Quiet Hollers have been with me pretty much since I started Adobe & Teardrops, and it’s such a gift to see how they’ve evolved. Formed in Louisville around singer-songwriter Shadwick Wilde, their alt. country-styled debut, I Am the Morning, came in 2013, spawning a cult following via some critical praise, allowing the band to tour heavily, where changes in personnel and musical direction saw the band exploring territory beyond their beginnings.
In 2015, a birthday-cake adorned self-titled sophomore album introduced the band to a broader audience, drawing praise both for the breadth of its various influences and for Wilde’s songwriting. The album and it’s breakout single, “Mont Blanc” brought the band to Europe for the first time. Sadly, by the end of the album and tour cycle, tensions in the band led to the departure of longtime drummer, videographer, and collaborator Nick Goldring.
In 2017, Quiet Hollers signed with indie label Sonablast for their third LP, helmed by producer/drummer Dave Chale (Low Cut Connie, Wax Fang). Drawing sonic and thematic parallels between the modern day and the 1970s– exploring spirituality, agnosticism, toxic masculinity, and mental illness in another decade marred by division, corruption, and violence.
Quiet Hollers’ fourth LP, Forever Chemicals, came out last week, featuring Dave Chale on drums, with Shadwick Wilde handling most other instruments. This is the band’s first full length in over four years; a culmination of years of touring and therapy. It’s a truly gorgeous, gorgeous album, already one of my favorites of the year. Here’s what Shadwick has to say about it.
Explain the title of your album.
“Forever chemicals” is this phrase that has recently come to our collective attention. It refers to this type of compound– PFAS or Polyfluoroalkyl substances– used in countless commercial and industrial products, linked to a variety of cancers and birth defects. It doesn’t break down naturally, and so it stays in our water and air indefinitely. Traces of it can be found almost everywhere on earth, in our skin, in penguin eggs, polar bear fur– everywhere. We needn’t look hard to find ways in which humanity shows apathy toward itself, destroys itself in favor of short-term profit. That’s part of it.
In another sense, we ourselves are forever chemicals– we’re made of stardust, as Astronomer Carl Sagan liked to say. The atoms we’re made of have been on their journey since the beginning of the universe, forming and reforming, becoming us in this present moment. I think that simple fact is quite beautiful and spiritual.
Do you start off with the music or lyrics first? Why?
For me, every song is different. In the case of “Atheist’s Afterlife,” I started out with just words– no music at all. I wasn’t even sure it was a song, at first. Each piece came in its own time, thereafter… the words began to form their own melody and rhythm, which asked for chords, which then left space for counter-melody in the bass and guitar parts. What’s exciting to me about songwriting is seeing the whole picture take form as the component parts find each other. I don’t feel like I am painting the picture, so much as finding the puzzle pieces and placing them where they want to be. Sometimes, you have a melody first, and you have to figure out how to translate the story it tells into words. The real creative freedom comes when I begin to just allow the process to unfold, not force or strive… just let it happen.
What have you missed about touring?
I guess one of the main reasons I want to play live music is to connect. With other musicians, with the audience, with our fans… this music is supposed to connect us, to let us know that we are not alone, that our human experience– our suffering– is this intimately personal, but ultimately universal thing. The lonely “I” becomes “we” and suddenly we are not alone. I miss that a lot. The immediacy, the bursts of joy, the community.
What have you not missed about touring?
The summer tours, the broken air conditioner, swimming across the boiling planet’s concrete heat islands. I don’t miss being around alcohol every night. Sometimes it was easier to just give in and drown in the ocean of liquor instead of trying to swim against it. Both can be exhausting. With our shows, it’s very much hit-and-miss. Some nights we could play to a packed room of fans singing every word to our songs. Other nights we would play to a handful of people, and were lucky to be paid at all. I love touring, but lately I have enjoyed the relative simplicity of fewer moving parts. I love being at home with my partner and our child. I am happy not to leave the farm, most days.
How do you feel your coming out journey plays into your music?
This is actually the first album I’ve written since I realized I have always been bi or pansexual. That comes up in “Garden of Love.”
“I wanna be straight and true / ain’t there nothin’ I can do for your love?”
It was a long journey for me. When I was a kid, I had crushes on both girls and boys, but I faced a lot of violence and bullying because of that, and because I had a queer single mom. I guess I forced that part of me down into unconsciousness, in order just to survive growing up. I know it isn’t as easy for everyone to do that… I was lucky in that regard. My journey as an artist and a songwriter has been about finding my truest voice, and writing from that place. So naturally, love and sex are going to be a part of that, and things are going to come up from beneath the surface of that ocean of consciousness. There is real freedom and joy in truth-telling, choosing not to live in fear. I love music because it is my doorway to freedom and joy, and it feels more effortless than ever, now that I am at peace with who I am.