Death Songs - “Ophelia” - Feels Like Home #45 ::: Intothewoods.tv Directed by Hannah Gregg Camera by Hannah Gregg, Rodrigo Melgarejo, Jaclyn Campanaro, and Mike Elliott Audio by Jeff Hylton Simmons Words by Jaclyn Campanaro Apart from the recording equipment, everything inside the tiny one-bedroom house seems to be decades old and made of wood. Dried flowers hang in garlands from the walls and there’s no computer or TV in sight. The few indicators of modernity harmonize with the rustic milieu: an 8-foot-tall logging saw stands in the corner behind the drum kit, a Rolling Stones record crackles along with the wood-burning stove, someone taps out the first few notes of “Seven Nation Army” on the crumbling ancient piano… The anachronistic character of the space reflects the music being made within it. Death Songs began as the folksy side-project of The Shaky Hands singer Nick Delffs but has evolved into a louder, more intense full-time collaboration with drummer Justin Power. Their music doesn’t quite feel like it belongs in this era, yet doesn’t sound like it could have come from any other. “I want to make music for the time I’m in, but I don’t really identify with a specific modern genre,” Nick explains. He cites soul and gospel as having inspired a conscious shift in process away from penning personal melodrama toward tackling more broadly-relatable themes. But “Ophelia,” a song about a suicidal friend showing up in a dream as the eponymous character from Shakespeare, was written in the early stages of this transformation and it remains deeply personal. It’s an ominous procession driven by percussive Wurlitzer with drums marching lockstep behind and lyrics cloaked in megaphone reverb. Low groans of dissonant electric guitar are banged out at the bridge, foreshadowing a break in the tense, ordered restraint. The song swirls into a climactic solo before ending suddenly, its narrator presumably waking up in a sweat. The music’s tightly-wound energy, all pent-up and barreling toward an unclear resolution, conveys the sense of anxiety and cognitive dissonance Nick feels he shares with its tragic character: “This past year has been the hardest, the most work, the saddest, and also the best, most joyous and rewarding time in my life,” Nick says in reference to the difficulties inherent in balancing a disciplined musical practice with new fatherhood. “[But] it kind of opens your mind up to how much you’re capable of feeling, and I want to try to convey that spectrum of emotion. I’m not interested in tunnel vision anymore.” It’s little surprise that with the maturation of the man comes maturation of the music, and the ongoing metamorphosis is reflected in the trajectory the song has taken. The version that appears on the self-titled 10” bears little resemblance to the version we’re seeing today. “I recorded it right after I wrote it so I feel like I didn’t really know the song yet… It seems crazy now but it almost had like a Flamenco style to it. But because the subject is so dark I was having trouble playing it even though I was enjoying the lyrics,” continues Nick. “So I changed the tempo and time signature and it kept evolving and we ended up with this great intensity. It’s really kind of folky but it turned into a rock song.” The saw stands behind the drum kit.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 00:11:21 +0000