White Hinterland

Having recorded her debut album, Wind-Up Canary, under her own name in 2006, Massachusetts-based singer and multi-instrumentalist Casey Dienel has adopted the moniker White Hinterland for her second, the densely lovely, Phylactery Factory. Prior to the album’s release last week, Casey, who turned 22 yesterday (March 10), kindly took our call to discuss name changes, vivid dreams and zucchini bread.

When you adopted the White Hinterland name, you said that one Casey was still here while the other had gone somewhere else. Is this purposefully mysterious?

“I don’t know about purposefully. I think I’m naturally given to be a little less obvious. I appreciate mystery in things so it felt fitting. There’s only one way to say I’m doing something different.”

Is the difference then the greater band element?

“I needed a heading for everything, I play music with so many different people that I don’t feel it’s necessarily all mine and wanted to spread the ownership a little bit. I write all the music and lyrics and arrangement but there’s something alchemic that happens when you’re in a room trashing out things with a group of people and I felt it would be more truthful to the musicians. I don’t feel so precious about it.”

Do you feel yourself drawn to playing with a great variety of people
“I love any kind of creative exchange – there are times when I’m playing duo or times when I’ve had 8 people playing as live Hinterland. I’ve been very lucky, I’m not a very outgoing person, I’m shy and I think music has always been helpful for bringing wonderful people to me. I don’t really seek them out so much."

The album was recorded in Portland, Oregon. As an outsider, it seems like an amazing place to make music. Is this the case?

“It’s really beautiful; I think someday I’d like to live there. There’s a very big lack of pretension with the music being made there. People are very eclectic; there are a lot of multi-taskers. The weather is very cloudy and cosy and it gets very rainy and dreary in the winter so a lot of people get busy when the bad season comes in.

It feels like a seamless record from start to finish, was it as easy or seamless to make?

"I’ve never had so much fun recording before. The first record was really hard for me because I didn’t intend to make a record, I just fell into recording. But with this record, I wrote a six-page essay of what it would sound like and how each song would be arranged so I was very specific so in that sense it was easy to record.”

“(Producer) Adam (Selzer) is so amazing to work with, he’s a great foil. We both have so many ideas and with idea people, a lot of people will say just pick one and let’s do it but Adam is really good at saying let’s try everything. So we would just throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what came up and I think that’s how we came up with a lot of the textual stuff on the record.

Did everything come out as was written in the manifesto?

“I was specific, but as specific as I am, first and foremost I’m very flexible and you kind of have to be when you’re working with a small budget. You can’t really labour over perfection, but being a disciplined person means just being prepared for the spontaneous things that happen and learning to love them. You make rules in order for there to be a good reason to beak them.”

The album title mentions phylactery which are Judaic boxes containing biblical scrolls...I’m obviously being educated by the day here... is this a theme throughout the record?

“I have a really active and vivid dream life and often I’ll have dreams about little words or the way a word sounds… It sounds so crazy. But I had dreams about the sound ph for about four days while we were recording and it was driving me crazy. I keep a little dream journal and one morning I woke up and phylactery, this word I’d never heard before, was in my head so I ran to get a dictionary and found out it meant the emulate you wear to remind you of god but the other meaning for it was basically a reminder.

"I loved that idea because in each of the songs there are so many reminders or objects that are being personified in a significant way. All the songs in some way are addressing that, like in Napoleon in Waterloo, Napoleon would be the phylactery in that song.”

It trips quite nicely off the tongue as well.

“It’s memorable. I didn’t want a title that’s already taken. I really hate the idea of using imagery that has already been visited. When you’re given the chance, it’s more special to make it unique. I wanted both the band name and album not to have any immediate visual association. I love the feeling when you first hear a word you’ve never heard. It’s like when you’re a kid and you taste something for the first time – it feels familiar and foreign at the same time. There’s a word for it in German but I can’t think of it right now.”

You have said that autobiographical songs are about the last stop. Do you tend to then focus more lyrical snapshots of particular people, places?

“No, I don’t think I write about just me or just other people. I think when I’m writing about one thing, I’m writing about several things at once. I wouldn’t say any of my songs are autobiographical but I kind of feel like saying that makes it sound like none of my songs are personal and they’re very personal.

“I used to be more terrified about writing about myself but you make a lot of sacrifices to be a musician. You’re away from home a lot, away from your kitchen and your cat and your hometown so I think if you’re going to do it, it’s going to have to be worth it. Being clever, cute and funny is not worth if for me – it’s not getting at something that’s gnawing at me.”

Songs like ‘Napoleon at Waterloo’ and ‘Lindbergh’s Metal Birds’ concern people being preyed upon; is this one of those gnawing issues?

There’s a lot of imagery where a person or a town is preying on someone. I love leaving that complexity wide open and not feeling I have to tie it up with a pretty bow. Some people say it’s very dark and I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily light nor dark, I think you have to have a presence of both in order for there to be that levelling agent that makes something special and magical.

Lots of the great Joni Mitchell albums do that.

“Yeah, she’s really great at that and Alice Coltrane has a lot of those elements in her music – there’s a lot of balance between feminine and masculine motifs.”

They are two musicians you’ve been compared to a lot. Are they comparisons you enjoy?

“I love whenever someone picks up on something that I love. I love Joni Mitchell and Vince Guaraldi and Alice Coltrane and Dollar Brand. I don’t love when the comparisons are lazy or unimaginative and usually their based on instrumentation or gender. That puts me asleep. I think Joni Mitchell and Alica Coltraine’s music is really beautiful so if people think my music is even a quarter as beautiful, I’d be incredibly honoured.
Is the plan just tour, tour, tour, and is there a chance we’ll see you in Europe?

“I hope so, everyone keeps asking. It’s just so crazy right now. I work at a bakery and have been working there for the past year and now getting back into Casey the musician mode, it’s always kind of trippy for me. Last time I was touring all the big bands were different so it’s like when you go back to college, and say look at all the haircuts people have.

“Someone was asking me was I going to ‘South by’ and I didn’t know what they were talking about, even though I am going I didn’t understand the abbreviations. It’s just not my realm; at home I’m horribly mundane and boring. I think it makes me sane. It’s too demanding to be any other way.”

Hopefully we’ll see you soon then, thanks for your time.

“Thanks for calling. I think I’m going to bake some zucchini bread and watch Indiana Jones, Temple of Doom now...”