It's been more than a couple of years since we last met for the Sanctum and it sure feels good to witness your return! How do you feel about releasing -once more- such an important part of yourself?
Thank you! It’s wonderful to be back and speaking with you again! Especially about this project which feels like it’s been brewing for quite some time now. I think I had just started toying with the idea of putting together a conceptual live record when we last spoke, towards the tail end of the promotion cycle for Innovations of Grave Perversity. The creation of that record was such a different experience for me and I really loved working with all of the musicians who played on those sessions, so that was actually the impetus for this “concert”. I just felt it would be a great shame if we didn’t explore playing together further, and in a sense that collaborative process was something I’d always wished I could’ve done on some of the earlier records. But having said that, I was really only interested in exploring different sounds and pulling apart what we had already done and seeing where that would lead. I didn’t want this to be a repeat of what we’d already accomplished. In a way this performance did begin as what I imagined would serve as the tour for the Innovations album, but by the time the show was actually complete and the arrangements had been worked out it was very much its own thing. I definitely feel that this is my fourth proper album, even though it is a “live” record. In my mind it’s fully canonical and serves as the next chapter. But honestly, I felt I had something to prove, primarily if not exclusively to myself. Because I’ve only ever played one actual live show in my life [a 3 hour solo performance at the New Museum of Contemporary Art on New York City’s Lower East Side to promote his debut record Mountains of Nothing In Love in 2013] and it was so long ago and from such a different period of my life, I wanted to know that I could actually create something like this today. Stripped of anything that you could potentially hide behind in the studio. It was a big undertaking, it felt like it had the weight of a tour even though it was really just this one imagined evening.
Since you've already introduced yourself in our 2022 interview, I'd like to get straight to ‘Indelible Sundries’. Is this literal, allegorical or both? Why did you choose this title for your latest release?
It’s definitely intended to be a combination of the two. So this phrase actually came to me in a dream, which I won’t recount the details of, but occasionally I’ll have a dream where a vivid phrase appears to me and I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and have to fumble towards my bedside table to write it down. It’s not often that this happens, but it certainly wasn’t the first time. So I had this phrase rolling around my mind for a while and I just sat with it and tried to figure out what it meant in the context of my life. This was somewhere towards the end of writing the last record and I felt it didn’t really make sense with that project. It was both phonetically too similar to Innovations of Grave Perversity and it also seemed to speak to something more far reaching than the story presented on that record. Even though I firmly believe Indelible Sundries is a proper next step, because it didn’t house any newly written songs it was almost perfect to have this title that was loosely an extension of the previous album. I liked that it implied some sort of evolution but also a kind of tethering. In a way this live record is sort of a “best of” package. It touches on everything I’ve done over the past decade and this title reflected exactly that, what these songs and the moments they captured have been to me, a permanent miscellanea. I liked the contrast as well, that it combines these two opposing ideas; Indelible being something so impactful that it leaves a permanent mark, paired with Sundries, which are trivial things that aren’t even important enough to be named. So it was about how these seemingly insignificant moments in your life can leave a lasting impression. You know, how the minor details can have a profound impact on us. I liked how the juxtaposition of those two words presented the idea that the mundane can become meaningful over time. There was also an aspect of it that reminded me of the Joni Mitchell line “songs are like tattoos”. All of these moments I’ve collected in song over the course of my life have not only helped shape the person I am but they’ve left this indelible mark on me.
Were there criteria that had to be met in order for the tracks to make the cut for this LP? How hard was it for you to make the selection?
They actually all presented themselves for selection fairly naturally. I mean, I definitely did have a specific mindset as I was putting the setlist together. It didn’t feel right to do anything that was too stridently dark or hopeless. There were certainly a few songs on Champagne and Childhood Hunger [Terino’s second LP released in 2018] that I didn’t think made sense for me to sing at this stage in my life. Stuff like “Annus Horribilis” or “The Saturnine Song” were just too fueled by despair or anger or whatever you’d like to call it to be a part of what I was interested in doing here. But having said that, I was actually surprised at how many songs from my first record [2013’s Mountains of Nothing In Love] that raised their hands for inclusion. I think a big part of that was because I’ve always felt those songs didn’t get a fair shake. I was in such poor condition then, the fact that I was able to even make that record is in and of itself a small miracle. I mean, the fact that I came out the other side of that at all is a genuine full scale miracle! So I was curious to see how it would be if we explored some of that material now, ten years later. It was something I was hesitant to do at first. I don’t like looking back, it doesn’t feel safe, and so the idea of going back and immersing myself in those songs again was somewhat unsettling. But to my surprise I found a way in, I could access them from another angle and they made perfect sense to me still. With some of them, like “Mark (Saint Francis Blues)”, I was able to perform it as almost a cautionary tale. It was like a sort of traditional storytelling folk song where I was singing from the perspective of the narrator. Whereas back then I was the deeply troubled young guy in that song. And with others it was just about understanding the natural position the negative has in the balance of our lives. Something like “Enough”, which is a song about ultimately deciding to give up on fighting for your joy, is just the other side of the coin. One can’t exist without the other. So I guess ultimately it was just a process of feeling out which pieces were necessary to paint a complete picture of what I feel has been my experience here thus far.
There are songs like 'Torture the Dead' that are given an unexpected twist, almost vibe-changing compared to the original versions. Is this intentional or plain experimentation?
Oh yeah, that was another huge part of this project. I had zero interest in doing anything as it had already been done. Even though these aren’t newly written songs, what made the project exciting for me was that I treated them as if they were. With the older stuff it was much easier because they were all originally recorded solo without any other musicians. So it was just a process of building them up and creating full arrangements with the band. With the more recent songs it was sort of the opposite. I wanted to strip them back and simplify their presentation. But I always like playing around with the mood of a song. “Torture The Dead” is actually a perfect example because it’s had so many different lives. On Innovations it’s very much a dark, baroque, almost orchestral song. But during the sessions for that album we also recorded a languid guitar-based Día de los Muertos style version which came out as the B-side to “Body Gets Stoned”. Now we’ve done a completely new arrangement again and presented it in a sort of avant-garde jazz context. I think it’s interesting to see how the songs can lean into different stylistic avenues and still feel very much like themselves. But yes, that was an important and deliberate aspect of the creative process for this record. I wanted everything to be completely different from how it had been done before and for these songs to feel like they were all pieces of this specific world.
Are there tracks in ‘Indelible Sundries’ that made you re-evaluate the originals? Given the supernatural chance, would you replace an older release with a re-imagined one?
Oh absolutely, on both counts. I think a lot of artists feel this way. If you listen back to something you did years ago you can always pinpoint details you wished you’d changed or things you wished you’d included. But that’s part of the beauty of record making, it does in fact do what it says on the tin. It’s a record, a documentation of a moment in time. So we can’t really strive to perfect these things, you could go on in perpetuity. At some point you have to just call it and say ok, this is where we stop, this is the record. But having said that, like I mentioned earlier, I do often think about how the songs from my first album didn’t really get a fair chance. So I have sometimes considered doing a Mountains of Nothing In Love Revisited kind of thing, and going back to re-record that album. Maybe when it’s 20 years old I’ll have the headspace to do something like that, but for now I’m continuing to look ahead.
The handmade, collage-style world you created, made me visualize you as a ghost performing in a haunted dollhouse. Can you give us your story behind this artistic direction?
I love that visual, I’m so glad the artwork conjured that feeling for you! This one actually took quite a long time to figure out. The artwork for the 3 albums I’d done prior all came to me fairly easily. With some of them it was even the starting point, like long before I’d written a single note of my debut I had shot that photograph of the stapler lover’s quarrel and told myself it would be the cover of my first album. But for this, because it was such an unusual project, I wasn’t sure how to translate that visually. I was thinking of all the live records I’ve loved over the course of my life and typically you either get a photo from the performance or just some kind of portrait of the artist, and none of that felt like it represented what I was doing here. So I spent the entirety of the recording process trying to figure this out and nothing came to me. For ages I just had this plain white cover with the title typed out and I kept staring at it and I genuinely couldn’t envision what it wanted to be. But finally one day it all clicked and I thought, this is a conceptual concert recording and the artwork should be a depiction of another kind of conceptual concert. Upon first listen you might think it’s just an actual recording of a live performance in front of an audience. But if you spend a little more time with it, it’ll reveal itself to you for what it truly is. And that’s exactly what I aimed to do with the artwork. I wanted these photographs to appear as if they were real shots taken during a performance, but to feel like something seemed somehow off, even if you couldn’t quite put your finger on what that something is. I also loved playing with the presentation of that concept on the physical record, where the front cover tells you one thing and then the back reveals a whole other layer. So the cover is the full performance shot and then when you flip it over you see the miniature stage being set and my comparatively gigantic hand placing in a paper cutout of myself as the performer. I was loosely thinking of the Rolling Stones Let It Bleed LP, that sort of playfulness and the interactive quality of holding a physical record and then turning it over to see something unexpected. Basically I wanted a visual representation of what I felt I’d done with the album, which was creating this imaginary moment in this imaginary world, which is in fact my reality.
Detail of the album's cover art (left) and the back (right)
The album consists of older releases, re-recorded to appear as a live experience and sub for a tour. In what ways does agoraphobia affect you both as a person and artist?
The vast majority of the time I feel like a fairly regular “normal” kind of person, but I do realize that the parameters of my life are pretty unusual to most people. As much as I don’t feel defined by my agoraphobia or any aspect of my mental health, I understand that it influences basically everything I do, both on a personal and creative level. There are relationships that suffer or flourish because of it, and there are artistic endeavors that do the same. But ultimately it’s just the nature of my life. It does present a lot of obstacles though, I think you’d be surprised to see how many details of your everyday life become a significant challenge if you’re not able to easily venture out from your home. So to some extent it is a burden I have to carry, but it’s also led me to some wonderfully unexpected places that I likely would’ve never found myself in otherwise. I mean, I think a great deal of my personal relationships may never have formed or at least not formed in the way that they have had I not been in the position I’m in. But also this project certainly would’ve never come to be. Had I been able to just do a proper tour and record one of those dates and release it as a live album, I think it would be a hell of a lot less layered and interesting than what I was able to do with Indelible Sundries. So it’s like anything really, you make the best of what you’re given and try to use what you’ve got to cultivate something greater.
Can you name a few pros and cons of working remotely with musicians from around the globe versus working close/in person?
I’ve very rarely worked with other musicians in person actually. But when I have, I’ve found that the experience is pretty much the same as when I’ve worked with them via text or zoom or swapping voice memos or whatever. Luckily we’ve gotten to this advanced stage in technology and you can do pretty much anything remotely with relative ease. So I think for me it actually works best to communicate with other musicians remotely, as it gives me time to process my thoughts about what we’ve just played or whatever changes we’ve just made to the song. It’s as if you’re working with someone in the flesh but between every line of communication you speak you have a few hours or even days to think about how you really feel and what your response is going to be. The way I create isn’t a conventional jam around and find what works best sort of approach. There’s a documentary that I love about Laurie Anderson from when she was making [her 2008 LP] Homeland and one of her collaborators speaks about how for Laurie that period of being in the studio and editing is actually part of the songwriting process for her. She doesn’t follow that Rock & Roll path of - write the song, take it on the road, work up the best version of the song, then get in the studio and take a big glossy snapshot of it to put on the record. And I always feel a sense of that in what I do, like the creation of the song itself is happening as I’m shaping it in the recording process. So again, that’s why this project was so interesting to me. I was able to treat these songs as if they’d not been written yet, and I could use the creation of these new arrangements to give them alternate lives. But like I mentioned earlier, it was daunting in a way that was totally different to anything else I’d ever done before because we were fully committed to it being “live”. Everything was done in a single take, there were no layered vocals or overdubs or anything, the concept was carried through to the fullest extent so that the end result would feel as authentic as possible.
Are there moments of the album itself or its creation process that you treasure the most?
The fact that I was able to get Jolie back to be a member of the “touring band” was something I’ll always treasure. I had every musician that played on the Innovations record return to serve as the band for Indelible Sundries, but of course I wasn’t certain I’d be able to get to work with Jolie Holland again. She’s such an incredible artist and honestly one of the few musicians that I think possesses genuine “genius”. She was a hero of mine from way back in my early teens and to hear that voice singing on songs that I’ve written will never cease to blow my mind. She also just so happens to be a wonderful person and collaborator. So to have her on this record is such a gift. But honestly the entirety of this creative process has been something I’m extremely grateful for. I was able to sort of reexamine my life through these songs. Actually, one of the linchpins for this project was William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The liner notes begin with a quote from the Proverbs of Hell and it was sort of the basis for how the record all came together; “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”, which he explains as, “You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.” That’s how I felt about what these songs represented and ultimately what my life has been, a testing of the waters both emotionally and physically as an attempt to find some sort of truth. Basically it’s about a rebellion against the idea that good is superior to evil. Heaven and hell are both equally valid and neither can exist without the other. Which extends to all concepts; body and soul, obedience and rebellion, chaos and order, falsehood and truth. I liked that idea that life is more like a giant pulsing mass of energy which actually needs the darker impulses we’ve deemed as negative or evil to flourish. There’s also another proverb Blake wrote which is “Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.” And that spoke to me on a deep level as well. This concept that joy initiates or plants the seeds of change, while sorrow brings about the actualization of that change. So I think having that understanding and perspective was how I was able to access the darker songs I’d written in my youth and incorporate them into the story of my life as a whole. Ultimately both joy and sorrow are essential for creativity and transformation to take place.
If Eric Terino was to forever remain in history with his music, which song/songs would you choose to be remembered by?
Oh man, that’s tough. I think that probably changes from day to day. But maybe I already subconsciously answered that question by making this record, by choosing these songs to tell the story of my life. I guess what I really feel is that any song of mine that can have any sort of emotional connection with someone is a song worth being remembered by. As an artist you give the work over to something outside of yourself when you complete it, it’s no longer yours in a sense. You just have to hope that someone finds it out there and sees something in what you’ve done that they feel impacted by. I’d like to think that some shred of the work I’ve done in my life will resonate someday with someone somewhere, and just the prospect of that gives me peace and makes it all worth doing.
Enjoy Eric Terino right here:
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