It’s with bated breath that Deafheaven fans have anticipated the sixth album by the band who effectively planted the blackgaze flagpole with the success of Sunbather in 2013. Since then, the San Francisco squad has challenged their audience and flirted with mainstream acceptability with the help of frontman George Clarke’s vocal range from black-metal screams to soft singing, not to mention the band’s recent tours with decidedly not-black-metal bands like Coheed and Cambria and Interpol. But have no fear, Deafheaven fans (beyond the fear you inherently crave): Lonely People with Power delivers a punch that will leave listeners reeling deliriously. The new record restores Clarke’s black-metal screeches—sometimes at their most ear-shattering yet—while also producing the punchiest hard-rock riffs proliferating the band’s arsenal.
As Clarke tells us, the album title posits that those controlling the direction our society is heading in are the very ones who lack any sense of community or personal connection to it, leaving a void they fill with, in his words, “ephemeral influences.” At the same time, the record “has to do with the way that men relate to one another and how shortcomings in, say, a father, an uncle, or a teacher’s perspective come to shape your own worldview. Overall, that’s the idea of Deafheaven: to recognize that the personal is often also the universal.”
As Clarke acknowledges, the record also deals with recovery from substance abuse (hence its 12 songs, which equate to the 12 steps that addicts turn to for guidance). “It’s funny that that’s your interpretation of the record, because that’s my interpretation,” shares the songwriter, who recently celebrated seven years of sobriety. “Much of the record is a recovery record. It deals with the hereditary aspects of alcoholism and depression. Even suicide comes up a lot throughout the record—but when we talk about it, we’re talking about a slow version of it.”
Clarke did us the honor of commenting on each one of Lonely People’s 12 songs, discussing how nervous he was to snag Interpol frontman Paul Banks for a guest appearance, what the band learned from changing its tune with Infinite Granite, and more.
1. “Incidental I”
The “Incidental” concepts in general were [Deafheaven guitarist Kerry McCoy’s] attempt to create moods in each section of the album. I really love “Incidental I” in particular, because it’s such a scene-setter and has an ominous quality. Also, it has a melodic reprisal in “Doberman,” the following track. Together, that kind of creates a big opening movement on the record. It’s a preamble of sorts. And then we're off to the races with “Doberman.”
2. “Doberman”
I really love this song. It has a lot of intensity to it. I particularly like the vocal at the end, the strain in it. It’s athletic compared to some of the other songs. With the choruses, we heightened the Emperor influence—the synth sounds call back to that. The bridge is our take on Aphex Twin—the drum effects. We don't tend to affect percussion. [Regarding the lyrics,] I’d read Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, and the idea of a cage of mirrors is interesting to me. A lot of this album deals with the idea of misinterpreted reflection and how we often self-mythologize. “Doberman" deals a lot with that.
3. “Magnolia”
The initial riff was something we played at sound checks throughout our 2023 tour. Then, as we kept playing with it, it became what it became. Often when you're in the mode of touring, your sound check on the first date takes an hour. By the tenth date, it takes 20 minutes. So you have all this extra time. We tend to use that time to jam, ’cause there's not much else to do. It’s a very “Kerry” riff—Kerry at his most succinct. It’s a refined version of what he calls “ADD riffing,” which means he can either stay on something for a long amount of time or has to switch it up constantly.
It’s also at this point on the album that we really get into the personal lyrics, even though I prefer them to be openly interpreted. It's important for people to find themselves in what's being written about and not hammer the personal aspect too much. The mention of “Sacred Heart” references Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Winona, Mississippi. It's where my uncle’s funeral was. Much of this [song] has to do with my experience at his funeral, and much of the record has to do with familial ties in Mississippi and Louisiana. Magnolia is the state flower of both States.
4. “The Garden Route”
“The Garden Route” was a lot of fun to make. People viewed Infinite Granite as a big detour. In a lot of ways, it was. But it also was this hugely important pivot to take at the time because it, more than anything, was a time to refine our songwriting. To write in a way that trimmed a bit of the excess to really understand transitions better. To not be so formulaic in our songwriting and so forth. “Garden Route” is an example of that. This song couldn’t have been done without having done Infinite prior. I'm glad we were able to take those elements from a record that seemed so alien in our catalog and apply it in respectful ways throughout this record.
5. “Heathen”
This song deals with the same sobriety themes that arise in “Doberman,” “Magnolia,” and “Marvelous Orange Tree.” The numbness motif really kind of comes up here.
6. “Amethyst”
[I put the first stanza of this song’s lyrics in quotes] because the remainder of the lyrics have a specific subject matter. We wanted the vocals up front. There was a sense of drama—of surrealism—about them that didn’t fit within the context of the original set of lyrics. “Amethyst” is the big centerpiece. It’s the big emotional core. I wanted to apply something that had that same type of heavy emotion. The first [stanza was added] thereafter. And I thought just as a way for myself even to feel more comfortable with their inclusion, I just put them in quotes.
7. "Incidental II” (feat. Boy Harsher’s Jae Matthews)
I thought a cool way to showcase our range of influences was to invite some collaborators who we really admire. So, with “Incidental II,” we got in touch with Jae. We had a really wonderful conversation, and I sent her the music. I said, “I love what you write for Boy Harsher. Here’s what our album is about. Maybe you can find something there.” And she was able to. So she wrote the part that she sings, and we had her come out to the studio. It was a really fun day. Like “Incidental I,” [this track] provides an ominous feel that then leads into “Revelator.”
8. “Revelator”
“Revelator” is all-out fun. This also features Kerry letting loose. A lot of this record was written with the show in mind. The original impetus for writing heavier songs was that as much as we enjoyed making Infinite, when it came to touring, we really missed that psychotic element. And the chaos. And when we started playing older songs…those are the sets we livened up the most. We aimed to chase that again. “Revelator” is an example of that. It’s written for the stage.
9. “Body Behavior”
A couple of the guys have listened to krautrock since they were in their teens, and with “Body Behavior,” we really tried to bring that influence in. This song in so many ways is an outlier—even within our own catalog—between the vocal delivery, the kraut verses, and even the kind of Infinite-Granite-by-way-of-In-Rainbows bridge section. We weren’t sure if it was gonna make the album. Sometimes the first thing you write is not the thing that you wanna keep around, because the period of writing feels so experimental and open-ended. But we all love this song, and within the context of the album, I think it works really well.
10. “Incidental III” (feat. Interpol’s Paul Banks)
“Incidental III” is the most purposeful “Incidental.” It connects with—it sort of is—“Winona.” There’s a seamless sequence of the two songs that we applied, and I love the way it came out. Having Paul be part of it was huge for us. I’m a huge fan, and we thought it would be a Hail Mary to get him on the album. I had a lot of nerves about it, truthfully. But he got back in a really timely manner and he sent a bunch of different versions of him speaking it casually. We took it, Kerry massaged it into the track, and that’s how it came about. I think it sets up the final quarter of the album very well. But we were able to get in touch again. He was like, “I love this, I’d love to be a part of this. I think what you guys do is really cool.” It was very easy. I sent him the music and the monologue I wrote.
11. “Winona”
Winona is the name of a town in the Mississippi Delta. Only 5,000 people live there, but my grandparents lived there for a long time. My grandmother was raised there. It’s where a lot of my family is buried. The title doesn’t necessarily relate to the lyrics. It’s more just an opportunity to apply another piece to this puzzle.
12. "The Marvelous Orange Tree”
We have this thing with ending albums with trees, I guess. The only explanation I could really offer there is that nature is here for all of us, is very synonymous with reflection, and having the opportunity to go into nature is a way to reinvigorate your creative spirit. The chaos of a city can be a little overwhelming when it comes to creating, so over time, we’ve used nature not only in our titles but in a lot of the field recordings that we apply to our albums to represent moments in which we felt a sense of peace.
