The last time we wrote about Philadelphia‘s Michael Cormier, we reviewed two albums that introduced the solo work of an artist also known for his role in Friendship and Hour (as well as one of the people behind the excellent Dear Life Records). The albums were thematically quite different, one a nostalgic exploration of the past and the other a document of love in the contemporary capitalist grind, but both possessed the same bittersweet atmosphere and a dedication to finding hope and meaning in life’s small details. “The records perform inverse roles toward the same end,” we wrote in our review. “Days Like Pearls mourning and celebrating the loss of the super-sensory meaning of childhood, and M-F seeking to re-engineer such an existence within the present day.”
Now Michael Cormier is back with a brand new album, More Light!!, a co-release between Dear Life Records and Oof Records which explores similar ideas with a newfound creative assurance and, yes, brightness. For while anxiety and existential woe make up much of the record’s raw material, in Cormier’s hands it is illuminated from within, highlighting small sparks of joy and wonder in even the most distressing circumstances.
Michael was kind enough to answer some questions about the record. Read on for more in-depth insight into psychedelic insomnia, the relationship between fear and beauty, and that striking cover art.
Hi Michael, thanks for speaking with us. How does it feel to be putting another record into the world?
I feel a mix of emotions. I really love making albums, but the release cycle leaves me feeling pretty gutted. This campaign has been particularly drawn out. The record was totally wrapped back in October of 2020, announced six months later in April of 2021 and is now being heard in its entirety in June. Running a label, I recognize all the moving parts that go into releasing an album, but as an artist it can get to be tiresome. After this process, I am excited to work on some improv projects that can be shared more immediately with a little less (self-imposed) pressure. That’s what I say now, but records always have a way of sneaking up on me.
In a conversation with Wendy Eisenberg, you talked about having a “fermentation period” when writing, with sizeable periods of time between the music, the lyrics, the demos, but also how you maintain a degree of improvisation too. I’m fascinated by the interplay between immediacy and distance within this practice. Does the fermentation part allow for more freedom, a truer spontaneity in knowledge you’re not deciding there and then this is the track?
This is interesting to try to think about because I never consciously decided to work like this. Musical ideas come to me very fast, so I am often sitting on multiple records worth of “song bones,” which are just the contours of what could eventually be songs with lyrics or stand-alone instrumental pieces. These accumulate for some time then eventually I start demoing them. I improvise over the demos which can lead to final arrangement ideas or melodies that are later turned into the lead vocal melodies. By the time I am working on a final recording, I know the song inside and out, which I think allows for me to expound on ideas, throw some out, and follow whatever impulses arise during the session. I know none of it is fixed, because once I take a song to a band to perform live, I know it will change again and sound nothing like the recording.
I actually just played on a new record of Wendy’s, and working with them rewrote the script for me on how to approach recording. I had listened to their demos extensively, but I wasn’t even sure I was going to be playing on the music at all. I showed up as a supportive friend and they said “okay wanna lay down some drums?” It felt very much like a jazz session, with Wendy as the bandleader and me responding to the material in real time while the “tape” rolled. I hope to incorporate this sort of approach in my future work, whether it’s me playing along with myself or with fellow collaborators.
From the very first line (“I twitch before I sleep…”), there’s an anxiety that’s woven through the record, something that sits just beneath the gentle tones and lyricism. Did you set out to write something darker than your previous work? Or is it a product of these strange times we’re living through?
I am fascinated by how fear and beauty interact. My anxiety softens me in a way that allows me to feel more receptive to the transcendent, which can be powerful medicine to ward off the worst fears. Aesthetically, I am never looking for something to be 100% beautiful or 100% gruesome. I am way more interested in how darkness and light exist simultaneously in the same space. I wrote a lot about bars on this record because they feel like the perfect archetypal setting for the comingling of darkness and light. Dim yet iridescent. Solipsistic yet communal.
My fascination with these sorts of oppositions seems born out of a year that kept most of us in our homes, glued to our screens for reminders of human connection. This record doesn’t feel exceptionally darker than my other records though. Days Like Pearls is a lamentation that my childhood only exists in memories I am steadily losing access to. And M-F wrestles with how to give yourself wholly to a partner while working a shitty job makes such generosity feel impossible. The blending of melancholy with jubilation has become pretty central to my artistic output.
In contrast, the title More Light!! gives a very different impression, and the title track in particular focuses more on small pools of light that pop up in a sea of darkness. Could you expand a little on this relationship between light and dark?
I inadvertently alluded to this above, but ya this is my bread and butter! ‘Degradation’ and ‘Empty Mugs’ are both insomnia songs. Having bouts of insomnia felt pretty psychedelic, turning my house into a fucked-up hall of mirrors. Everything looked distorted and gross, exacerbated by the feeling that something was horribly wrong. But at the same time, it allowed me to notice things I’d never really paid attention to. How our neighbors had a chandelier in their dining room that was regularly left on throughout the night. The harsh floodlight our landlord put up on the corner of the house that cast everything in an unsettling pale blue.
Thinking about this, I am reminded how often lights cutting through darkness can be more unsettling than the darkness itself. I think that comes across on the record too, that the metaphor of darkness and light works both ways. There can be comfort in total darkness as there can be comfort in total light, and both can be obscured, disfigured, and manipulated. Songs like ‘Degradation’ and ‘Empty Mugs’, which take place at night, feel the most hopeful, whereas bright sunny songs like ‘Buggin’’ and ‘Yellow Sadness’ feel the creepiest to me.
On a related note, I have to ask about the cover art – who painted it and how much input did you have into the concept?
The cover was painted by Philadelphia-based horror artist Hayden Hall. His work adorns countless posters for VHS Film Festivals and album covers for metal records. I know he was inspired at an early age by the cover of Holy Diver by Dio. I had been a fan of his work for a while and knew I wanted the album cover to look like horror art, which often depicts its macabre subjects in excruciating detail.
I came to Hayden with a rough idea that fused the basic composition of the cover of Tom Waits’ Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, & Bastards with imagery inspired by the Northern Lights episode of the show Northern Exposure, a show I cherish deeply. In that episode, set in the darkness of the middle of an Alaskan winter, town DJ/local philosopher Chris steals light sources from people’s homes and workplaces. At the end of the episode, it’s revealed that Chris was constructing a massive art installation on Main St, a monolithic wall of lights. I sent Hayden a clip of the final scene of the episode where the piece is unveiled and asked him to riff on that for the cover with me in the foreground. His flourishes and style were exactly what I was hoping for. Follow Hayden on Instagram @sick_slice.
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=130761738 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=3949887425]
Although it’s a “solo” album, you had a lot of people contribute and collaborate. How did those connections come about, and was it difficult given the pandemic? What does this kind of collaboration bring to the record?
Honestly it was probably made easier due to the pandemic, because we were all stuck in our houses with not that much to do. Everyone who contributed did so remotely, including folks who I definitely couldn’t have had on the record because they don’t live anywhere near Philly. I really tried to leave a lot more open space than I usually do for the contributions of others. Most of the songs started as guitar, drums, and vocals, then I’d send them over to producer Lucas Knapp who immediately elevated the songs with his additions. I’d sprinkle some more ideas in after that, but each song seemed to demand the work of specific artists I love and trust. The collaborations felt really natural, and took very little management. Most everyone sent in parts that required very few if any notes.
You’re quoted as saying the record is ultimately “about treating our own perceptions as an artistic pursuit,” and I think the idea captures something at the heart of your music. A vulnerability that allows a sense of wonder. Annie Hart spoke of “play in the childish sense” when recording her latest record, and it got thinking of your work too. Childlike in the best possible sense. As open to joy as pain.
Annie’s record is super inspiring to me. We played a show together back in February of 2020, and I was instantly drawn to her work and personality. She exudes so much joy and kindness. She had talked to me later about starting work on instrumental synthesizer music. When the finished record came out, I couldn’t help but notice how teeming with life that music felt. That’s always the goal, to make music that is the embodiment of life the way we would like to live it. Annie was massively successful in that pursuit, and I feel like I am getting a little closer to that with every new project. It’s heartening to know that a childlike sense of wonder is intelligibly communicated on a record that explores my pervasive fear of aging and death.
More Light!! is out now on Dear Life Records and Oof Records. Get it on LP, CD, cassette or digital from the Michael Cormier Bandcamp page.
Photo by Meghan O’Leary, artwork by Hayden Hall