people talking, and it was distracting for me. So maybe that.
Personal Fable is out May 20 on Old Press Records.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
The Popdosemagazine is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Popdosemagazine merch.