Jesse Sykes
Biography
The word 'artist' these days is used to refer to pretty much any musician, but few songwriters or performers approach their musical life with the degree of intense concern as does Jesse Sykes.
Although originally a visual artist (she holds a degree in photography from the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design), Jesse Sykes sings that "only music sets my soul free". She's always, however, brought a deep visual sense to her textually (and texturally) rich songwriting. Raised in the cold damp of upstate New York, Jesse Sykes moved to the cold damp of the Pacific Northwest and started to make music (described at one time by Sykes herself as “spooky American music”) that feels equally at home during a drive across the desert as it does next to a cozy fire in the woods.
The first two critically acclaimed albums by Jesse Sykes And The Sweet Hereafter (Reckless Burning, 2003 and Oh, My Girl, 2004, both released on Barsuk Records), are fragile, sometimes desolate landscapes, evoking images of damp fields populated with leafless trees and darkened rural roads smoldering with American folk idiom. Embraced — and sometimes frustratingly genre-labeled — by fans of so-called 'alt-country' music (encouraged in such labelling, perhaps, by Sykes' longtime collaboration with guitarist/songwriter Phil Wandscher, co-founder of seminal post-punk Americana band Whiskeytown) and increasingly by more experimental-indie listeners of Low, Bright Eyes, Palace or Smog, Sykes' work has been characterized by a compelling mixture of longing, dark depression, and hope.
After wrapping up Oh, My Girl touring in mid-2005, Sykes wasted no time in throwing herself back into songwriting, arranging, and expanding her sonic palette. Perhaps most surprising among the fruits of this work is a collaboration with respected avant-metal bands Sunn 0))) & Boris on a track on the groups' 2006 album Altar, a pigeonhole-defying move that nevertheless felt perfectly natural in the context of Sykes' sometimes mystical leanings and expansive taste. She also completed a new album with The Sweet Hereafter; produced, recorded and mixed by Tucker Martine (Decemberists, The Long Winters) and Martin Feveyear (Mark Lanegan, Kings Of Leon), with additional recording and production by Randall Dunn (Kinski, SunnO)))). This album, also released on Barsuk, is now seeing a double vinyl release on Southern Lord.
