Skullcrusher on Leaving L.A., the Haunted Hudson, and Moving to Dirty Hit

This is a free post from Larry Fitzmaurice's Last Donut of the Night newsletter. Paid subscribers get one or two email-only Baker's Dozens every week featuring music I've been listening to and some critical observations around it.

OK! I took a brief vacation but I am back—paid subscribers, keep an eye out for a new Baker's Dozen in your inbox tomorrow. On to today's matters: I've really enjoyed Helen Ballantine's music as Skullcrusher from the beginning—her incredible song "Places/Plans" appeared on my Best Songs of 2020 list—and tomorrow she releases a bold new record, And Your Song Is Like a Circle, via the increasingly stacked home-that-the-1975-built indie powerhouse Dirty Hit. I've had Helen on my list to talk to for a minute or two, and when we got on a call earlier this summer the chat was well worth the wait. Read on:

This record obviously takes your sound in some very different directions. Talk to me about how it came together.
It's funny, because I was talking to somebody recently and they were like, "Do you feel like this is very different from what you've done?" As the artist, everything you do feels in line with everything else you've done. Maybe you're not perceiving the changes as much—which is cool, because it makes sense with the changes in my life and some really big transitional periods of growth. A lot of things have changed, but sometimes you don't perceive those differences until later and then you're like, "Oh, wow, I really did change." As I was making this record, it wasn't the intention to make something so different. I make music according to whatever's making sense right now.

When I met [producer Isaac Eiger] after moving back to New York, we just clicked so well in terms of the music we were listening to and what we were interested in. We recorded "Changes" first, and it was very similar to the way I would've done something on Quiet the Room. We were leaning into ambient and electronic references as well as super-layered vocals. We were vibing more. With certain decisions, we were like, "Let's lean into more electronic breakbeat drums, or go for a more '90s Massive Attack feeling." My life was different, I was working with someone new, and I was feeling new things. I was like, "Okay, everything's different right now. I'm just gonna lean into that as much as I can, as well as the fact that I don't know what's going on."

Talk me through some of those live changes you experienced.
I was living in L.A. for 10 years, and I really felt like that was my place—that I built my life there. COVID definitely played a big role, as I look back on it. I'm like, "Oh yeah, that rocked my life a little bit." I mean, obviously, it did for everybody. But looking back, I'm like, "Wow, that really did send off this reverberation." But I feel like my social life suffered from that, and so did my relationship at the time.

I eventually ended up leaving L.A. and came back to be with my mom for a little bit. Then my cat got really sick, and a series of other things kept me in New York. It took me years to be like, "Okay, I'm gonna live here now." I always had one foot out of the door. I was definitely dealing with some intense mental illness struggles that I've always dealt with, but they came to a more significant head in the last few years.

I was feeling like I lost a sort of family that I built in L.A.—friendships and romantic relationships ending—and I was experiencing a pretty significant period of isolation in New York, where I didn't really know anybody here and I was living alone upstate, which was a bad decision. I don't know why I went there, but I was alone for a while, which was just not good for me at the time. But maybe, also, it was good. I don't know. I feel like I let everything go a little crazy, and then the last year has been a lot of healing, which is nice. In terms of making the record, I was in a more intense spot mentally.

It's interesting, because I bring up COVID a lot to people I talk to for the newsletter. For me, and you probably feel the same, I'm just kind of like, "Yeah, I'll be thinking about this for the rest of my life, probably." I've talked to a lot of people recently who have been like, "It was actually pretty good for me, I had a good time." I'm not saying everybody has to suffer, but it is kind of refreshing to hear somebody else be like, "Yeah, no, it was bad."
It's a strange thing. Maybe the negative effects were not always perceptible on a day-to-day basis for me. I wasn't personally at risk in terms of the medical side of it. On that level, I was okay—just watching Lost or whatever, and in the moment I was like, "This is chill, I'm just watching TV and going on hikes."

But underneath that, there was something really getting messed up in terms of my art. I'm already not great at putting myself out there socially, and that really pushed me into an isolated place where I was neglecting friendships. After the fact, I realized how much damage it had done. Maybe for some people, they just felt like they were enjoying it at the time.

I personally feel like it messed everybody up quite a bit, and if you're not acknowledging it now, it'll probably come out in some other way.
I agree with that. Culturally, it definitely ignited some behaviors. Just the way that like social media feels now...something happened. A lot of things became charged, more potent and frustrated. There's some lingering repression. If we're not existing as much in these social, communal ways, there's a lot of energy that gets trapped somehow. I don't know how to explain it fully.

You mentioned how you've been going through a healing process. What has that looked like for you?
It has different layers to it. The biggest thing that has allowed me to feel the most peace and progress has been acceptance, surrender, and responsibility. It's a very universal path. When you're in your 20s, you have more ego, and it's good to figure out what you want and who you are and build that a little bit. But that will crumble at a certain point, and that can be very hard to deal with. For me, there's been a lot of letting that go a little bit more and reaching a point where you just have to surrender yourself a little bit. With "March," just going to the piano and almost melting on it—letting my situation be what it is, channeling that in the moment of writing, not fighting against it—sometimes stating it in the song feels good, somehow.

When you can accept things and not spend your energy trying to control things that you have no control over, you can focus more on the things that you feel good about. A lot of times, the solutions are so much simpler than the problems, and when you're really in a dark place you want to lift up your problems and respect them. Sometimes it's hard to say, "I just need to go for a walk every day and make a list of the things that I'm grateful for." Sometimes that feels like you're disrespecting your problems, and you're like, "No, my problems are so complicated." You have to humble yourself and be like, "I love my cat, I love my mom," and write that down. You have to do some of that work. It's a constant process. The work is never over.

Let's talk about your cat. My cat also recently got sick while my wife and I were sick. She had a minor UTI, but it feels like the end of the world when your pet gets sick.Like, I'd rather be sick than my pet. That's a very specific feeling that I think pet owners understand on an innate level.
I'd just come back to New York, and it was stressful because I was moving around a lot with my cat, and he doesn't like that, obviously. So at first I felt like, "He's stressed, he's overwhelmed." But it got to a point where I took him to the emergency vet, and they diagnosed him with FIP, which is pretty bad. Until recently, the prognosis for that was usually, "We have to put your pet down." But there was one doctor there who pulled me aside and was like, "There's a treatment that's kind of experimental, and it's also illegal. You can join this Facebook group." I was just like, "What?"

It was just the worst feeling. He's been my ultimate companion for the last few years. Having a pet, they're so innocent. Seeing a being that's just so full of purity and love get sick, it's like, "How can this be?" I went into a mode of, "Alright, I gotta do whatever I can do." It's like being in fight-or-flight, where you're running way faster than you really should be and then your muscles collapse, but you're in danger, so you have to keep going.

It was a six-month-long thing where I was like, "Oh my God, I feel like I'm gonna get in trouble for something." I don't think anyone really cares at this point, but I was buying these illegal medicines on Facebook and I'd have to meet up with them in these parking lots. It was super weird. It was medicine that you inject, so I had to learn how to do that and inject him with this medicine every day for the first three months. It was really hard. I can't even believe that it happened, in a way. I'm just like, "How did we get through that?"

But he did start to feel better from the medication, so it helped a lot. It also taught me a lot about being present, because animals are obviously very present. Once we got into this routine and he started to generally feel better from the medication, every morning I'd inject him and he'd obviously be very upset during that part—but a little while afterwards, he'd be upset in the corner for a little while before bouncing back and being happy for the rest of the day. There was something about how he was going through this really hard thing, but he's still able to enjoy the day—playing with his toys, looking at the birds, cuddling, having treats. He's always very appreciative of the things that he loves, Aand we really bonded so much in that time.

Let's talk about living upstate. You said it wasn't a great thing for your headspace, but people in NYC really romanticize going upstate in general.
I was also romanticizing it for a bit, but I also was like, "I don't know what to do at all." I had some friends up there, and I just needed to move out of my mom's house, basically. But it was wild. I was like, "What type of evil spirit energy is lurking in the land?" I was in Hudson, and I swear that there's something cursed in that place. I don't know how to explain it, but it was just evil. Maybe it was my apartment, honestly. When I was moving out of my apartment in Hudson, I found these weird markings on the floor, and I was like, "There's some Blair Witch Project stuff happening."

You're there and you're like, "There's actually a lot of stuff going on here. There's restaurants, people are walking around, there's stores and things." You think that it's maybe going to be this cute small-town community—but it's actually just people visiting from the city. In the winter, or on the weekdays, nobody's walking into those stores to buy candles. And then you realize every single one of those stores are selling candles for $100, and you're like, "Wait, these stores aren't selling anything that I need." I'd just walk around aimlessly like, "What is going on here?" Then I'd go home and just be alone, and it would be so quiet.

You moved to Dirty Hit for this record. They're becoming a label that's pretty broad in terms of the type of music that's on there. Talk to me about what the move has been like for you.
It just came down to the way I felt about the people that I was talking to. The last few years, they've been difficult for me, and I've had a lot of trouble in the past with finding people to work with who are patient with the time and pacing that I need to move at. I've often felt pushed to move at a certain pace that has not always been comfortable for me. With Dirty Hit, we started the conversation in a time where I really had to specifically be like, "Look, I don't know like how much time I'm gonna need"—and they were still really interested to work with me. Everything was out on the table with them in terms of what's going on with me, and I felt like they were really understanding and respectful of that.

They're very perceptive and passionate about what they like, and that's very appealing. Right off the bat, I was aware of that. But what really connected me was the first time I met [Dirty Hit founder Jamie Oborne] in person. Sometimes, you just really don't know what that's gonna be like with those people who work at labels—it can be hard to relate. But with him, we really related on a lot of things, and I felt really comfortable being able to talk to him. That's really what did it for me.