Old Man of the Woods is the project of Seattle-based artist, Miranda Elliott.
Those who have been a part of the Sun 13 journey since the start will remember our interview shortly after the release of Old Man of the Woods’ excellent 2021 release, Votives – a radiating interpretation of electro-pop, and with the weather brightening up this week, going back to it has been something of an unexpected soundtrack.
Old Man of the Woods followed up Votives last October with the three-track EP, Triptych I: Devolve. While it may have slipped the net at the time (yes, there’s too much out there!), in what is a seamlessly progression from Votives, it’s also been a pleasant surprise to engage with.
Ahead of Elliott’s show this weekend at Seattle’s Add-A-Ball, exclusive to Sun 13, be the first to watch the video for the EP’s second track, Ghost.
Speaking exclusively to us earlier this week, Elliott said that she planned to explore similar themes that inspired the video at an artist residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in June. There is also hope of securing several dates around Europe and the U.K. to coincide with the residency.
With respect to those themes, Elliott provides further insight, including some details on her forthcoming full-length release:
“For the past few years, I’ve been transfixed by the concept of consumption, by the state of being consumed – be it by a bacteria, a parasite, a lover, a thought, a suspicion, a fear, a desire, a vice, an obsession, an addiction… physical, emotional, spiritual… from which can we recover, and to which do we relinquish?
“Fittingly, my upcoming sophomore album, Tendrils, was written and recorded while an artist in residence at an abandoned sanitorium outside of Berlin, and explores every dark corner of that question. The first single drops April 16. But Ghost belongs to Triptych I: Devolve, an EP recently released in the liminal space between LPs, acting as the first installment in an ongoing series of sacrilegious iconographic structural remixes. The EP traces a villain’s arc from possession to obsession to dissolution, encouraging listeners to unravel in unison.
“Ghost is an ode to the intoxication of devotion. Diagnosis: consumption memoriam – to be consumed by a memory. However, don’t pity our protagonist yet, it’s no feeble condition. In its visceral potency lies the power to haunt, not simply be haunted.
“In the film, a woman has loved and lost, and having tasted such affection, can’t resist the hunger for more. Desperately, she warns her doll – the perfect, pure, frozen form of her youth – to stay inside, unafflicted, untarnished. Recounting the thorny labyrinth of attachments, her memories morph as they become stories, slithering down moonlit streets eternally searching, flashes of passion, anguish, disdain. Shot like a haphazard home video, the scene evokes an uncanny nostalgia – are we really locked out of the past, or can they hear us tapping on windows and whispering through mirrors, begging them to be better? Cackling at the absurdity of it all?
“I’d thought I wanted the video to explore haunting former lovers – that’s what I’d thought the song was about when I wrote it. I’ve since learned that it’s equally valuable, and perhaps even more effective, to haunt your former self.”
Triptych I: Devolve is out now via Totally Real Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.
