Listen to Volcanologie here.
Following the death of Geneviève Castrée on July 9th from inoperable pancreatic cancer, I should have made this or any one of her gut wrenching and astounding musically emotional outbursts our Song of the Week, but I just didn’t feel that I should add my voice to the many who knew Geneviève personally, or her husband Phil Elverum, or their young daughter. Though I personally know many from that community, I do not know Phil, and did not know Geneviève, I figured that in the week following her passing I should leave the chants up to her friends, colleagues, and family who have something of genuine substance to share and grieve.
I feel considerable shame that it isn’t until now after her passing that I am taking a mesmerizing and disjointed swan dive into her work as a musician, writer, and artist. Known best for her musical projects Woelv and later Ô Paon and dozens of other appearances, tangents, and collaborations with some of the greatest indie musicians around. Though I feel like an intruder at this point, like buying every Nirvana Album in May of 1994, I can say that the music of Geneviève has always captured my attention, and though I always intended to write something, I knew I needed to do considerable research before I actually did. Her music has a darkness to it, like a dark wood nymph or something, with her earlier recordings namely Woelv being for folksy and lofi, while later recordings namely Ô Paon has a more full and soundscape quality with plenty of darkness woven in.
For others Geneviève’s artwork and writing might be just as notable if not more so than her music, mainly her graphic novel Susceptible which is beautiful, haunting, and surprisingly blunt. Her particular art style is as influential as her music, and you can see the wake of her genius all over the place.
To boil her career down to a single song that is represented in our lame Song of the Week is an insult, but really it’s all I got and potentially the best way I have to remember this beautiful artist and being. I chose the song Volcanologie which isn’t a Woelv or even an Ô Paon song, it’s from a 2005 7″ collaboration between Geneviève and another Anacortes artist Karl Blau. The song was recorded in the little shed/garage/studio behind Karl’s house, which also happens to be where I first met Karl and it was there that I saw this wall of recordings, finished and unfinished, released and unreleased, and kind of magically I saw this album just poking out there. It seems weird to choose this song because it is more of a collaboration than some of her other work, which you’re being deprived of if you haven’t gone to check out here, or here, or here. While I love Karl’s vocals on this song as well as the astonishing instrumentation, it’s Geneviève’s vocals that are quite literally out of this world. Those vocals start off with a simple beauty but as the song swells and her voice grows they reach a devastating emotional eruption (pun intended). It is an exceptionally rare person who can get their voice to inhabit the place that her’s does on this song, this kind of straddling of the physical and metaphysical realms.
The world has lost a lot of really amazing artists this year but the passing of Geneviève is on a whole other level. Not only the loss of an amazing artist, but primarily the loss of a wife, and most devastatingly the loss of a mother, I can offer no words that give comfort to losses like that, and worst of all they only stir up my own fears as a husband and father. I hate that we’ve lost someone who’s art was so impactful and demanding, I hate that I waited to long to dig into Geneviève’s work, I hate that I’ve written this article at all that somehow feels like I’m taking advantage of her passing while simultaneously projecting my own fears onto the loss of others. I hate that there is a husband grieving his wife, and a daughter who will likely have to learn of her mother from others.
It wasn’t that long before Geneviève’s passing that Phil Elverum created a Gofundme page to help with the family’s mounting medical bills, please go and contribute, but also go buy all of Geneviève’s work, you won’t be disappointed by any of it, in fact go by Phil’s work as well, his art his music (Mount Eerie, Microphones etc.) Get your hands on anything you can because it is all incredible.
Also check out this haunting and amazing performance from What-the-heck-fest, it also has a pretty funny story that you can read here.
The post SOTW: Geneviève Castrée ~ VOLCANOLOGIE appeared first on secretly important.
