About Demons:
While the untangling of duality — awe and anguish, faith and fraud, hope and
horror — is hardly a new artistic exercise, such rich questioning is rarely
attempted in the form of an entirely-accessible six song EP. Performing the
duties of both architect and builder, Zach Gehring (of beloved Virginia-based Mae acclaim) has designed an exorcism vehicle, the aptly-titled moniker Demons, and allowed often-at-odds voices the opportunity to speak. The result is Great Dismal, an oxymoronic battle of declarations, withholdings, distortion, and clarity – – a tussle of the psyche examined through opposing dynamics.
Considering the past, present, and future success of Mae (four highly-revered full length records, three EP’s, and over half a million records sold), it is fair to
question Gehring’s motives in pursuing a new project now. In his own words,
“over the years it’s just been a nagging desire. I’d dismiss it for periods of time,
but then it would come back to me. I wanted to see if I could do it. I knew I had
ideas and a desire to give some sort of voice to them, also, and most crucially,
they were not ideas that could be developed in Mae,” says Gehring. “I wanted to
do something harder, less crafted, something more abrasive. Conceptually, or
lyrically, I was more interested in problematizing myself and throwing tacks on
the road, so to speak.”
“Tacks on the road” becomes an increasingly appropriate metaphor as Great
Dismal plays out. Moments of sonic accessibility lose footing and spiral into
heavy and brooding responses with little warning, Gehring’s fragile vocals
transition into angst-ridden bellows, and words from the same speaker argue
back and forth across the tracklisting:
“Some things are better left unsaid –left wild, violent, raging, deep inside your
head” (“Lenora Slaughter”) // “I pray to God, I won’t do you no harm, and that
you find rest in my helpless thin arms” (“Quietly Waiting”)
Conceptually, “the name of the project, ‘Demons,’ comes from a Fyodor
Dostoevsky novel of the same title,” says Gehring, “although, my reason for
going with that for the name is because I feel it’s something we all have in
common. Maybe not so necessarily sinister, but this alternate, more problematic
or complicated portion of our personality — a side people don’t always like to
recognize in themselves. The title Great Dismal is taken from a local swamp in
southeast Virginia. I think it succinctly describes my worldview right now, kind of a combination of awe and anxiety. It’s both expressive and reflective.”
“The main undercurrent was just a curiosity to see if I could do this. Demons is an experiment in a true sense of the word,” say Gehring. “The music isn’t
experimental at all, but the process, me writing songs and singing, was always
understood as an experiment. There are these narratives of creativity, art, and
expression, and they are sometimes at odds with each other. I think everyone
has something they want to express, and I wanted to overcome any obstacles
that would potentially prevent me from doing so. I wanted to try to eliminate selfdoubt, fear, and any pre-conceived notions what songs should sound like and find a reason to create something new in an environment that is both over
saturated and begging for more.”
And what was that reason?
“For me,” says Gehring, “that reason was simply that I had something I needed to explore, both as it relates to my creativity and deeper anxieties that stemmed
from this abundance of opinions and seemingly sourceless, floating frustrations I constantly felt and still do.”
Upon first glance, the urgency of Great Dismal can be misunderstood as a sole
tone of disparity; however, after repeated listens, other thematic motifs become
more pronounced — threads of meaning that, in retrospect, Gehring describes as “tempered hope, humility, and critical self-awareness.” By allowing these
conflicting voices to speak, Gehring has begun to exorcise his own demons in an attempt to pave a road toward a more tangible sense of clarity, understanding, and faith — on the other side, those on the same journey will find solace in his courage to press “record” during the process.
