‘Unique’ is a well-worn and often overused expression in the music industry. However, defining the output of Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter with that term is not out of place. Their four studio albums RECKLESS BURNING (2003), OH, My GIRL (2004), LIKE, LOVE, LUST and the OPEN HALLS of the SOUL (2007), and MARBLE SON (2011), although planted into the Alt-Country genre, were psychedelic cinematic vistas, raw in emotion and quite unlike anything else before or since. The good news is that a fifth album from them is on the horizon and likely due for release this year. They are also touring again as support act to drone-metal band Sunn O))) and play Dublin’s Concert Hall on 25th March. We spoke recently with Jesse about her music, the band, the intervening years since their last recording, and her latest venture as lead vocalist with Dave Alvin’s project, The Third Mind.
Hi Jesse. You appear to be busier than ever at present, touring as a member of The Third Mind and about to play dates in Europe, opening for Sunn O))). How are you coping with that workload?
I’m very excited for the adventure, thank you for asking! Lord knows I’ve been long overdue for some heavy workload;)
In terms of the coping aspect, I think now it’s become less about the trials and tribulations of touring itself, but trying to cope more with the reality of how fast life is moving, and how much I don’t want this (or anything for that matter) to be a missed opportunity.
I just hope that I can deliver, and be inside each moment, so that I can give all of myself. That’s all I ever really am concerned with—the transcendence aspect.
So yeah, just knowing that I can hopefully find "that" sweet spot each night on stage makes all the logistical nightmares of travel fuckery worth it.
Our review of the excellent THIRD MIND 2 album describes your artistic marriage with the band as 'made in heaven.' How did your involvement come about?
That’s very sweet and a lovely compliment, thank you. Well, I’ve known Dave Alvin a long time and I was always a fan. He and I got to know each other years ago when my band opened some shows for the Knitters—and we remained friends. So back in 2019 when Victor Krummenacher called me and asked me to sing a song on the first Third Mind album, I, of course, said yes.
I think Dave just thought my voice would be a good match for the song, Morning Dew. (Which is on the first album.)
Then when this next record rolled around, Dave wanted to focus more on just playing his guitar vs. singing—so I was invited back, and I ended up becoming the main vocalist. It was a sorta, “let’s just see what happens” vibe—and honestly, it was nice to step out and away from my own constraints, and in essence not have to call the shots—and just simply sing.
I just have to add, too, that it’s been a real privilege and honour to play with such top-notch musicians.
Being described by Dave Alvin as a vocalist 'that sings like Sandy Denny meets Grace Slick' is about the highest compliment for me. Did you develop your vocal styling after being influenced by any particular artist?
That's a huge compliment, and it truly means the world to me —but I’m going to explain why I feel like I’m not worthy, in what’s hopefully an interesting way;)
These influence questions always stymie me, because I’ve lived a long time, and to answer this I have to go back to being thirteen!
I mean, many of my earliest influences (and the list is honestly too long) were extremely powerful soul, R&B and blues singers (both men and women.) I mean influences, in that they made me want to dedicate myself to music.
I definitely don’t have a powerful voice or range… I’m not a belter….and early on I’d get psyched out of course, because technically I couldn’t come close to singing like them.
But what I did come to understand or intuit (luckily), out of the impossibility of ever having pipes like, say, Aretha Franklin or Janis Joplin or Lead Belly, was the understanding that it more often than not, was about the emotion left behind in the actual wake their voices created, that I was being emotionally struck by—and sometimes less about the raw psychical power of their singing.
I just really honed in on how they might sing one word, or one note, and for me it became about chasing that feeling I’d get from even just a whisper perhaps —which eased the burden early on of thinking I had to be a “technically great” singer, to be a singer at all.
I just quickly came to understand that you had to embody the song, and there are different paths to doing so.
Of course I was also obsessed with a lot of singers who weren’t technically great and were very idiosyncratic … I mean this is kinda par for the course in the rock n’ roll canon….and when I finally started to listen to more singer songwriters in my 20’s vs classic rock bands etc., I definitely finally let go of the trappings of thinking I needed to belt it out. Leonard Cohen was a game changer for me this way.
I just found the voices that can convey an inherent sorrow with just one note, or even the subtle space between notes. I mean not all music allows for this either —that space that’s needed to cradle a voice—and sometimes those micro nuances, or the mournful ache of a voice can get overcome by its own sheer power, or the music itself.
So it’s the “in betweens” — the cracks and fissures that I respond to—the actual “sound” of vulnerable desperation—which is exceptional when it’s juxtaposed to great fortitude of spirit and soul.
I’m into mournful music in general. I mean I could listen to nothing but Gregorian chants from here on out and be quite satisfied;) I need a bit of death and a sense of nature and the elements, with hints of broken-hearted desperation. Love.
Sounds cliche, but funeral worthy music;) That’s what my influences all share! You could be buried to them;)
Townes Van Zandt is another that comes to mind of course, in that his voice was all cracks and fissures with light coming in from all over. In his last years, his voice literally sounded broken… it was unbelievable to behold. And it embodied pure love.
Anyway....it’s important to add I’m speaking from the perspective of myself as a fan. This is what I’m touched by from others. This is what inspires me. Moves me.
I am not saying I have achieved this myself.
But of course it’s what I strive for. I’m still trying to reach this “place” with my voice as the “go-between”. But I’ve yet to. And I may never.
Sandy Denny, she had it all. Honestly, I’m not worthy of comparisons, nor do I come close to the timbre and richness her voice had - the warmth. No one comes close (in my opinion) to the rarity of the purity of her voice.
Grace Slick too was so distinctive and out of the box, ahead of her time in so many ways. Always was a huge fan… but I see her as an artistic singer (whatever that means;) Maybe just in the sense that her voice was like looking at a piece of Modernist sculpture in a grand museum hall… It was important, it stunned—but it wasn’t soulful …It was beautifully sculpted and defined but a bit cold. I don’t think I’d play Grace Slick at a funeral;)
Anyway, to try and summarize my thoughts…
My voice, or my goal as a “singer”, was to simply occupy an emotional space — and the singing itself was almost secondary to this space —which is why I started writing my own songs. The songs were forged out from my many vocal limitations—so the songs made it all make sense as a cohesive expression —in that it wasn’t about being “a singer” at all, but more an interpreter of an internal world that was, for better or for worse, needing to come forth—with music being the vehicle to do so.
How’s that for explaining my style;)
As far as the last couple of decades, I can tell you my favourite singer songwriters that inspire me (in that I’m just a huge fan of them.)
Marissa Nadler, Will Oldham, Nicolai Dunger and Jason Molina.
But I’ll close by saying this (and I think I said it before in an interview once) that my biggest influence was probably my mother’s voice…. humming a lullaby to me as a child at night. The sound of her voice through her chest, next to her beating heart was everything. Love.
How were the recordings for the albums THIRD MIND and THIRD MIND 2 structured, and at what stage were your vocals added?
All the songs were cut live, so I was there at the get-go for each one. We’d basically just run a few versions of each song, and you'd just hope you'd nailed it.
Were you familiar with the song selections before recording them?
Yes. On the second record a few song choices were actually mine. ‘In My Own Dreams’ by Paul Butterfield, which is an all-time favourite from my teenage years, and “A Little Bit Of Rain” by Fred Neil ….and then of course “Tall Grass” (which was an original Dave and I co -wrote together.)
I actually was not familiar with the Gene Clark song. That one’s a good example of a cover being completely reimagined.
Is performing live with them a different experience than fronting Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter?
Yes. I mean The Sweet Hereafter is my DNA, my forever unreachable Sistine Chapel ceiling, (that I will be reaching for from beyond the grave, eternally ;) and It’s my sole reason for being. So, therefore the live shows have a specific emotional context and sonic timbre.
The Sweet Hereafter is my and Phil's songs and vision (which is a dire and desperate vision.) And it’s also Phil and I on our emotional journey as two people who share the same heart, on full display.
The Third Mind for me is an extension of what I’ve come to learn from the Sweet Hereafter, but it’s more light-hearted onstage. I mean the Third Mind’s music isn’t sombre the way ours can be at times—and I suppose it’s a bit more of an exercise in "letting go" vs holding on. Especially because there is a lot of improvisation— it’s literally about letting go.
I enjoy finding new ways on stage to embody the songs with The Third Mind, because they didn’t come from me, so I get to be free from them, and I get to be an observer too—and I enjoy never knowing where it’s going to go because I’m learning as I go.
On a side note—I’m learning too, that it’s ok to fall in love a little with new musical relationships. I guess I’m poly “band” erous now;) But seriously, I am very loyal to a fault—so there is a true freedom to belong to something else that doesn’t belong to me (if that makes sense?)
Also, onstage I’ve gotten over feeling like I’m cheating on Phil;)
Your relationship with Sunn O))) goes back almost two decades, and you contributed to their collaboration with the Japanese band Boris. Were you familiar with both bands and was that association a stimulant for you to be even more experimental musically?
I was familiar with Sunn O))) because our bass player Bill Herzog introduced us to Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley way back in the day—that’s how they found me and asked me to come write and sing the words and melody for what became ‘The Sinking Belle’ (from the album Altar), which was the Sunn O))) Boris collaboration.
Boris I met during the actual recording, and I was just blown away by them. Their presence, their whole gestalt. I mean they have all the elements. True artists.
So yes, working with those bands in the studio and then performing with them made us feel like we needed to step it up as artists. We felt like what we had done til then was child’s play.
One night after we performed at ATP with them all, Phil came up with the intro to Hushed By Devotion, the song that opens our last record, Marble Son…and I remember thinking we have to start a record with this musical movement (cuz it really is a movement, or a “piece” vs. a song.) So that intro set the template for what became Marble Son.
Had it not been for Sunn O))) and Boris, I don’t think we’d have gone that far into (what for us at the time) was left field…a real departure—or an arrival—depending on how you care to view it.
Does the support slot touring with Sunn O))) herald a rebirth of Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter?
Yes, we are definitely in a rebirth. Or we are getting ready to be born;) But….it remains to be seen how that will translate.
Sunn O))) have given us a huge gift by taking us on this tour, because it’s allowing us to re-emerge in a very elegant and gentle way.
I mean to be invited to set the tone each night that guides the audience into Sunn O)))’s intense sonics, isn’t just a huge honour— it just makes sense somehow in context to our journey—as we are still kinda caught between worlds until the new record is released. And these performances are all about being between worlds.
As strange as it sounds, their music feels very quiet to me, very calm…. Like being beneath the ocean or sort of like being in the eye of the storm… gentle in the middle…and I relate to that stillness, and I need that stillness, now more than ever…. it’s like a sonic shroud….and I’m lucky to play for people who get this, and understand that this is a kingdom you enter. I know it sounds overwrought perhaps to describe it so majestically—but it warrants this description.
So again, it makes re-emergence feel gentle….and reverent. And perhaps dare I say, relevant.
You've hinted that we may be presented with a further album by Jesse Sykes & The Hereafter. With a gap of over twelve years since the release of MARBLE SON, what can we look forward to?
Well, there is a record and it’s done and in waiting. This record is a little bit like if you were to put all our records in a cosmic petri dish.
It’s funny cuz we started recording it eight years ago, but I’m proud of these songs, because they sound like what life felt like this past decade, for better or for worse—in that the songs seem to exist outside of time, much in the way we all have (perhaps) existed outside of time. They might not have made as much sense had they been released eight years ago. Who knows. I’m probably too close to make this call.
For me the songs really seem to have grown into the zeitgeist of this modern era—which is one of great fragility. I think this moment in history is best defined by the collision of the collective unconscious, pressing against the sinister digital construct we’ve all seemingly allowed ourselves to become bound by.
How does one quantify this? For me it’s shaped every aspect of life, and I have to be very careful because dipping into the internet pipeline can ruin me for days at a time.
Anyway…. Phil sings a song on this record too, and honestly, It’s my favourite song. It’s like we’ve come full circle and it’s almost irrelevant who’s singing what at this point. But for the story of this record to make sense—this song had to be sung by him. I think it might be a eulogy.
That hiatus we were on, from which this new record is born out of (and which was still in an acceptable range at the point when we started recording eight years back) was all about living outside of the indie music world’s goings-on because aside from other things I was dealing with in life that were monumental, I had felt it all got tainted and made worse by social media and the internet in general. It all finally culminated into this moment in time where I just needed to shed all aspects of persona and expectation and associations—which were all an unwanted part deeply entangled with any kinda musical pursuit.
It’s hard enough to pursue music in the purest way imaginable (i.e. not caring about money—because I really don’t) but then to have to be continually demoralized each day with the dog and pony show of social media —well that was just killing my soul. I just needed to leave it behind. So I did.
I didn’t even have a computer for many of those years. I just revelled in the mundane and the beauty of the day, and kinda let myself get lost in life without overarching goals, and often without music in any form.
At first it nearly killed me “letting go” of everything ….and I had to grieve big time …. but eventually it became a life.
A beautiful one. A life where music stopped being— everything.
Instead, silence became everything.
I’m leaving out a lot of background;) I mean we as a band lost a lot of our machinery right after the last record came out, in that labels folded, people quit, Spotify took over, Seattle rents went way up…but it’s too vast to go into in a cohesive way;) Let’s just say Phil moved five times to four different cities during the hiatus.
But if there was a bright side to all the changes taking place, I think it just forced us to take a long view with making this record….and in doing so it seemed to be an almost protective entity. Like going to the studio over that long time frame kept us on track emotionally, while parts of us evolved into whatever it is we needed to, in order to carry on.
For me, just going into my own world, allowed me to kinda re-enter that “Theta” stage of childhood —which was an unexpected cherished outcome of everything seemingly falling apart around me at the time.
During this period I also obsessively made a bunch of little surrealist documentaries (on YouTube), because I tried to capture this beauty and its ache and the melancholy, through story telling. Luckily, the process of creating these mini documentaries eventually helped me fall back in love with music and life…. And some of the music for our record came out of these storytelling vignettes.
Bottom line, these little YouTube movies are important companion pieces to the new record.
So I feel like in hindsight it was all necessary, the hiatus, and the eight year on again off again recording sessions. It was the only way to continue in this adventure in a pure and authentic way.
I’m just hoping the new record has a bit of that childlike melancholic beauty I’ve alluded to, and evokes the feeling of how hope feels, before you ever knew that it was a thing you could lose.
Does that make sense?
It’s aptly titled, “Forever, I’ve Been Being Born.”
In 2011, MARBLE SON arrived after a traumatic time for you and the band, and that disorder adds to the album's brilliance. How difficult was it for you and the band to create that album collectively?
In truth I just think it’s always been hard for us to make records, even at the beginning when our records were quite simple. I mean Phil and I have an intensity—and well, you mention a “disorder” and I’m laughing, cuz I think I have one in this regard —when it comes to making records.
I just think aside from the music actually not aligning to my vision at times, and the frustration of clashing viewpoints, I have a kind of sonic dysmorphia, and it’s hard for me to hear the music played back outside of the studio sometimes. It’s like I won’t hear it played back the same way twice… I lose trust in my own perception…. and that just makes mixing a nightmare.
The first time I encounter a mix at home to review it, is pure hell. I used to get in the bathtub and cover my ears with the water running, while Phil would take a listen in the living room, and tell me “Yay or nay” while I was still in the tub. Then I’d eventually work my way into stomaching a listen —if he liked it.
If he didn’t, or worse if I didn’t like it —it could really send me spiralling. I’ve had bedridden depressions over mixes.
I end up (especially in the case of this new record) having to step away for long periods to forget what I thought I heard;) Honestly, hearing what might be your very soul played back, for me can be traumatic and disorienting. If you really think about it, it’s not that far-fetched— to go a little crazy;)
Because again, in my mind it had to be right, or close enough to the internal world from which it came.
I don’t have any other excuse really. I just seem to be a bit of a victim of my own undoing in this particular circumstance (i.e. the circumstance of my own recorded music;)
But I also think depending what’s happening in your life at the time, record making dynamics are gonna be a crap shoot - I mean it’s hard to make a record during a major life transformation I think….
With Marble Son it started out brilliantly… the recording process with Mel Dettmer was magical…But yes, Phil lost his dad during mixing and he and I had just broken up ….and then we didn’t like the mixes —so we took it to like three different people before we finally cracked the code.
Plus, it was clear at the time we were going to lose crucial members, because they weren’t able to tour as much as we were required to.
Fatherhood, motherhood…. Marriage. It was kind of the beginning of the end of that incarnation.
And soon after I lost my mind;)
I mean it’s so much more complicated than we have time for. I’m not able to do this question justice;) I’m making myself look insane.
Someday maybe we’ll make an easy record!
Songs such as Hushed By Devotion and Be It Me, Or Be In None are like open wounds. Can you perform them live, or are those memories best parked?
We still perform “Be It Me, Or Be It Non’’ but “Hushed by Devotion” needs a full ensemble. We are definitely wanting to get a full band back together, and yes, I’d play that beast in a heartbeat!
No one ever had to twist my arm to play most of our older songs! I mean even the new ones are old now;)!
Your intrigue with mortality comes across in your writing and, indeed, in your band's title. Is that drawn from anxiety or fascination, and has that tempered over the years?
Oh Yes, death was always my muse and as a child it was my constant play date you might say;) I came into the world knowing it belonged to us all and it was just a crap shoot who would be called upon. As a very young child I had a great amount of anxiety because death was very present early on, so it shaped me into who I was then and who I am now.
I guess as one would expect, my relationship to it has deepened. Meaning it’s less novel in terms of its elusive ways, and less conceptual and closer to home--more hands on.
As far as hands on, I now care take my ninety-year-old mother much of the time, and at night she has what I can only describe as visitations. When they started it was easy to write it off as dementia or a side effect of medication…. But now I’m convinced she’s just living between worlds where she can see things we can’t. People, old pets. She has many phantom cats in her apartment that she’s always in search off—hiding in closets etc. One night I heard a ruckus and she was throwing newspaper pages into the air and I said, “mom what’s going on?" "Why are you throwing this newspaper everywhere??!”
And she responded, “I’m throwing them at the people.”
I think she and I are at a point now where she no longer fights them, and I no longer tell her they aren’t real. (But honestly, I always knew they were real;)
So I’m in it… deep. And it’s every bit as beautiful as I might have expected, but even more sad.
You have spoken previously about the intensity associated with the band and how that can lead to ruination, yet despite numerous collaborations, you have not recorded a solo album. Was that ever on your radar, or are you committed lifelong to Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter?
Sometimes I joke that I make music not so much for music’s sake, but more for the notion of having an excuse to sleep in a motel room with 5 people;)
I just always loved the familial aspect of it…. I mean maybe not so much motel-wise anymore;) But I think I truly needed a family, and Phil (and the others) became my family through music. Plus he and I just have such a shared internal braille. We read each other’s minds and hearts —and I know it’s too precious of a relationship and that life’s too short to think I could find that again. The musical trust as well.
It’s a love story, and I don’t need to always be falling in love.
Solo records often sound too engineered. (i.e. The soul gets sucked out) Sometimes the metaphysical nature of the relationships between people is not taken into consideration enough. Those relationships lend some kind of extra juju we can’t quantify. Even if there is great friction. The friction might be necessary. Might be the magic bullet.
I mean, I know there are many exceptions where magic occurs in solo records— but the thought right now makes me think of lawns with fake grass;)
Yeah. I’m just not interested. And at the end of the day, a solo record at this point in time, with so many band members having come and gone (with the exception of Phil) would ultimately mean “no” Phil…. and it’s just not going to happen. He’ll probably roll his eyes if he reads this, but I know he gets it …at least from my vantage point
Your show in Dublin is advertised as Jesse Sykes with Phil Wandscher and Bill Herzog rather than JS and The Sweet Hereafter. Is that anything to be read into, or is it a faux pas by the PR people?
It was honestly just that we didn’t want people to think it was a full band and then be disappointed. It can get confusing. I think of Jesse Sykes and The Sweet Hereafter as the full band experience, with drums etc….
This tour is us stripped down. No drums. In the early days it didn’t matter if we showed up as a duo, trio or five-piece, cuz the first two records were so minimalist. But after Marble Son, which is such an epic journey of an album, the distinction started to really matter, in terms of what form of the band you were getting (because so many songs on that record require full band.)
Man, now I’m thinking I probably should have billed as JS & The Sweet Hereafter after all— and just surprise people!
Lol;)
Either way, with Sunn O))) also performing, it promises to be an exciting double bill and a welcome return to Dublin for you. We are very much looking forward to the experience.
We are beyond excited Declan! And I cannot thank you enough for giving us a voice (out in the vast sea of it all!) See you soon my friend.
Interview by Declan Culliton Photography by Harrison Kadwit (Main Image and Jesse with Phil) and Steve Dewall (Jesse with Dave).