Spirit Award Confront ‘The Fear’
Photo by Bella Petro.
In a house on San Juan Island, at the fall of dusk, Daniel Lyon saw a ghost.
DAN
I was recording on the island for ten, twelve hours a day.
I remember playing guitar
doing this part over and over
and I was exhausted.
I was completely sober.
I was with my dog and this other dog I was watching
I just see this shadow move
in front of me
and the dog watched it move
and started barking at the steps.
For the musician whose moniker has long been Spirit Award, whose most recent record is called The Fear, the story seems almost too prescient. I’ve been sold some tall tales before where it relates to the origins of music. But sinking into a plush couch in the KEXP Gathering Space, listening to Lyon recall his experiences putting together the new record, I’m struck by the casualness with which he drops the ghost story. It’s almost as if he’s a little embarrassed to recount it, or as though his sense of skepticism is still attempting to reject the fact that it actually happened.
DAN
Later I was hanging out
with a friend of the house’s owner
We were getting existential
And I was like
“I have to tell you something weird.”
And she was like
“Did you see the ghost?”
I got full-body shivers.
I talked to Jen and she said
“Yeah, I didn’t tell you, I’m so sorry.”
And she tells me all these stories
about what her little girls have seen
and about the history of the house.
Chills.
I did not sleep well
the next few nights.
I would stop recording when it got dark out.
The haunted Friday Harbor house is just one source of the sounds heard on the record, but its role in its story is crucial. Of course, not everyone believes in ghosts (I don’t, really), and some of us get judgmental about the people who do. Not even Lyon fully subscribes to the idea that what he saw that night was a specter, given that he spent the next night at the house trying to recreate what might have happened. But the encounter nevertheless affected him so deeply that he considered redoing the entire album in its wake. Dealing with the afterlife, after all, was at one point a huge part of his upbringing.
Photo by Bella Petro.
The Fear is Spirit Award’s fourth full-length since 2017’s Neverending, as well as their second distributed through iconic Seattle label Sub Pop. It’s not a concept record per se - there are songs about lust, danger, petty grievance, and holistic rebellion peppered throughout - but his alleged encounter with the afterlife is a crucial part of the equation. It’s also a thread belonging to the record’s strongest connecting line: Lyon’s confrontation of his psyche.
Lyon grew up in Bowling Green, Ohio, one of what feels like a million towns in America with absolutely nothing to do. The boredom, and the influence of his older brother John, led him to start practicing guitar as a ten-year-old, which then led to countless experiences playing in garages in bands made up of equally-bored kids. Some of Lyon’s first shows were held at his house, and at the houses of others, where fellow kids would be bribed there with slices of pizza. Countless bands later, Lyon joined Cincinnati act Pomegranates in the late 2000s and learned the mechanics of touring, playing one of KEXP’s first video-recorded live sets before even moving to the city.
DAN
We were
I believe
the first video in-studio
that KEXP ever did.
You can’t find it,
it’s not in the archives.
We brought a smoke machine
that filled the room with haze.
I don’t think
they were super thrilled with that.
In Seattle, Lyon worked service industry jobs as he broadened his network of musician friends. During his time as a kitchen manager, he forged a connection with bassist and audio engineer Chris Moore, a server at the same restaurant. The two started “nerding out” about music, and after Lyon slipped him some demos that had piqued Moore’s interest, the two decided to use up a couple of gratis days at Electrokitty Studios to attempt a full recording to tape. The session was rough, mostly because of Lyon’s inability to nail the drumbeat with only a few takes available, but the process inspired the couple to form a trio with Moore’s drummer friend, Terence Ankeny. Spirit Award would start playing shows around Seattle soon afterward.
For a few years, the trio’s combo of krautrock and noise built up enough of a buzz around the city that they eventually became mainstays of its radio stations and local publications. By the end of the decade, Ankeny’s demanding work as a lighting director, along with burnout from three years of intense touring and practicing, caused the trio to dissolve. Ever since, Spirit Award has mostly been Lyon’s project, apart from contributions from musicians local and not. (Beach House live drummer James Barone, for instance, provided drums and engineering for the band’s previous release, 2021’s Lunatic House.)
Lyon and his collaborators (among them, bassist Chris Jordan and drummer Andrew King, both in Sunny Day Real Estate’s current lineup) started recording what would become The Fear at the turn of last year during an early-winter uptick in Covid cases. The process started at Way Out Studios in Woodinville, with longtime producer Trevor Spencer (Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty, Chastity Belt) once again behind the boards. Lyon came armed with four songs, and two of them - “Guilt and Shame” and “Western Violence,” both eventual singles - would result from the session. The rest of the record would stem from a series of disparate recording and mixing sessions, from the halls of BIG BLDG to the basement of fellow Seattle band Deep Sea Diver to some casual knob-tweaking during a flight to LAX.
It can be a struggle, but
making music is this fun exploration,
this extension
of the human spirit.
It’s worth it.
Though Lunatic House was released during the height of the pandemic, The Fear is the act’s true pandemic record. Its focus on intrapersonal spelunking feels apt for songs conceived during a period of forced isolation. It’s not stylistically dissimilar from previous Spirit Award records, but the material pulls more directly from Lyon’s past than any before.
Throughout his childhood, Lyon constantly lived in close proximity to Christianity. His father, a local pastor, imbued his family with a belief in Christ and in the existence of demons from the get-go. For a time, he and his brother were only allowed to listen to Christian music. Yet as Lyon lived his teenage years and attained a little more worldliness, he started to struggle against the concepts that had once dominated his life.
DAN
I feel like it was
such a big part of me
growing up.
I didn’t completely reframe my belief set
until I moved to Seattle.
I had always doubted all of it
and was struggling in this
middle ground
where I didn’t know what to believe.
Eventually I had to completely
walk away from it.
Fittingly, the record opens with “The Shadow,” a shuddering tumult of guitar that then launches into the kind of Suicide-like jam we now associate with the band. “Guilt and Shame” kicks in directly after, and it introduces the record as an extended rumination on subconscious motivations. The song is about dealing with a lifetime of nervy self-appraisal that comes from devoting yourself to the appeasement of an invisible entity. Later, “Western Violence” documents the process of leaving that belief system behind and the hole it inevitably leaves in you, among its summoning of fathers and sons, bibles and murders, and a sense of righteousness as ignominious as it is ignorant.
Lyon’s quest in repairing that hole recently led him to regular sessions with a therapist, along with some more experimental treatments. He wrote “Pushing Forward” in anticipation of a psychedelic therapy session conducted in West Seattle; there, he would be instructed to ingest a strong dose of psilocybin, its effects augmented by Syrian rue, and navigate the thicket of his ego while blindfolded. While “Pushing Forward” merely imagines what the session might entail, the actual experience ended up immensely positive.
DAN
I laughed a bunch,
I cried.
Not even laughing or smiling,
just tears,
rivers pouring out.
Besides the outside help, part of the healing process is simply making the music. That’s been the case since Lyon left Ohio. The best way to repair having lost a guiding voice, after all, is in learning how to trust your own intuition within your sense of creativity. Sometimes that leads to guitar parts that stem from drum parts that themselves stem from outtakes. Sometimes it’s in the joy of collaboration, either with old friends or with new acquaintances. And while the songs that originate from that process have led Spirit Award back to KEXP’s studio over a decade later, the process itself is the true reward. It’s the high of connecting with people, aligning with a vibe, or feeling the energy of the crowd on stage.
DAN
It’s something I’ve always been drawn to.
It’s an extension of myself,
in a way.
When I’m not making music,
I don’t feel totally fulfilled.
It’s the creative aspect of it.
It can be a struggle, but
making music is this fun exploration,
this extension
of the human spirit.
It’s worth it.
The Fear is Out May 19th. You can catch Spirit Award at their album release show on June 10th at Neumo’s with Versing and Shimmertraps.
Photo by Bella Petro.