* 7PM - DOORS
* 8PM - SHOW
* 9PM - WESTERMAN
WESTERMAN
“I wanted to make something that’s eventually uplifting” says
Will Westerman about the origins of his debut album Your Hero Is Not
Dead. “I wanted to say in as unguarded terms as I could — there
are reasons for hope.” This vision, fully realized, is an album
about empathy and compassion, struggle and release, and all the ways
we contradict and battle within ourselves.
Your Hero Is Not Dead is full of supremely crafted songs about moral,
political, and ethical grey areas. Recorded alongside his close friend
and producer Nathan Jenkins (aka Bullion), they find Westerman
attempting to resolve external issues by looking inward. Like a young
Peter Gabriel in a late capitalist world, Westerman’s music falls
somewhere between artful soft rock and confessional electronic pop.
Westerman writes through his internal conflicts—songwriting is a way
for him to grapple with concepts and paradoxes that cannot always be
expressed with words, and in doing so he’s able to reach resolution
and catharsis. “What animates me is when I feel a compulsion to
express something in a way that can’t be conveyed through
conversation.” Often, it’s a process of “expulsion.” He writes
about his own writing process—about creativity blocks and
“infinite choice”—on “Confirmation,” a rich and cerulean
song and one of Westerman’s most celebrated yet, he sings - Don’t
you wonder why / Confirmation’s easier / When you don’t think so
much about it?
You can hear that struggle and release in the sound, too, which he
similarly works out through experimentation until it feels right; he
has arranged what he calls his “sonic palette” in order to
accompany or juxtapose both the lyrics and melody of each song.
“Think I’ll Stay,” began as a rumination on chronic pain, but
has a jaunty, energizing, and soothing tone and beat. Westerman
describes the track as “a sort of giddy affirmation of being”
despite the seriousness of the topic. Can I look the other way? /
Crying hurts but it keeps me entertained, he sings, before a sweet
little synth moment. Don’t know how I got here / but now that I am I
think I’ll stay. “The whole feel of the song is supposed to be a
sort of warped celebration of existence. The initial impetus is a very
specific case, but I think there’s an inevitable amount of pain that
everyone goes through, being alive.”
Your Hero Is Not Dead is about existing as a thoughtful human being,
attempting to find some kind of order and hope in a messy world of
contradictions. “What made me want to make music was listening to
other people's music and feeling a kind of human, unspoken
understanding,” says Westerman. “I'd like to be able to pass that
on with my music, to be part of that human, creative and spiritual
conversation.”
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23/07/2020 Last update