Deafheaven's George Clarke on Friendship, Interpol, and Feeling Free

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Alright let's get cracking—I had a friend text me about Deafheaven's Lonely People With Power on the day it came out, that's how good it is. I profiled the boys circa Ordinary Corrupt Human Love for Stereogum and it was great to hop on a call with George Clarke last month and talk about where the band finds themselves these days. Check it out:

You're on Roadrunner now. Tell me about what that means for the band as far as business stuff is concerned.
For our various record contracts, we've always kept short-term deals. The freedom to do so relieves a sense of pressure that we can sometimes feel. Infinite Granite was the only record that we were obliged to do with Sargent House. We had a great time, and I'm very proud of that album, but we saw an opportunity to do something different—to work with new people—and I think that revitalized us in a lot of ways. Having that new energy around us—people that were very excited about and wanted to help the band—was invigorating when it came to writing. We wanted to maybe prove a little something to ourselves and to them. We were given a lot of support and freedom to take this album in any direction that we saw fit.

This is the first time that we've worked with a major, and I grew up with a lot of warnings around the major label system—how they exploit and cheat you, or they want creative control. But I found that the experience mirrors [working with] indies way more than I could've imagined. At its essence, we're working with a really small group of people who are dedicated and interested in what the band has to offer and isn't looking to mold the band in any other way. I really respected that approach.

I mean, a poorly kept secret as far as like the last five or six years of the music industry is that a lot of indies functionally act like majors now.
I would agree—and I can only say so much, because I don't have much experience past a certain time. We became more knowledgeable about the label system around 2013 or 2014. But if there was a big difference before, that would be unrecognizable today from my perspective.

The last time we spoke, I remember you mentioning how the creative process behind New Bermuda wasn't very easy. How are things with the band's work routine these days by comparison?
The process these days is a lot more confident. There wasn't a huge precedent for our band to follow, necessarily. For our sound and the things that we're trying to accomplish, a lot of it was feeling our way through the dark, and when you're attempting to mold something that way, things get jammed up here. There can be a lot of frustration in trying to find what it is that you're doing, and on this record we had a real sense of clarity. It was the first time that we were able to really look back on our own catalog and assess clearly what it is that we do.

A lot of that is framed around Kerry's songwriting, which has very much at this point become its own thing. It's to the point where, even when we're trying to cram influences into new songs, they become Deafheaven-sounding no matter what—and that's due heavily to his development as a player. For this record in particular, we gave him that space to confidently walk forward and put his foot down a little bit about, "This is us and this is how we sound"—and the rest of us kind of followed that lead.

A lot of this band is built around conversations, and a lot of Kerry and I's relationship is built around endless talks. We talk every day, we're very close, and it was very important that him and I were on the same page as far as the M.O. of what this album is. Also, we've been playing with these guys for so long, and they're such an integral piece of this whole thing, so when we get together, it's extremely natural. The way that our drummer Dan and Kerry play off each other in particular is psychic. There's much less thought and much more feel, and it really is is a privilege to get to watch them. Shiv and Chris come in really naturally to build these songs out, and I take the energy and emotion that's being presented and I try to match that from my own angle.

Tell me more about matching that energy when it comes to what you're putting down on paper lyrically.
It goes back to Kerry and I being like, "This is what Deafheaven is." That led me to think about what the lyrical side of that was, and there are things that I've talked about through the years here and there. I write abstractly a lot of the time. I do think that it's important for the listener to put themselves into the song, and for that reason I've avoided being too direct—and I think it's cool that we write in a way that's open to interpretation.

That said, I've talked a lot about alcoholism, drug addiction, family, being young, and sometimes relationships with women and older men—fathers, stepfathers, uncles, teachers. For this record, I wanted to once and for all express myself with with as much clarity as I was willing to give, to put a finer point on some of these topics in the same way that we were staking our flag as in terms of musical intention. Because this record felt, musically, so much like a Deafheaven album—one that we were always trying to make—I tried to match that energy lyrically.

It's interesting to hear you mention the notion of looking back at the band's work while making this record. In 2023, you had shows where you played Sunbather in full. I'm sure that's surreal to do at this point in your career, and for the listener that might entail a different experience than for the artist. That record really changed everything for you guys!
It certainly did. It was fun getting to relearn the songs. When we first put out the record, we were touring it by essentially just playing it in full. It was cool to go back and revisit that, and it really meant a lot to see people connect with it. Funny enough, it also reminded us of the things that we wanted to move away from after writing songs like that, and then continuing that type of songwriting through Ordinary Corrupt, which was the big impetus for creating Infinite Granite.

Obviously, the focus of that record for many people is that we leaned into the softer side of things and let go some of our metal identity on that one. But for me, the most important aspect of that album was how it enabled us to be better songwriters—to cut the fat a bit, maintain an emotional rush and crescendos without needing 12 minutes to do so. After Ordinary, Kerry and I remember being like, "This is cool, but can we do this in a better way and more to the point without without losing our sense of self?" I do think that we accomplished that, and I'm proud of that.

So when we went back to play the Sunbather songs, I was like, "Oh yeah, we're doing this riff like eight times in a row." Which is effective. So we took those two things and reached into our old bag of tricks, but in a way that felt more concise and considered. I've been saying this a lot, but the more I think about it, the more apparent it is that this record sonically could not have been made without Infinite Granite—taking that time to learn how to write songs in a different way.

We talked a lot about genre provincialism last time around, but it was interesting to have you guys really throw the gauntlet down in that regard with Infinite Granite. Tell me about how you perceived the reaction to that record. It seemed like it provoked some strong reactions—which, honestly, the worst thing that could happen when you put something out is that you get no reaction to it.
When Kerry was first writing the songs, and we were three songs in and a fast part hadn't happened yet, we had a conversation about it. I was like, "I love this, I think what you're coming up with is really beautiful, but it's a change. I'm into leaning into this, do you want to do it?" And he was like, "Yeah, I mean, it's just what's naturally happening."

I think if we had made another "standard Deafheaven album," it would've done that exact thing you just mentioned: it would've provoked nothing, because it wasn't provoking anything in ourselves at the time. We've always been a band who, for better or worse, has been led by the heart—and we didn't want to be dishonest with our own intent.

That said: Yes, of course, we were like, "People are going to feel very strongly about this. That's okay." I'll say this: it went over way better than I thought it would. My self-esteem tends to go up and down, so there were times where I'd be like, "This is just gonna go so south." After writing a song like "Great Mass of Color," I was like, "There are sonic touchstones, but this is significantly different in an overall way." There were nerves around it for sure.

Today, it remains a bit polarizing, and I think a huge part of that is how objective listening can be subverted by expectation. So I was never mad about peoples' disappointment in the album when it did arise, because I understood that as a listener, as a fan, you have expectations. As time goes and we can divorce expectation from objective listening, even those who were turned off by it initially might be able to hear it for what it actually is, which is just songs. That would be cool.

I'm just happy it didn't sink us. Actually, it was such a learning experience when it came to the release and hearing the feedback. Going into this album, I felt more like free in a way that I've never felt before. It really felt like, "Okay, we can do whatever we want now." We put ourselves through this gauntlet, and now we're clean on the other side—and it feels good.

The album artwork is very striking as ever. Tell me about Nedda Afsari's work on this, as well as having Nick Steinhardt in the mix again. I talked to Nick last year for the newsletter about his graphic design work as well.
Nick and I have a really great relationship. It sort of mirrors Kerry and I's, in that it's a lot of conversation. We're always talking—going to museums together, seeing gallery openings, texting each other things that we're into—and a lot of the time these things happen in between records where I'll have an initial set of ideas and am like, "You know maybe this is going to inform the next one." And that happened this time as well.

I've been a fan of Nedda's for a long time. We'd met in passing a couple times but never had a conversation, even though we have a million mutual friends. When I knew that I wanted the album cover to be photographic, I was discussing ideas with Nick, and he was like, "This sounds like something Nedda could do." And I was like, "Yes, exactly. I'm gonna hit her up right now." I emailed her and was like, "I'd love to buy you a coffee and discuss something with you if you're into it."

I shared with her the initial set of ideas, which was not terribly far off from what we ended up with—but, again, this is prior to even making the record. I can often be in 10 directions at once in terms of what I'm aiming to accomplish here. But she was like, "I love this idea, and if it changes, I'm really confident that we'll come up with something good." From there forward, we all kept in contact through 2024, sharing ideas and image references.

The initial idea was more in line with much of the record's symbolism—a symbolic set of characters. As the record progressed and things came more into the clear, I thought, "I'd prefer to go personal here." The thing that we can all offer, as artists, is perspective. That's what I'm most interested in, ultimately—when I can really see an artist's clear perspective and story. Even when it has nothing to do with me, I connect with peoples' personal and artistic interpretations of their own experiences, and the more personal they are, the more drawn I am to it. So we shifted.

The song "Amethyst" details this experience I had when I was a kid in a motel with my father, and I thought it would be really interesting to take the idea that we'd already been working on and apply it to that. It felt very clear, strong, and singular, and they were both like, "Yeah, I'd love to do this." So all of the video and package work that we ended up doing is derived from that song, and the cover image is derived from the lyrics to "Incidental III."

Nick has a great eye for taking my concepts and and and ideas and applying them in a way that feels very complete. He takes small pieces of what I'm saying and interprets them in very cool ways. Case in point: There's this sigil with a Celtic ring around it that appears throughout the artwork, and it's actually based on a real motel in Van Nuys called the Townhouse Hotel that's referenced in the lyrics. I went to the townhouse, photographed it, and sent Nick the photos. It's a very unremarkable building with a very unremarkable sign, and underneath the sign is this little wave. He took that wave and made it into like a closed loop. That's the type of detail that I can't think of. He's so smart about taking these small details and and creating a whole concept out of them.

Paul Banks contributed vocals on this record. Just knowing your taste in music from conversations we've had, I feel like you probably appreciate Interpol quite a bit. Tell me about getting Paul involved as well as your relationship to Interpol's music. It's weird—they're huge at this point, especially abroad, and yet I get this feeling that they're like a little underrated as well.
That's an interesting assessment. I would say they're underrated—it's a bit of an "if you know, you know" sort of thing, which is also a lot of people. I just saw them sell out a show. I'm a huge fan, it's the band I've seen the most in my life. I got Turn on the Bright Lights when I was 14, and I was like, "This is it."

To have Paul be part of this album was huge for me and very surreal. When we have guests—on this record, it's Paul and Jae Matthews from Boy Harsher—it's an opportunity for us to be fans, which is very exciting for me. I don't think that artists get to do that a whole lot—to be on the other side while you're making something.

With Paul, Daniel Kessler and I had a mutual friend, and I was living in New York for a couple of years just doing my own thing. Our friend was like, "I think you guys would get along, you should grab a coffee when when Daniel's in New York." He lives there sometimes, he's in Spain otherwise. He actually came around when we played L.A. on the New Bermuda tour, so us hanging out was a long time coming. We walked around the city for four or five hours just talking—he's a great guy.

We'd also previously opened for Interpol in Mexico City, and they offered us an opening slot for their Antics tour, which I was really excited about. We were making the record in May and we'd gotten the offer in March or April, so I figured that asking if Paul wanted to be on the record wouldn't be super far-fetched. It felt like a Hail Mary. Kerry and I knew that we wanted someone to do this poem that I'd written, and he was the first person that came to my mind.

So I hit up Daniel and I was like, "Hey, sorry to be weird, but what do you think about this idea?" He was like, "You should just text him, it's fine." So he gave me his number and I hit him up out of the blue with a rough version of of the song idea and the lyrics, and I was like, "If you're into it, that would be cool." He was exceedingly cool about it and got back to me really quick—he was like, "I love this, this is awesome. I'm a fan of your band, this would be very cool for me to be involved in." They were on tour in Europe at the time, but it didn't matter—he recorded, like, five versions and sent them. I called Kerry when I got them and I was like, "This is so crazy for me to hear him voice this poem that I'd written."

Obviously, your relationship with Kerry is something that's endured for a very long time. What do you value in it, and what have you larned from being friends for so long?
I reflect on it here and there, and I certainly don't take it for granted. It feels a bit unique at this point. We've been best friends for 23 years. It's amazing. We were laughing about it when I moved back to L.A. last year, because when I went to New York, he moved into my place and was setting up to get a place of his own—but there was an interim where we were living together again. We've done that on and off our whole lives, and here we were again. It's a relationship I value so much. We really see eye-to-eye, shockingly, on most things—and we're really good at communicating. I'm able to get his perspective, and he's able to get mine. Most often, we end up in a place where we're on the same page, so decision-making is easier.

The most vital thing that's happened in our friendship is our sobriety. If that hadn't happened, who knows. In that process, you become such a different person.
That process takes a lot of time, and it's a continual process, but it's one in which you become much more communicative, open, and emotionally vulnerable. All these things lend to making friendships easy. When you're not wrapped up in the self and you can lead with empathy and understanding, everything becomes easier—and both of us have really benefited from that. It's allowed us to have a stronger bond, and I'm very influenced by his sobriety—his meditativeness. There's a real exchange of goodwill that has made what we do viable, and otherwise we wouldn't even be a band. We're a bit indebted to that, and I feel very fortunate.