The Passion of the Wright
Atlanta-based singer/songwriter comes from the heart
Prolific local songstress Shannon Wright begrudgingly began her solo career in 1998 amid the haze of a dissolved band of high-school friends, a disappearing record contract and a city too packed to fit her need for insular inspection. Walking away from her Jacksonville-birthed indie-pop band, Crowsdell, New York City-based label Big Cat and the city itself, Wright sequestered herself in Pittsboro, N.C., 30 minutes outside Chapel Hill, where she was unable to quell an inner urge to fall back into songwriting.
From that involuntary genesis came four years of extreme productivity with three full-lengths — Flightsafety, Maps of Tacit and Dyed in the Wool — and a mini-album, Perishable Goods, all making their way to shelves courtesy of Chicago indie Touch & Go's mellow subsidiary Quarterstick. Then, after a year-and-a-half of touring in support of 2001's Dyed in the Wool, Wright stepped away for a year to renovate houses with an Atlanta contracting company. It's a fitting break considering the analogy that the terse (at least in interviews) songwriter employs to describe her songwriting method.
"It's like building a house for me, the way I record," says Wright. "Because I start out with the foundation, and then I just start layering stuff — because I play all the instruments."
With the exception of the drums, which were filled in by longtime friend Christina Files (Victory at Sea, Mary Timony), Wright played every instrument on her new album, Over the Sun, released April 6. Despite never having received formal training on any instrument and, in fact, having only played guitar — the first instrument she mastered — since she was 20, Wright's fourth full album is, like her other releases, technically exceptional (or at least fakes it really well). Guitars swoon, chug, swirl, grate, hop, swerve and even jangle, either picked carefully or strummed with the force of the Indigo Girls' arms put together. The keyboards on "Throw a Blanket Over the Sun" are alternately stoic minor-key peckings or streaming chord progressions, while on "Avalanche," they remain subdued and classical in nature, almost like a sleep aid.
The sheets of instrumentation provide a gnarled canvas for Wright's typically venomous lyrics, which run the gauntlet from self-effacing sadcore to break-out-your-middle-finger-"Fuck you, dude!" proclamations. Attempting to parallel the claustrophobic intensity of a Wright live performance, the woman-done-wrong elicited the help of visceral producer Steve Albini, who made the tones on albums by both PJ Harvey and Nirvana nearly leap off their plastic encasements and bang the temples of their respective listeners. Actually, it wasn't Wright who went to Albini, it was the producer who approached the songwriter.
"He called me and he said, 'I really want to do your next record,'" says Wright, recalling the exchange. "And I said, 'Well, I can't afford you.' And he said, 'Well, I'll cut you a deal.' ... And he did, he cut me a really nice deal."
Albini's services can run a band off the street upward of $14,000 for a 10-day session, the time it took Wright to record her album. Wright essentially set up camp in Albini's Electrical Audio studio in Chicago for free. The payoff: In relation to her other work, which has sporadically featured Albini's production, Over the Sun hits with at least twice the force. More than likely, this is not just due to Albini's passion, but the marriage of these two most ardent musicians.
"We're friends as well, and so I feel really comfortable recording with him because things can get a little intense," says Wright. "He's an intense person himself, and so he understands what I'm doing, what I'm trying to do, what I'm trying to convey and it makes it easier for me to do those things with him. ... On each individual song, I wanted different sounds ... on some songs I took 45 minutes trying to get the right guitar tone, and he was fine with that."
Setting aside the ringing guitars, what's talked about most often with Shannon Wright's recorded material are her often inscrutable lyrics that convey deep emotion, but are hard to peg down for definite meaning. While in the past she would unleash enigmatic phrasings like, "This eager scheme has turned/Lathered up your bottled smile/But the notice passes the tether by," from 2000's Maps of Tacit, Over the Sun appears to have been written with the aid of the secret decoder ring found halfway through a box of cereal.
"And all my trials start/Moth to the light/ You on your face/The cruelest eyes/And could you blur my visions," Wright sings in her injured bellow on "You'll Be the Death" to a man who isn't good for her. Wright has never been this brazen with her audience. The two-and-a-half years off from writing finds the queen of the oblique Thom Yorke-ian metaphors (veering toward Radiohead's disjointed subject changes) now dealing strictly with the literal.
"I use less metaphors and stuff," says Wright. "It was just a different challenge for lyrics this time around. There's no big plan behind it or anything, I think it just came out this way. I tend to hide things through metaphors in my lyrics, and I think I allowed myself to be a little more direct this time around."
A turn for the obvious may have been just what Wright needed to keep the intensity level up and her head in the game. After the debacle of Crowsdell, she had withdrawn from everything with full intention of not returning to music, but her subconscious had other ideas. The songs that she sings are pure catharsis, the channel for every feeling that seethes, glows or burns inside her. And if it took too much external manipulation, you can be sure Wright wouldn't be interested.
"The main thing is, I don't want to just put out music or play live shows that aren't from my heart," says Wright, explaining her modus operandi. "That's really the main thing. So when that ceases, it's time for me to quit."
The tale of Shannon Wright the solo artist may have opened in utter reluctance and disinclination — and should keenness for music-making subside and those qualities return, the story will end.