Sound

INTERVIEW: Lady Lazarus

Tom Jenkins | Monday 20 May, 2013 12:00

We’ve been eulogising about LA-based singer-songwriter Melissa Ann Sweat, aka Lady Lazarus, ever since we first heard her stunningly minimal and evocative second album All My Love In Half Light, a collection of nine reverb-drenched, mainly piano-based songs of incredible strength, beauty and longing, released in February and available digitally here. Check out the video for the magical, wintery album-closer Gleam, here.

We caught up with Sweat to talk Plath, divine inspiration and your average Friday night on the California coast.

Hi Lady Lazarus, please introduce yourself.

Hello! I’m Melissa. I started my solo music project Lady Lazarus in 2008, and it’s been a fun/wild/unexpected ride. Right now I’m listening to Melody’s Echo Chamber (one of my favourite newish albums/bands), and I’m about to go read a book by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on the beach and watch the sunset. How romantic! Not a bad way to start a Friday night.

You take your moniker from a Sylvia Plath poem. What was it about that poem that resonated with you?

There are a good many women, and men also, to be sure, who relate to Sylvia Plath – I’m not really in the cult, though I do respect and relate to her. I’ve had similarly strong/volatile emotions and some similarities in point of view and biography. In part, I took the name because it seemed both powerful and feminine to me, which are aspects I feel my project has. I also struggled quite a bit growing up, got into some difficult things, and I related to the rising/falling nature of the character in the poem. I see the name more in a positive light, however, and focus more on the rising back up again. I just want to keep healing and becoming a happier, healthier, more loving person in life, ya know? To call myself Lady Lazarus is sort of a kick in the pants, like, ‘keep going, silly! You can do it. Instead of going so far back down, let’s keep going up.’

There are definite religious and/or spiritual undertones to your music – Nazarite Oath from Mantic, Lapsarian, the name of course. Where does this come from? Did you have a particularly religious/spiritual upbringing?

I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school (Kindergarten to 12th grade, then 1 year at a Jesuit university); I chose not to be confirmed around age 15 or 16, and have considered myself more of a spiritual person for quite some time. Sometimes lines and themes in the Bible as a work of literature inspire me, and that has come out in a few songs. Mostly I think my songs intend a spiritual, existential, humanistic bent.

You grew up in California and are currently living in LA. However your music, especially on All My Love in Half Light, brings to mind somewhat chillier landscapes – snowy plains at dusk perhaps. To what extent is your music inspired by the ‘outer’ – your immediate environment – and by the ‘inner’?

It’s a twilight album, definitely, and it does get a bit wintry in some places whilst in others, it’s a bit warmer. Although actual and spiritual travelling, journeying, adventuring are themes that come up a lot in my songs, I’m probably more inspired by emotional landscapes. Everything is filtered through the self, my impressions, and my story. The outer travelling brings experience, knowledge, and inner revelations, but solitude and being still are just as important. I’m a big fan of Rainer Maria Rilke and Joseph Campbell in that way – the inner journey moves outward, the outward journey moves inward.

You recently played some shows with Youth Lagoon (in LA and San Diego). You have contrasting styles musically. How did it go?

Youth Lagoon/Trevor (Powers) and his awesome band were so fun to play a couple of nights with. What an experience! I think we come from a similar emotional/sometimes child-like place, and even some of Youth Lagoon’s repetition and melodies in his keyboard-based songs hit a common note with mine. Of course though, my music is rather quiet, intimate, and sparse, which is a contrast, but those who were there to hear what I’m doing were very responsive – and then we all rocked out to Youth Lagoon, and it was rad.

You’ve recorded a track for the Jason Molina tribute album Weary Engine Blues. What did Molina mean to you?

I relate to Molina’s struggles, and admire him greatly as a songwriter. Hold On, Magnolia is one of the most perfect songs ever written, I believe, and it’s one of those that you think was written just for you to describe how you’re feeling. It was quite emotionally challenging to cover Don’t It Look Like Rain – it even made me a little depressed after, but I felt kind of connected to him in a way after that. It makes me sad when I think about musicians and artists who have suffered and passed on too early, and I relate to them in a very personal way. It does motivate me though to want to take good care of myself and keep making music, because when that light goes out, it’s gone forever.

Any plans to play some shows outside of the US?

Oh, I hope so! That would be a dream, and I’m definitely working to make that happen. More music (and travelling) to come, for sure.

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