Baltimore’s Lower Dens released its third album in March. The band’s leader, Jana Hunter, has been a fixture in the independent music community for years, first attracting attention on the Devendra Banhart-curated compilation “Golden Apples of the Sun,” and performing with a vast number of bands, including Phosphorescent and Cocorosie. When she debuted Lower Dens in 2010, the band’s new wave/post-punk sound was a departure from her rootsy origins. The band is dynamic, eerie, moving, and powerful.
Lower Dens will be at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth with openers Gem Club on Monday, June 22. The Sound recently spoke to Hunter about collaboration, being in other bands, and how Baltimore has shaped the band’s style.
To read an interview with Gem Club’s Christopher Barnes, click here.
A papercut illustration of Gem Clubs’ Christopher Barnes and Lower Dens’ Jana Hunter. (by Dylan Metrano)
Lower Dens’ sound is in sharp contrast to your earlier solo music. How different is the process of working on music with the band?
I started the band because I wanted to write in the context of community for the purpose of community. I’d written songs that I never intended to share, or that certainly weren’t written with an intention to share, and it was therefore difficult as a solo artist to ever feel really comfortable sharing them. I needed other people to draw me out of myself, and to be able to hear voices (both physical voices and creative perspectives) other than my own to be able to make songs that I was certain would at least have the generosity (inherent in collaboration) that is necessary to making an object presentable to a community. A thing can be made to be shared if it’s created in isolation, but that’s a much more rare talent than those I possess.
What is your creative process like?
It changes for whatever reason. This time, the band started writing together and probably would’ve finished that way but for the early departure of one of our members. The rest of us took that hard and retreated to separate corners. I finished a lot of what we’d started, got it close, wrote vocals and lyrics, and then took it back to the band in the first phases of production so that we could cement the arrangements and the final aesthetic layers together.
Looking back at “Golden Apples of the Sun,” just about every artist on there is still vital or well-established. It’s a pretty great snapshot of a moment. How did it feel to be a part of that when it came out, and how do you look back at it now?
I was confused by it. On the one hand, I was so impressed with those musicians and so enamored of their work that I couldn’t have been happier to be included with them. I was and am very grateful to Devendra. On the other, I didn’t consider myself to be in any kind of folk tradition, so I didn’t know what I was doing there. Looking back, you know, what a time. And I miss Jack Rose.
How has Baltimore shaped Lower Dens? Do you feel like a part of a community there
Baltimore is what inspired me to look to community for growth. It was a little different when I got here, a little smaller, weirder, more tightly knit. Our band wouldn’t exist without Baltimore, both because of that community and because Baltimore is a poor, oppressed town in which artists could get away with barely paying anything for rent.
Lower Dens
Is there anything you want people to know about the recent events there?
I do wish there was a lot that people knew about what happened here, but I think it’s hard to understand it if you’re not there to see it. I would recommend reading pieces and first-hand accounts by the black people that grew up here in poverty and under oppression. I would recommend never trusting mainstream media not to sell you the most marketable version of events.
You spent years touring and collaborating with a variety of bands, including Castanets, Phosphorescent, and Cocorosie. Do you miss being in someone else’s band? What did you learn from those experiences?
I really love being in my band right now. It doesn’t leave me lacking anything. There are a few people locally that I hope to collaborate with, but, for the most part, I am not keen on dividing my focus.
Outside of music, what inspires you?
People who work for the truth, people whose goals have them aiming at invisible targets, people who know themselves, people.
Whose is your favorite voice?
Right now, it’s Waheeda Massey’s on Archie Shepp’s “Quiet Dawn.”
What can we expect in the future from Lower Dens?
I don’t know. It’s the best.
Lower Dens performs Monday, June 22 at 8 p.m. at 3S Artspace, 319 Vaughan St., Portsmouth. Gem Club opens. Tickets are $20, available at 3sarts.org.
Top of page: Jana Hunter of Lower Dens. (photo by Frank Hamilton)