Jesse Sykes And The Sweet Hereafter: Forever, I’ve Been Being Born

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Time travellers from a simpler existence and high class troubadours of renown return with a collection of songs that captures the fleeting essence of their sound. MK Bennett finds respite.

Jesse Sykes lives and sings in the ruins of what was always an imagined America anyway. She and the Sweet Hereafter articulate the echo of the broken promises of a constitution that evolved beyond its architect to dismantle it. But a country, and a world, doesn’t really change. Its culture is set regardless of the noise that surrounds it, and that culture was and remains an amalgamation of its collected history.

She may well be bone weary now, but she knows, and they know, that the DNA lives in the sound of these acoustic guitars and lap steel, the ghost music of the working class and the poor, from dust bowls to food banks, from porch swings to pick-ups, sometimes all you can do is tell the story. They do this with such broken-hearted clarity that it borders on the spiritual. It is seemingly a eulogy to loss, and the eventual acceptance of it.

Feather Treasure strolls in with a gorgeous echo and slight distortion, tremulous and strident, as Jesse sings a heart-worn melody, the guitars respond in kind, presumably the work of co-conspirator and Whiskeytown legend Phil Wandscher, and while it is her name first, he is clearly The Sweet Hereafter. Every lick is thought out and considered, every note a stab, a bruise, a mark. The music here mirrors the ebb and flow of the words, which are mysterious and devastating, obscured by clouds, as the old song goes. When the harmonies fade and the Neil Young rust feedbacks its way to the end, it’s breathtaking.

Gentle Chaperone, with the always excellent Marissa Nadler sitting in, is a country lament, the ghost of Gram and Emmylou, the choirlike voices turning it into a winter hymnal. The majestic backing is subtle and supportive, the narrative too frail to break. In the dying seconds there’s the faintest hint of something under the skin but it dissipates, too wary of destroying the carefully arranged mood. Dewayne sounds both achingly personal and the sad, concise narrative of a Sam Shepard or Raymond Carver, the matter of fact phrasing making it that much more devastating, though the music, a chorus-heavy reverie of assorted strings, shimmers warmly like dragonflies across a pond, swells and breaks and reflections on the water. Mesmirising and pulse-like, always returning to itself. I Still Hear Lorelei, meanwhile, is a meditation on missing home, a soft croon that brushes past you, a whole world of regret in a few minutes, a bruise that you don’t press too hard. Winter’s Empty Pages is almost onomatopoeic; the angels’ voices that stir through it like mist are sparse but tombstone heavy, brittle and spectral. The sound, which has been a consistent blend of Neil Young, Giant Sand and Joni up until now has reached a peak of Crosby, Stills and Nash excellence, the continuous choir of harmonies crushing you into submission, a candlelit country gothic wonder.

There’s a heaviness in the approach, if not regularly in the immediate sound, that may be relative to them being signed, in the US at least, to Southern Lord, ordinarily the home of more obviously heavy fare, though obvious is entirely the wrong word to describe Sunn O))), Boris or Earth. The sense comes from the fact that whilst the heaviness here rarely comes from distorted guitars or double kick drums, it does sit behind the music, a silent partner, ready if needed. Jesse Sykes is recognized for her range of collaborations, including co-writing and performing the cult classic “The Sinking Belle” on the Altar album, a joint project with art metal bands Sunn O))) and Boris (Japan). Sykes claims the lyrics were inspired by Joan Didion’s book, The Year of Magical Thinking, itself an essay on grief, a subject she regularly circles back to, regardless of the sonics involved, This is simply devastating in a different way.

Dead End Pools is a sweet and beautiful ode to love after youth, long after youth, when we find different routes to joy than we used to, but we still find them. A song of second chances, a wedding song for grown ups, picked and strummed to perfection. Oh, My Sitter, once again featuring the beautific force of Marissa Nadler, has the depth of an ocean. Jesse says of this lyric, referring to the sitter themselves, “She truly was the person who taught me love,” she muses, “When I think of the moment of death, I often think that it would just be going to her” The title is apt as so much of the material represents either death, rebirth or both, the theme runs through it like a river.

Forever, I’ve Been Being Born itself, with words that suggest a lineage between the art of song and its ancient lore, is something that takes its time without haste, a slow build to reveal the full picture. It’s southern via Flannery O’ Connor, with a lovely and lilting harmony guitar solo to break up the verses, a ton of slide for geographic purpose. Like everything here, the way the sound is constructed with the atmosphere is superlative, top of the game technicality that somehow sacrifices nothing, the feel first and last and always. Remarkable because it quite simply is often not the case. “My Sweet Hereafter” could be a song about a loved one, a song about home, or a song where one serves as a metaphor for the other. Either way, it is stunning, wonderfully reminiscent of Elliot Smith and sounds as if they’re sat directly in front of you. Deeply affecting, it’s largely acoustic with the occasional Lou Reed/Sterling Morrison string bend. A New Medium is political in a subtle way, perhaps a new chapter for the band, though it remains starkly poetic. It ends with a minute or two of barnstorming echo and distortion-laced guitar excellence, a full stop and a cycle back to the beginning.

Carefully put together but loose enough to give the illusion of the carefree, everything from its photography to its titles to its muted tone has a clear aesthetic designed to put you in the right frame of mind to just listen and pay attention. A project of high regard and beautiful results, because in the end, some things you just have to sit with for a while.

Jesse Sykes And The Sweet Hereafter’s Instagram | Facebook | Bandcamp

All words by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram