“Forever, I’ve Been Being Born” is Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter’s first new album since 2011’s “Marble Son“, and the band’s fifth album since 2002. It is a suite of masterful, emotive songs from an open heart, dwelling in a brightness yet deep in the ethereal and melancholic, steeped in themes of magical thinking, emotional dislocation, death and transformation.
In the making for 10 years, the album centres around the power of Jesse’s transcendent voice, which has never been more beautiful, evocative, and hauntingly intimate. Guitarist Phil Wandscher’s playing masterfully frames these songs with classic and fractured tones, a duet of vulnerability and strength frequently on the edge. The album also features exquisite contributions from Marissa Nadler.
“This album is our attempt to create elegant folk and sometimes ragged, cosmic, heart rendered songs full of eulogies and laments,” says Sykes. “Our sound is still familiar enough, but unrecognisable at times — we’ve gotten older and wearier, the music more fragile…
“When we started recording this album, I remember saying, ‘Play the songs as if the edge of a butterfly wing was brushing against your cheek in the dark while you’re holding a small child.’ I wanted to connote tenderness and a state of grace in the wake of resolution — paying homage to the creeping knowledge of an emerging, menacing undertone forming in our collective psyche. In hindsight, the delay in releasing this record has been a bit of a blessing, as the lyrics seem more poignant now, transcending our own internal voices and psyches. As the world shares its collective crisis, so we too, share our songs.”
With “Forever, I’ve Been Being Born”, Sykes and co. have crafted a work which feels “very much like a eulogy” — a collection of tracks which see her exploring the idea of mortality with a calm acceptance. While Sykes’ voice has already acted as a guiding light through dark times for others, for Jesse herself, that presence is felt in the form of a chaperone on this record. More specifically, Jesse’s childhood babysitter inspired a motif on the record, “She truly was the person who taught me love,” muses Jesse, “When I think of the moment of death, I often think that it would just be going to her.”
Recording a new album was delayed for years, in the wake of two band members unexpectedly leaving after “Marble Son”. “Losing our rhythm section was heartbreaking,” she reflects. “ It sounds cliche, but we had to grieve that loss, and in doing so, we had to separate ourselves from making music for a while, because dare I say, music was painful at the time. It reminded us of what we’d lost. Bands are like family and I’d lost my family. So yes, I had to give up music in order to fall in love with music again.”
The album title, “Forever I’ve Been Being Born“, hints towards this sense of cyclical surrender — “I’ve felt I’m constantly being born and constantly having to die. Or constantly dying in order to be reborn.” We live in a time of collective mourning, and to Jesse, “the lyrics make more sense now than when I was writing them. I think there was some kind of premonition going on… juxtaposed to what’s happening in the country, the emotional climate — this music speaks to the times we are living through.”
The emotional feeling of the record can be summed up in a single line from the title track — “Eternities, they will crumble.” A quiet sense of acceptance runs through the record like a stream meandering towards the sea. Listen in the dark.”
The Fat Angel Sings 
