An fascinating factoid about Miles Hewitt is that he studied poetry at Harvard. It was fascinating to me, anyway. I assumed that the proficient 31-year-old singer-songwriter would volunteer this in dialog, particularly since his background suggests far larger information of what good constitutes “good lyrics” than the music critic interviewing him. However “Harvard” didn’t come up in our 32-minute dialog till simply over 21 minutes in, and solely as a result of I used to be the one who introduced it up.
“You be taught to concentrate to stuff,” he mentioned throughout a Zoom name final month, after sounding barely embarrassed by my Ivy League name-dropping. “Even simply small technical issues like, what if this era is a comma? That may change all the things in a line of poetry. You don’t have intervals and commas in songwriting, however the rules apply. Like, what for those who change the phrase? What if this tune that I assumed was about “I” is definitely taking place to “you” as a substitute? It’s like the sensation of pushing on one thing and feeling the way it will push again on you, discovering worlds and worlds and worlds inside a single picture or a single phrase. Even the concept that the world is admittedly that alive, and that filled with which means, if you’re keen to go on the lookout for it and to search out what’s there.”
Based mostly on speaking to him for a half-hour, I might say the title of Hewitt’s beautiful new album out July 24 doesn’t apply to him. As a substitute, Vainglory refers to some larger sense of mankind’s misplaced confidence in his personal skill to regulate expertise — or to stop it from stripping humanity from the very issues that after outlined it. “It’s so Western colonial, so Enlightenment. It’s like Ecclesiastes — it’s vainness of vanities to imagine that individuals have some form of uncommon perspective, or rarefied energy over the universe. That’s a part of what the album title means to me,” he defined.
“It additionally has a second which means beneath, which has to do with my very own wrestle in making it, and the need to make one thing that’s actually superb, and to really feel the torturous inventive course of that may get you there.”
If you happen to can’t already inform, Hewitt is an artist curious about making use of grand themes to grandly realized music. And on Vainglory, his first album in 4 years — his 2022 debut Heartfall was a crucial hit — he achieves peak grandiosity, singing foreboding and apocalyptic songs concerning the dehumanization of contemporary life (by A.I., specifically) over spectral folk-rock that evokes the desolate, haunted landscapes depicted on the album’s cowl. A fan of prime-era English folks (Nick Drake is amongst his inspirations), Hewitt’s music achieves an analogous form of slow-building, absolutely immersive despair, together with his delicate, reedy voice — an odd however alluring synthesis of Dan Bejar and Marianne Faithfull — softly intoning over music that glides from one temper piece to the following.
The eye to element Hewitt pays to his phrases additionally applies to the music, which got here collectively over the course of a number of years after the tour cycle for Heartfall ended. His help musicians come from a who’s-who of well-regarded indie-rock acts, from Destroyer to Cass McCombs to Andy Schauf. In some instances, he labored with totally different combos of gamers to provide totally different variations of songs as Hewitt looked for what he wished, a course of that mirrored the spiritually questing of his lyrics.
“For me, what makes an album actually particular isn’t simply that it’s good or that it sounds good, but it surely has that feeling to it,” he mentioned. “It looks like one thing emotional which you could inform is coming from a specific place. And it simply took some time to search out that. It took going by a whole lot of iterations. I feel by the top of the method, among the musicians have been identical to, ‘Man, why are we doing model six when model three was simply as sturdy?’
“I feel that the album is a search. It’s each a search on the extent of the form of sociopolitical issues, technological issues we’re speaking about, but it surely’s additionally about trying to find the reality on a purely aesthetic stage as nicely.”
You talked about chasing a sure feeling with this report. What was that feeling?
Once I began writing the songs that might develop into this album — which was in 2021, 2022, and 2023 — I discovered myself writing so much from nearly like a chicken’s-eye view down on the world. It didn’t really feel like “Miles Hewitt” was the primary character or a very powerful a part of what was happening in any respect. I felt a bit shy about doing that at the beginning, as a result of it was like, “Who offers you the proper to write down on such a big scale?” However these are considerations which can be on everybody’s minds. The sensation of dwelling by possibly not the top of the world, however an finish of a world that we thought we have been dwelling in, may be very a lot within the air proper now.
Whenever you say there’s a “chicken’s eye view” in these songs, do you imply a God’s-eye view? Or is there no god in these songs?
That’s a very good query.
I really feel like there’s no god on the planet of those songs.
Dude, I really like that your second query to me on this interview is like, “Is there a God?” That’s superior.
Hey, there’s no time for small speak.
No, we’re getting proper in. I really like that. It’s trying to find one thing. It’s in search of one thing past the barbarity and materialism, I feel, of the world that we’re dwelling in proper now. So, I can’t say if it’s a God’s-eye view. It’s undoubtedly a view that feels way more essential than my private troubles or no matter, although.
One thing I’ve been pondering so much about for years now could be the stress between a worldview wherein all the things is materials, all the things is information, all the things could be measured, all the things could be quantified, and due to this fact managed and marketed. As a buddy of mine says, we’re in a very fast reframing and re-understanding of what it’s to be human. I feel that’s the query, one of many huge questions, that we’re dealing with in our time, and I feel that this report is partially about making an attempt to comply with that query, mainly. Like, who’re we? Are we information factors, or are we one thing that the quantification of our world can’t truly fairly grasp?
Is it honest to name this a tune cycle or an idea album?
I assume so, yeah. I hadn’t actually thought of it that method. I don’t know if it’s an idea album as a result of there’s no alter egos concerned.
There aren’t any characters or a plot. It’s not Tommy.
However tune cycle most likely feels proper. Albums are my favourite medium of human creativity. I’ve at all times beloved albums. Even after I was a child and I used to be simply stepping into listening to up to date music, I used to be simply instantly drawn to the mystique of constructing albums, and the way the entire is larger than the sum of its elements. I do really feel like this album is making an attempt to be that form of album, the place all of the songs are in dialogue. It’s not only a bunch of songs that occurred to be recorded across the identical time. A number of thought went into the sequencing. Even the sound of 1 tune may be a response to a different tune. There’s a striving for them to all join with one another not directly.
It sounds such as you reworked these songs fairly just a few instances.
I’m unbelievably fortunate to reside in New York and get to make music with actually among the greatest musicians on the planet. Individuals who concentrate on making data and in touring, it’s what they’ve devoted their lives to. They’re the form of musicians who, by the top of the primary time ever taking part in the tune with them, they’ve tried three issues and found out what the proper half is. There’s no self-indulgence in anybody’s taking part in. And that’s an incredible present, as a songwriter, to work with people who find themselves that pure, and dialed in about what their function is within the artistic course of.
Heartfall got here out of the pandemic. I had written a bunch of the songs beforehand, however then the pandemic occurred and I used to be compelled to decelerate and actually think about all of the songs in my thoughts. I had these actually elaborate blueprints, about every of the sounds that constituted every of the songs on Heartfall. I used to be making these temper boards nearly of like, “The drums on this tune are going to be mono, and the guitars are going to be this type of factor.” Once I was performed with it, I used to be like, “Now I do know precisely who I wish to name, and what studios to make use of. This subsequent report will value half as a lot and take half as a lot time to finish.” And naturally, it took twice as lengthy and value twice as a lot to make as the primary one. I’ve given a whole lot of thought as to why, and I feel it had so much to do with the truth that on Vainglory, I knew that there was a temper that I wished it to have and I knew what the songs have been saying, however there wasn’t actually that step of imagining all the things in cautious element first. It was way more about going into the studio and seeing what we’d get. It took some time, in some instances, to essentially really feel prefer it reached that feeling or that spirit that the music wished to have.
It’s fascinating how a lot time you spend on the music regardless of being a “lyrics-forward” artist, ostensibly, given your background.
The factor is I used to be writing songs earlier than I used to be writing poems, I feel. It was highschool, so it’s all roughly the identical time. However I received into Allen Ginsberg by way of Bob Dylan, not the opposite method round. Music simply has — what’s the phrase? — an unstoppable high quality to it. If you happen to hear a tune that strikes you, there’s nothing else in your thoughts. There’s no different feeling. If you happen to sit down on a piano, and also you simply push a key and also you hear that sound again, that’s such a visceral feeling. I feel that was the unique love for me, and writing phrases is simply one other a part of the artwork.
