Hether and the torn beautiful melancholia of "photograph"

 

""Yesterday caves in / The plastic people write their wills on butterflies / I reprimand my heart / It's searching wide and tied up in your hungry eyes..."

The aural world of "photograph" by Hether, the San Diego raised, L.A. based singer-songwriter / multi-instrumentalist Paul Castelluzzo, feels like liquid amber, translucent and like honey hard to move within. The sort of folksy psychedelia, part somber lounge punk, part hallucinogen, part cathartic confessional is so melancholy and so beautiful. It is one of those songs that feels high in it's lows, in it's ultimate sadness. The chorus "Hold me in your arms / Capture me in retrograded photograph / Spin me like a top / I can write your name in blood / It's all for you..." with it's stair stepping garden rock tones feels like the kind of closeness born out of sharing movements of despair. The kind of love that can feel on one hand like the most encompassing joy and on another, as painfully sensitive like a blister torn open. 

I don't do this often but I feel compelled to paste up Paul's words about his life / world:  

"When I woke up in July 2017, I was hung over from touring with a popular Bachata artist for two consecutive years across five continents. I played guitar in the 15-person Latin band while girls hurled their bras on stage; I puked in front of 10,000 people in Rome; fell in love in Guadalajara; played massive shows at Wembley Arena and Madison Square Garden. I saw so much -- so fast -- it felt like looking through the window of a speeding train. When the train came to a halt, I had the chance to think about what was next, and I fell into a dark haze. My sister died from a drug overdose over Thanksgiving the year before.

I remember my dad replaying her old voicemails over and over - crying. I held her hand in her final moments. After she passed, I couldn’t go outside or look at the sky because I felt overwhelmingly insignificant. I would get nightmares about getting pulled into outer space.

I never sang before but the night I wrote my first song as Hether the words came pouring out. I gravitated towards the sun bleached sounds of my childhood. The smell of sunscreen and the endless summers in San Diego. Countless nights were lost writing lyrics, drinking and staying up until 3 am making weird sounds on my tape machine. The creative process was for my escape, but the making of the music was for my sister. To have her hear what my heart was feeling. This is how I stay awake.

Everything you hear on these songs is me. I grew up playing a lot of blues, listening to Robert Johnson and Elmore James. Hearing my dad’s Coltrane record Africa Brass, I was introduced to a new world of improvisation, which lead to studying harmony and early bebop stuff. I love the sound of 60/70s beach/punk music and the whacky drum machines and blues riffs of Shuggie Otis and Sly Stone. I admire artists like Brian Wilson, Lou Reed, Marc Bolan, The Beatles, The Ramones and Sonny Smith.

This first EP "Hether Who" (2019) is my own sort of retrospective of all the artists and songs that have inspired me, made me smile, cry, and tingle. I want my music to make you do any one of these things, or maybe all of them. K bye."

I love the thought and can relate to the image of Paul staying up all hours of the night to get his songs on his tape machine. I revel in a place where he can escape and a place where he can have his own voice. For those who have things to say, playing an instrument in a band as kind of a hired hand is fantastic but can also feel lonely. And my heartbreaks for the loss of his sister and I grieve for Paul's father and mother too.

"photograph" like an old photo (when we held them in our hands and felt the curled paper edges) feels surreal and scratched, faded in spots and even torn. I love it like that. 

-Robb Donker Curtius 

THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:

https://www.instagram.com/hether/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5O35zGUolf87RATk2NgSD3

https://twitter.com/paulishether

https://www.facebook.com/hether

Hether is San Diego raised, Los Angeles based Paul Castelluzzo who writes sun-kissed songs to deal with the vulnerability of living.

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 Hether, indie rock, art rock, art folk, folk indie, singer songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, Paul Castelluzzo, psych folk, sombercore, cathartic, confessional, "photograph",