I started really conceptualizing and writing/narrowing down songs for Death in the Business of Whaling in the fall of 2024, coming off of my first couple rounds of headline tours. I had really wonderfully connective and intimate experiences sharing my first couple of projects with live audiences. Those projects were very personal and vulnerable and revealing my life and specific experiences to an audience began to feel a bit dissonant and exposing.

One of my favorite things about music is its ability to connect people. It has done so for me time and time again and it has been so special to see my own writing do that for people too. I just began to learn that for myself, there were specifics that I wanted to keep for myself. I became interested in writing songs that read more like folklore. A place where I could put my life and point of view out there, but in a way that spoke more symbolically. Something your subconscious understands before your conscious mind does. Visceral rather than literal. And that relationship to our deeper selves, our subconscious, our souls, is a major theme of the album for me. Most of these songs are about the different ways we all bump up against the human condition. Our spirit, the shadow self, our egos, trauma, love and fate. How we cope with our experiences and how we connect and take care of one another in an exceedingly dark and violent world.

This record is still deeply personal to me. But it is an attempt to reveal my cards in a more coded, symbolic manner. The live performance aspect of releasing music remained a significant consideration throughout the album making process. I wanted to have more fun on stage and to make the live shows feel more like a true performance. To release something that felt ‘bigger’ in every way.

I think the recording process lent to that in many ways. I recorded this record in a converted horse barn outside of Seattle versus holed up in my room like I usually do. I think you can hear the difference in the space and I’m excited to harness that bigger sound and translate it to the live shows.