ok1990For about six months after my ill-advised and short-lived marriage, I locked myself away in a cave and proceeded to go temporarily insane.

My hermitage was a converted warehouse space in the shadow of the Kingdome – vast, sterile and windowless. I rented it as a base of operations for my fledgling freelance photography business. After a manic burst in which I fitted it with a darkroom and kitchenette, I began to slip irretrievably into a deep depression. I quit my steady job. As my money began to dry up, I gave up my Capitol Hill apartment and began to sleep in a rough loft on top of the darkroom.

That’s when things began to get really bad. Except for football and baseball fans, not many people made their way to my part of Pioneer Square. I stopped separating work and life and began to do both of them badly. And I massively underestimated the importance of a window. After a long day in my cell, the walls began to creep in on me. On rainy winter days, sometimes I didn’t even leave the place. I’d pass out in my fetid makeshift bed and snap awake some time later in the pitch black without a clue whether it was night or day.

Just to get some fresh air and daylight, I used to wander under the viaduct to the waterfront and have breakfast at the OK Hotel. I didn’t have the money for this, but I was lonely and had a mild fetish for waitresses. In my escalating madness, I found their attentive kindness comforting. It didn’t occur to me at the time, that the amount of attention I got from the waitresses was directly proportional to the generosity of my previous tip.

mazzy-star_she-hangs-brightly-300x300There was one in particular – a pixie-esque Midwestern transplant (everyone in Seattle in the early 90’s was a transplant from somewhere), with short cropped dark hair and tiny features. With the genetic predisposition to compassion of a Midwesterner, she seemed to recognize my loneliness -as well as the extravagance of my tips – and would often sit down with me for a coffee when things were slow. I must have asked her out a dozen times, but it never went beyond coffee in my booth at the OK. I guess desperation just isn’t sexy.

She was enchanted with the California psychedelic dream pop duo Mazzy Star. I hadn’t heard the band, being more into the harder rocking music that was making Seattle famous at the time. But after many a long, lonely morning spent trying to remain relatively sane I began to associate Mazzy Star with my waitress crush. So, whenever I heard Hope Sandoval’s plaintive, languid vocals and Dave Roback’s fuzzy guitar lilting out of the OK Hotel, I knew she was working. And I came to love Mazzy Star, particularly their debut album “She Hangs Brightly”.

She wouldn’t go on a date with me, but she did me one better by introducing me to that album. I found some solace, some serenity, some sanity in Hope Sandoval’s lyrics. Like countless other albums before and since, “She Hangs Brightly” is all about love, particularly lost love, and the sadness. Sandoval’s lyrics, like her voice, are soft, ethereal and dreamy. There is darkness in her songs, but along with that darkness – redemption and hope. For the half a year that had passed since my break-up, I had been listening to angry music. Nine Inch Nails, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden – and thus had been angry, bitter and full of hate. That hate was the root of my madness. The more I listened to “She Hangs Brightly”, the anger started to slip away and for the first time in months, I started to see the world with a modicum of clarity.

mazzyThat bit of clarity didn’t make things better straightaway. I got out of that cave in Pioneer Square, but I still struggled – emotionally and financially – for a couple of years before fleeing Seattle with my tail between my legs. The waitress is long gone, but Mazzy Star has been with me in the 15 years since. “She Hangs Brightly” is one of those albums that I go to when the going gets rough, one that can bring me down to earth from the opening chords.

All this is prelude to the announcement that Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval has a new album coming out. Since the break-up of Mazzy Star in the late 90’s, she has  collaborated with bands like The Jesus & Mary Chain, Air, Death in Vegas, The Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack and Bert Jansch.

In 2001, she joined Colm O’Ciosoig of My Bloody Valentine to form Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions. The duo’s second LP, “Through the Devil Softly” is due from Nettwerk on September 29.

I haven’t heard the whole album, but the singles I’ve heard are excellent. They mark a progression from Mazzy Star and the 90’s, a maturity that you might expect a decade or so on. Sandoval’s lush voice is still the centerpiece, but O’Ciosoig’s instrumentation takes the music to a different place. Have a listen to “Blanchard”, with its tones of the Irish mountains in which it was recorded. If you like what you hear,  preorder “Through the Devil Softly” from Amazon.

If you’re after the older stuff, Mazzy Star’s “She Hangs Brightly” is available from Mazzy Star - She Hangs Brightly.

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Image credits:

OK Hotel 1990

She Hangs Brightly

Mazzy Star

 
icon for podpress  Mazzy Star "Halah" [3:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 
icon for podpress  Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions "Blanchard" [4:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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