On finding a reason to finish

When we spoke for MTV News in 2021, climate change was front and center in our conversation because your previous album Ignorance was largely focused on it, whereas Humanhood is more personal. Over the past few years, has talking about broader social issues felt less meaningful to your creativity? Is there another reason for the shift?

It’s not that it became less relevant or less important to me. It’s just that I can’t control what I write about. I wish I could, but in this moment in time, I was going through too much personally to control what was coming out in songs. I did have to have a little sit-down with myself where I realized that the album was just what it was, and I couldn’t change that. But I don’t think it’s not topical. Everything one writes has a personal and collective resonance. Things are in the collective unconscious, and they show up in songs, and you’re not always sure where they came from.

Where did sitting and having a conversation with yourself come from? What led you to that moment?

I experienced a falling apart—a breaking of kinds—of the self, or of what I thought I knew about everything. Which is a horrible experience, but it’s a thing that happens. It was difficult to figure out how much to represent that or whether to represent it, but I did represent the outlines of it. There is a theme of falling apart, disintegration, and reintegration on [Humanhood] that feels really relevant to me now… I’m kind of surprised at how complete the album feels. It came together in the end. Writing it from the place I was in was extremely difficult, and I did feel like my capacity was a fraction of what it should have been, could have been. But somehow, it did turn into a really interesting record anyway.

When you talk about not having full capacity, it makes me think of the fact that you brought in a full band and improvised a lot. Can you tell me about the improvisational process and why it appealed to you?

For the most part, I had songs with chord structures. I didn’t always know how many verses there were going to be, or I was rewriting a lot of chord structures in the room. I remember on “Mirror,” I rewrote the chord structures of the choruses as we were recording, and on the arrangement level, I wanted to go in with a more open framework. When we made Ignorance, for example, “Robber” was just a loop. There wasn’t much there, and the band really shaped that song, so I wanted to leave room for that. I could feel the band—they’re such good musicians—starting to solidify. I was like, “Now we can record.” That moment where a band is finding something is so exciting to listen to.

I tried to set aside time at the end of the day to improvise a little bit, and some of that [snuck onto] the record. The creativity of the musicians is very visible for me on the record. I can hear everyone’s spirit, and there’s moments where everyone shines and I can hear their creative impulses. I feel like my role was very curatorial, like, “This here, that there.” Paring it down. It ended up being a very joyful recording experience.

Was that your first time working in a curatorial capacity?

That’s what I’ve been doing the whole time. It’s just that I think I get better at it with every record. Ignorance and How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars were both very similarly curatorial. But for Ignorance, what we were listening back to in the studio was closer to the final recording. And there was definitely, on [Humanhood], a lot more playing with the sounds and manipulating things, though there are songs that are very close to what was recorded.

How do you know a song is done?

It’s very difficult. With a record like this—there wasn’t a genre, there were no guardrails, there were very few parameters—it was a bit too open at times. If there hadn’t been a deadline, it would never have been finished. But at a certain point, the mix date was approaching, so things had to be finished, but I was editing and re-recording vocals up until the song was recorded. We were mixing, and then on the weekend, I was recording still. If it wasn’t for other people coming in, I think it would’ve been one of those records that never was complete.

Some people I’ve interviewed for The Creative Independent have said that, with the editing process, you can just keep going, you might never actually stop. Do you truly feel that if there was no deadline, you would just keep going?

I think you need guardrails; you need some kind of parameter. You need someone else, a deadline, a reason why it has to be finished, or else it’s very easy to endlessly edit. This record was dangerous because I gave myself a lot of time and resources, and that usually leads to a bad record, because when you start working things, you tend to overwork them and you tend to make the song worse. The best records are usually alive, vibrant—boom, you’ve got it, that’s it. But I really wanted to make this studio record with a lot of sound manipulation, so I put myself in this position to drive past the exit.

The mix process was when I started to see the shape of it. I was like, “All this work has been worth it.” We did, in the end, make the right decisions. I have a lot of fine lines I’m trying to walk. With this record, it was, “I still believe in approachable music. I still believe in melody.” I want to be understood and I want my music to be accessible, but I’m trying to bring in these elements of brokenness and disintegration—just the right amount that you can still relax into it, but there’s a little bit of confrontation.

Early Weather Station music was just you, and later Weather Station music has been you and the band. How has not overworking your songs differed in solo versus band settings?

I think it’s the same. It’s interesting, I’ve been taking a painting class the last couple of weeks. It’s not structured, it’s just “sit down and paint a still life in two hours.” I’m finding it’s the same process no matter what I’m doing. Even if I’m painting a tiny canvas of flowers—and I’m not a painter—I start with this joy and this open, expansive possibility, and then I start to refine and get really perfectionist. In the last 10 minutes, I look at it and realize that, despite all the perfectionism, it’s not saying the thing I want it to say.

It’s the same thing with writing a song, too… For the most part, songs appear with all this beauty and meaning, and then, there’s this editing and perfectionist phase. And then there’s this final phase where [the songs] start to have joy again, start to make sense again. Whether it’s writing, recording, performing with a band, picking a tracklist, it’s all the same. I have the same mind no matter what I do.

All Of It Was Mine was a response to my first record, The Line, which took me four years to make. I had to teach myself how to do everything. I needed to rebel by just making a record in 10 days that was pretty live. It’s been this long journey back… For a while, I didn’t know how to work through the perfectionism. Honestly, I could see myself going back to folk after this. Who knows.

There’s something you said at one point about joy emerging on the other side of the editing process. Is reaching that joy one of your main motivations to keep at it?

There’s a falling into place when something is finished where it’s very joyful and it’s very satisfying, where the things that have been left behind are left behind, the things that have been included are included. There’s a pain in it that I think has taken me a long time to get over. When something’s almost done and you have to say goodbye to all the things it could have been, that’s where most artists who have a perfectionist streak get lost. With every record, I have a moment—or sometimes months, or sometimes a year—where I can’t stand the record because I’m so upset at all the things it’s not. But when you get through that, you can see all the things it is. You’re like, “A lot made it through the fire.” With this record—because I’m aware now of how it goes—I was able to move through that process in three months instead of a year.

As you listen back to your previous work, how do you feel that your creativity has changed? Are there any elements that you feel have evolved?

Last year, I did this thing where I played all my records live in three nights. I did two records a night, which is insane. I wasn’t thinking about it in terms of how it would affect me. I was just thinking of it as a nice show to put on, and a lot of people had requested, over the years, me playing All Of It Was Mine, so I thought this was a good opportunity to do that and a couple other things I wanted to do. I did have to go back and deeply listen to my old records, many of which I hadn’t listened to in years. I thought I knew what they were like, and I went back and listened and I was like, “These are different than I thought.”

In some cases, the narrative I had about a record was wrong. Even in the folk records, I’m surprised at how much my lyrics haven’t changed. The things I’m writing about are still the same. I was finding songs that were recorded but didn’t make the records, and I performed those as well. I was like, “I’m still trying to write this song.” I’ve been thinking about the same things the whole time because I’m the same person. I was struck by how similar they felt, even though if you put on Ignorance and then All Of It Was Mine, it doesn’t feel like the same person.

In your songs’ narratives, you’re often venturing out into nature. Getting out into nature can be a way of resetting one’s creative flow, taking a break, preventing burnout. Assuming that overlaps with your experience, can you talk about that?

I grew up in the woods, so I spent a lot of time outside as a kid. I remember walking around and singing in the woods, so it’s very formative to my relationship to everything. Even though I am a perfectionist and an over-thinker in most aspects of life, I have this comfortable relationship to my voice that I think is formed outside. The place I’ve always felt the safest, the most free, or the most myself is in the woods. If no one can see or hear me, I feel very free. When I write about the natural world, which I do on every record and often every song, it’s returning to the source or connecting back to the deepest thing for me.

A small part of why I ended up writing about my climate feelings was because I couldn’t reconnect to nature, couldn’t touch it. On the self-titled record, there’s a pain in it. I had to work through that, and that meant facing climate reality because I couldn’t enjoy being in nature, and that is where I feel most comfortable. To me, it’s the other world—there’s the human world and there’s the natural world. There are all the same forces and the same elements, but it’s like slipping into another dimension.

A lot of people have pointed out that on Humanhood there’s a lot of water. I swim, and I like getting into water… There’s such a strong instinct for me to connect to the fact that we are natural creatures. If I think of the human world, I’m thinking of politics, society, culture, and all of these things.

Is there anything more you wanted to say about creativity?

I’ve spent a lot of time working with songwriters and helping them find their way, and it’s funny, because I can help other people, but I can’t help myself. When something is complete and it falls into place, that’s when you realize what it is instead of what it isn’t. That’s also the key, I find, when people bring me a song they don’t like—you have to figure out what to say “yes” to. It’s not about saying “no,” it’s about, “What is the quality that’s trying to appear?” Finding the “yes” is often how to complete something.