Editor’s Note: This interview was conducted as a conversation between friends and does not intend to present an objective viewpoint or the perspective of The Michigan Daily.
Ever since I heard Lily Talmers sing “Hope, You Whore” live at 707 Lawrence St. in March of 2021, I have counted down the days until I could hear it again. Still a socially distanced and masked show, the song made all barriers fall and removed inhibitions; people began dancing — in their squares, mostly, but I recall about five attendees who linked hands and started turning in a manner resemblant of Matisse’s iconic painting, “Dance.” The melody of that song would be stuck in my head for weeks.
I had met Talmers previously that semester when I interviewed her on the release of her debut album Remember Me As Holy, and I grew enamored with everything she made — her heartbreakingly beautiful lyrics, the curation behind every melody and the wisdom behind every silence. Since, Talmers has become my most listened to artist on the 2021 Spotify Wrapped, a music collaborator and a good friend.
It only made sense for me to follow up on the recent release of her sophomore album, one I had been waiting for since I heard that hypnotizing melody on a still-too-cold Saturday afternoon. From her apartment in Brooklyn, New York, Talmers revealed in a virtual interview with The Michigan Daily the ins and outs of her latest record, Hope is The Whore I Go To, which she released on July 29. I asked her about the recording process, where she found inspiration and most importantly: Why hope, and why is she a whore?
She explained that there is a Balkan saying that describes the state of mind in which people wait passively and continuously for something better — longing for a different job, a problem to be solved, a lover to love more strongly. The saying, “hope is the greatest whore,” refers to the human condition in which one waits for the world to change — nothing but a futile attitude that leads to frustration and wasted time.
Talmers, a Michigander herself, said the concept for the album happened naturally, as a result of the effects of the pandemic on her life. She said, “(The album) is like, spurts of hope and spurts of something getting better or even being better finally, and then a sort of eventual letdown or realization that what you idealize is not coming to fruition.”
In those years of global unprecedented changes, Talmers resolved to channel all her emotions into music. While studying at the University of Michigan, the Birmingham-born singer recorded and released two EPs. Her first studio record, Remember Me As Holy was released in March of 2021 and was composed of songs such as “Maybe It’s Madness,” “No Woman” and “Middle of America,” where she writes about the throes of living in the Midwest, feeling small in the vastness of it all and the itching desire to be remembered as something good.
I knew that whatever Lily Talmers released next was going to surprise me, and she did not disappoint. Her latest record is a mélange of impulses. One couldn’t pin it down in a genre, an era or a region. It is as cosmopolitan as it is crude — lyrics unfold like honeysuckle flowers, while the sound of drums faintly resembles the stomping of feet on a wooden floor in Greece. It is the world in the palm of her hand. Hints of L.A. Americana — the Blake Mills and Madison Cunningham type — of Brazilian Bossa Nova and of French Cabaret abound.
She said, “There’s a sort of reductionist view (that) folk music or indie music is like being indiscriminately sad, and I like the way that this music is deeply sorrowful and grieving and disturbed in certain moments. But it’s also driving and groovy and exciting. I feel proud of this music because it’s not like a sort of simplification of itself, or like, you can’t pin it down in a certain way. And I think that represents my life, my inner life as a musician and as someone who is moved by music, and it represents what I listened to in a different way than the stuff I’ve written before.”
Composed of 10 songs, Hope is the Whore I Go To is a perfect voyage of emotions. One can sway with “Hope, You Whore” and forget the weight of every word, every silence, every jolt. She sings: “To the rhythm of your interest, I will easily unfold / And make you promise to remember me as good” — in a nod to her incessant desire to remain kindly thought of. One is placed in a climactic movie scene with “Hope is a Human” — the strings vacillating, as if someone was making you spin until your surroundings became blurry. One can dance with “Life’s So Fun” while the world goes up in flames. It is ironic, satirical. It is the epitome of life.
She encounters hope again in “Hope at Table, Talking Shop (La Solitude),” and she addresses her as a loving whore. Talmers describes hope as “a mirror of versions of yourself that you want to inhabit.” Throughout the album, her conception of hope ebbs and flows, but ultimately, like the human she is, remains unpredictable. In the aforementioned song she sings: “She’ll embrace you for a moment, then she’ll turn and kill the mood / With some heinous imposition, like ‘I thought you understood’.” And yet, like in her song, “Saudades (Over Now)”, she says that “she doesn’t mind at all to hear about the lonely troubles I run into.” Talmers confesses that she always returns to hope at the end of the day, in hopes of being told that it will be alright.
“I’m really propelled by my hope in and love for other people, and that I’m always in cycles of being disappointed and that there’s a resilience that you develop in going on that journey, but sometimes it’s too much and you have to write about your grief,” she stated.
The pandemic propelled these thoughts that she turned into poetry. This period of time, nonetheless, also played a part in the magnitude with which her sound matured from her first album to the second. She mentioned that Remember Me as Holy was recorded in the midst of the pandemic, at a time when performing the songs live was almost inconceivable — making it a much more stripped-down and intimate album than her latest one.
Yearning for performance, Talmers and her incredible band recorded Hope is the Whore I Go To fully live. Composed of various U-M alumni, including Geoffrey Brown, Ian Eylanbekov, David Ward, Aidan Cafferty and Ben Green, Lily Talmers brought music to life, literally — “I trusted that impulse and kind of wrote down exactly what I thought should happen in the song.”
“I’m kind of against perfectionism. Like, if a record is a remnant of my life as a musician, then it should be authentic to that and then willing to like, if there’s like a vocal mistake, then that’s what happened. It’s fine.”
Most of these musicians contributed to her previous record, which has resulted in a conjunct sonic growth that is clearly palpable in every song. These one-take songs reflect a mode of songwriting and producing that clearly enlightens the talent of each and every person involved in the project. “We didn’t make a lot of those very sterile momentary decisions. It was much more holistic as a whole, which is kind of the best way, I find, to do music, and also the best way that I can think about what I want from a song,” Talmers said. She mentioned that she felt “much more righteous and free” with songs being “more technically demanding of me as a musician.”
With this record, Lily Talmers leaves the Midwest and makes the world her backyard, in what feels like the homiest and most intimate patch of earth. There’s no room in this record for monotony. It will make you celebrate that you’re alive, and then make you cry for just the same reason. It is not anonymous. It is grandiose but not brutalist; it is frustrated but not self-deprecating. It’s a cinematic opening, a folkloric village scene, a sweet lullaby, a soulfully defeated chant.
Hope is the Whore I Go to is exquisite storytelling; a live performance; a one-on-one; a confessional; the things we cling to; the search for answers; solace in solitude; the life of the party. Yet another incredible album by an artist whose trajectory will flourish like the spring, persevere like perennial trees, age like fine wine and become, at every stage of one’s life, a hand to hold onto. And I can’t wait to follow along — like a dog on a leash, like the moon to the sun, like an encore to a good thing.
Daily Arts Writer Cece Duran can be reached at ccduran@umich.edu.