A Dirty Dozen with JOLIE LINDHOLM from THE DARLING FIRE – September 2022

According to a recent press release: “After enduring crushing sorrow, loss and personal grief, The Darling Fire return with their sophomore release. Distortions is a dark and pensive journey. It’s comprised of 10 tracks that encapsulate both beauty and pain, seamlessly combining elements of shoegaze, post-hardcore, and metal into a DNA-distinct blend. Ethereal, almost ghostly female vocals float above a pounding wall of sound. The end result is an album that is bleak, somber, and enchanting. Fans will find Distortions to be a significant departure from the band’s previous LP Dark Celebration. The new material is abrasive, gloomy, and brooding. There’s also a more potent metallic influence. The band felt that new, aggressive direction more accurately portrayed the sadness, rage, and pain they felt and that it balanced the hypnotizing softness of Jolie Lindholm’s vocals. The push and pull style combines the haunting nature of My Bloody Valentine as much as The Deftones. “It felt like a natural evolution for us to go in this direction — to create more movement…” says Lindholm. The vast collective experience of each member of The Darling Fire is exceptional by any standard. Its members previously played with Shai Hulud, Further Seems Forever, The Rocking Horse Winner, As Friends Rust, and Strongarm. They worked with producer Jay Maas (Defeater, Title Fight, Bane) in the studio, furthering the band’s impressive pedigree.” We get Jolie to discuss new music, influences, and more…

1. Tell us a little about your latest release. What might a fan or listener not grab the first or second time they listen through? Are there any hidden nuggets you put in the material or that only diehard fans might find?

Listeners that have been following us for a while will find DISTORTIONS is a pretty big departure from our last album, DARK CELEBRATION. We had just begun finding our sound when our first album was released in 2019, and we had more time to test our boundaries with these new songs. We layered more and included more movement in these ten compositions. There’s still darkness in the songs, and we experimented a lot more with keys, down tuning, time signatures, and heavier guitar tones. Going into recording with Jay Maas, we had a certain sound we envisioned for this album overall, and he was able to get us there. We’d been sitting with some of these songs for a couple of years now, so it’s been fun releasing them out into the wild like little children.

2. What got you into music and can you tell us about the moment you realized you wanted to be a musician?

I’ve always had music around me. My parents would listen to 70’s rock in the car, and in the house, since I was little, and I would sing along. I have a cassette tape of myself with a tiny voice that my parents recorded when I was very little, singing Hall & Oates, and telling silly jokes. Singing professionally wasn’t something I specifically set out to do though. It just kind of happened that way when I met and befriended musicians here in Florida. It became more of a side thing for me for a while after my old band, The Rocking Horse Winner, broke up, but a series of crazy events led to writing with my husband for the first time, and here we are.

3. Building on that, is there a specific song, album, performer, or live show that guided your musical taste?

That’s difficult to answer, because my taste is so varied when it comes to music. One of the albums that I played on cassette–constantly on repeat–was Siamese Dream by the Smashing Pumpkins. There are others I’d latch on to after that, but I could always play that album all the way through without skipping, and it still brings back certain memories for me. “Mayonnaise” was one of my favorite songs on the album. Something about the thick fuzzy guitars and Billy’s vocals always worked so well for me. There aren’t many albums I can listen to from beginning to end, but that one still sticks with me.

4. If you could call in any one collaborator to do a song with, who would it be, and why?

I’d love the opportunity to collaborate with Anthony Green (Saosin, Circa Survive). We were fortunate enough to do a small string of shows with his solo act recently, and it would be fun to work on something with him. I think our voices would work really well together.

5. What is your favorite activity when out of the studio and/or not on tour? What do you like to do to unwind?

Although it’s something I hadn’t done for a while, I just got back into writing fiction. When I begin working on a story, I lose all awareness of what’s going on around me and disappear into the writing. It’s been a great escape the past couple of crazy years, and I have a concept in mind for a sci-fi IP that I’m excited to get back to working on. I’m also a gamer – The Witcher 3 is my all-time favorite game, and I’m looking forward to the 4th installment. I’ve been gaming since I was a kid. Lucasarts (a video game studio offshoot of Lucasfilm) released a bunch of story-driven adventure games in the 80s, and when my parents brought home Maniac Mansion for our Commodore 64, I became obsessed and would be the first to buy each of their next releases.

6. How would you describe your music to someone who’d never listened to you before? What is the one comparison a reviewer or fan has made that made you cringe or you disagreed with?

I’d say our music is basically heavy rock, with female vocals, but not in the vein of what I call “rock goddess” style. I think our sound is subjective for the listener, but our new stuff has been compared to A Perfect Circle by a few people, or a hybrid of post-hardcore. It’s been hard for me to classify our music from the inside, but one thing we are not is emo. I’m actually looking forward to hearing interpretations of what we’re doing.

7. When your band is hanging out together, who cooks, who gets the drinks in, and who is first to crack out the acoustic guitars for a singalong?

We haven’t had much time to just hang out lately, aside from practicing, playing shows, or shooting a video more recently, but I’m definitely the one who loves to cook. When the guys come over, I’ll usually make chili or some other slow-cooked recipe. Our guitar player Mike would probably bring the beer, and we’ll usually practice, work on something new, or record something for a demo together.

8. When was the last time you were starstruck and who was it?

I try not to let myself get caught up in all that, but I had a surreal experience going to a Cyndi Lauper show with my sister in NYC in the mid-90’s. It involved attempted ticket scalping for one ticket to the sold-out show and led to us sitting in VIP with Claire Danes and her boyfriend at the time, Andrew Dorfman, who has since passed. A man in their party had offered to get us in after witnessing what happened. Sounds just as weird as it was.

9. What is the best part of being a musician? If you could no longer be a musician for whatever reason, what would be your dream job?

It’s awesome to be able to create something and send it out into the world, to see what the reaction is. There’s nothing more satisfying than watching a song come together, and remembering how it began. If I were to lose my voice, I’d dig full-time into writing, and would love to complete that sci-fi IP I started working on. Completing a concept for a film, series, or novel as a writer would be equally satisfying for me.

10. What is one question you have always wanted an interviewer to ask – and what is the answer? Conversely, what question are you tired of answering?

There aren’t any questions that I’ve been waiting to be asked, but there are plenty of things people don’t know about me. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of answering questions, although I’ve been asked to recount a lot of events surrounding my previous band from 20 years ago. Sometimes it’s hard to remember all of the details, and there are some good and bad memories from that time that tend to resurface.

11. Looking back over your career, is there a single moment or situation you feel was a misstep or you would like to have a “do over,” even if it didn’t change your current situation?

Actually, I think everything that has happened led me directly to this point, so I don’t regret anything. I do think about what the third album with our old band The Rocking Horse Winner would’ve looked like, but I don’t dwell on it. One thing I do know is that I definitely didn’t take enough time to enjoy the little moments while touring when I was younger, but if I didn’t take such a long break from being in a band full time, I don’t know if I would’ve had the itch to create The Darling Fire with my husband at this point in my life.

12. If you could magically go back in time and be a part of the recording sessions for any one record in history, which would you choose – and what does that record mean to you?

That would probably be Siamese Dream, again. I would’ve loved to be there while they were experimenting with layering guitars, using an insane amount of effects pedals, and trying to create something different from what they’d already heard. That record holds a special place for me, and probably always will. I listened to it repeatedly while I was moving from NY to FL, at a time when I was leaving the comforts of home, and entering uncharted territory. There are always these little happy accidents while recording–we’ve had them ourselves–even while laying down tracks for demos. We’ve actually used some of those little demo details in the final product over the years because we knew they couldn’t be reproduced easily. I would imagine the same happened for The Smashing Pumpkins while recording that album. There’s just something about it that’s always resonated with me, triggering strange memories from an innocent time.

THE DARLING FIRE LINKS:

FACEBOOK

TWITTER

INSTAGRAM

Category: Interviews