"pull over the car I'm not doing so well / I'm gonna break down any second now / no, I don't wanna talk about it / quiet while I try to calm down..."
It is quite possible, if your ears and heart are wide open, to listen to a song and hear past it. In between the urgent notes and inside the vocals that feel like emotional implosions you can, literally, lose yourself in moments of cataclysmic confrontations, revealing naked realizations, rubbing your skin raw until you crack up and bleed. These are some of the internal conversations I had with myself while listening to the incredibly intimate "What's Wrong" by (described) "LA-raised, Berlin-based by way of Brooklyn, queer 'gentle folk' purveyor Hayfitz" although this artistic confessional is not 'gentle folk' in any way, it is, instead, raw poetic bloodletting. The track via Vienna, Austria-based SeaYou Records is ultimately the result of conflicts that might of been brewing an entire life.
Some art is ultimately more than just art but expressions of transformative moments that feel like unexpected expectations and because regurgitation of personal important info carefully phrased ahead of me I will share those words here:
[With a brave idea, Hayfitz sought ultimate closure by isolating in a cabin for three weeks to record and co-produce his forthcoming sophomore album, Everything Else (Out 10/6/23), with the very person it was written about. A lengthy path towards his late-discovered queer identity via an unrequited love with collaborator-turned-best friend, Sam Cope, Hayfitz details a confusing, often excruciating three-year period following a chapter of necessary separation and eventual reunion between the friends.
“I knew that as soon as I admitted to Sam what it was all about, that it was no longer going to be just hypothetical,” says Hayfitz. “It was a very dark internal chapter for me. But it had to happen one way or another as far as me telling him. And it’s all embedded in the record."
“I knew that as soon as I admitted to Sam what it was all about, that it was no longer going to be just hypothetical,” says Hayfitz. “It was a very dark internal chapter for me. But it had to happen one way or another as far as me telling him. And it’s all embedded in the record."
At twenty-five, Hayfitz was questioning his sexuality and confronting the consequences of his response to Cope’s rejection and the falling out of their friendship. After a two-year period of silence followed by an eventual reconciliation, Hayfitz and Cope finally reunited in the fall of 2021 to produce a set of songs as lush as they are intimate, a near-chronological depiction of their story. The album was recorded outside Pittsburgh at the cabin of their close friend, with the musicians having hauled out a carload of gear from Brooklyn and set up their studio in a large, fully windowed three season porch.]
As you can see the album "Everything Else" and the pivotal "What's Wrong", by extension, is a sonic novel, or seems to be such to me. Something to trust fall into, to cuddle up with, thoughtful emotional art to behold. Sonic splatters of black ink, artful Rorschach tests for us to interpret, to smile and cry with.
Step into the endearing Official Video shot on Kodak Super 8mm. Film by Sebastian Vericella & Brandon Hafetz. Edited by Brandon Hafetz.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6Ll2krEOObQ8m7QFbmG10y
https://www.instagram.com/_hayfitz_/
https://hayfitz.com/
The most gentle indie-folk out of Berlin ~ sophomore LP, 'Everything Else' out October 2023. Featured on playlists by La Blogetheque, Spotify, Alexrainbird, TIDAL, Sonderhouse, and more.
The most gentle indie-folk out of Berlin ~ sophomore LP, 'Everything Else' out October 2023. Featured on playlists by La Blogetheque, Spotify, Alexrainbird, TIDAL, Sonderhouse, and more.
No comments:
Post a Comment