Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou: Redefining Southern Gothic

On the face of it, Emma Ruth Rundle and THOU might not seem like an obvious pairing but, when May Our Chambers Be Full was announced back in August, eyes were turned on this odd couple with gleeful anticipation. We asked ourselves: how would the understated beauty of the Kentuckian singer-songwriter’s balladry measure up against monolithic weight of Louisiana’s THOU?

Answers were forthcoming. Advance singles Ancestral Recall and The Valley gave us an early insight into what this unlikely partnership would sound like, and it seemed as though they had together reimagined a classic gothic duality; light and dark, soft and harsh, the beautiful and the bestial. This is not THOU with another vocalist, nor is it Emma Ruth Rundle playing with heavy accompaniment: occasioned by friendship, and sustained by their creative affinity, May Our Chambers Be Full is a truly authentic collaboration between these artists. Ahead of the album’s release, Distorted Sound spoke to Andy Gibbs and KC Stafford of THOU to hear their side of the story.

As their past work proves, both Emma Ruth Rundle (E.R.R.) and THOU are enthusiastic collaborators, so it’s perhaps not altogether surprising that the two would someday come together on a joint project. “We met Emma at Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle: we saw her play and really liked her, and so she entered the shortlist of people that we’d like to collaborate or tour with,” recalls guitarist Andy Gibbs, “and that was probably a year before Roadburn.” Their collaboration was precipitated by THOU’s artist-in-residence appearances at the festival, where they together performed the material which would eventually become May Our Chambers Be Full. “Walter [Hoeijmakers] (Roadburn’s artistic director) wanted us to do a collaboration set, and so it was a good excuse to follow up on our plan to approach Emma with something. We all went into it understanding that it was going to be an album,” Andy insists, “it was never just a Roadburn thing.”

Following their performance, Emma and THOU reunited stateside, and begun to hammer out the details of their collaboration. “The songs were mostly written, but most of the songs changed after Roadburn; not drastically, but we tweaked a lot,” remembers Andy. “All the writing was done with all seven of us in a room, together.” Writing music as a group can be difficult, not least when there are seven musicians in the room, but things went more smoothly than you might imagine. “Personally writing with Emma is a lot more like how I write myself,” notes guitarist and vocalist KC Stafford. “I found it really easy to work with her, and we’d often work together on stuff outside of practice.” “Emma definitely threw herself into what we were doing,” agrees Andy. “As much as it’s possible, it was a collaborative writing process.” E.R.R. dulcet tones are not an obvious pairing for the dense, rhythmic sludge THOU are known for, as Andy observes: “Most of our music ends up being one big monolithic thing; a Greek-chorus of guitars. Emma brought a whole new guitar tone: she plays with much less distortion, a different tuning, and a Fender. Her cleaner tones really stand out, and that’s a different thing for us.” May Our Chambers Be Full is rich in classic Gothic harmonies, particularly the synchronous soft and harsh vocal duets of E.R.R. and Bryan Funck. “With that kind of vocal juxtaposition, it’s really easy to accidentally sound like a band who may or may not have t-shirts on the wall in Hot Topic,” laughs KC. “James [Whitten], our engineer, really helped us avoid that.”

Both Emma and THOU are well-known for their DIY approaches to their craft, so it’s easy to imagine that their creativity would connect so easily. “It’s funny when we say DIY because that implies we do it ourselves, when we actually just have a community of friends to help us to accomplish what we want,” laughs Andy. “It’s more like A.Y.F.Y.S.,” KC adds, “Ask your friends yourself.” Continuing, Andy sighs: “Inevitably people would bring a song and it would go back and forth a million times. Remember Magickal Cost?  We were still going back on forth with that until the day it was recorded.” “That song had more time and thought put into it than any other of the others,” agrees KC. “So much passion and emotion went into it,” remembers Andy. “After a long day of practice, you’re like: ‘I don’t even know if I like it with the ‘cowboy part’ going three times…’” “Yes, it’s like jamais vu,” KC interjects, “when you say a word so many times that it loses all meaning.” The ‘cowboy part’?  We’re confused. “Just close your eyes and listen to that song,” KC maintains, “and whenever you start seeing crusty looking dudes reaching for their guns, that’s when you’re there.”

Adorning the cover of May Our Chambers Be Full is a striking portrait, conceived by THOU vocalist Bryan Funck and captured by photographer Craig Mulcahy. “It all came about through some of the imagery that Bryan was exploring at the time, photographs of a dancer named Mary Wigman,” explains Andy. “I’m not sure how to put it, but her style is very avant-garde. There were a lot of costumes and poses which were used in her dances and photographs, and so [Bryan] kind of used those as a template for the figures in the picture. The general theme of the artwork was supposed to be anonymity, and the idea was to have these shapeless, anonymous figures that act like a kind of like a Rorschach blot. ” The cloaked figures are a fitting allegory for an album written by seven musicians; each of their individual contributions having become lost in the totality. It could be just another band photo, but not all is as it seems with the Louisiana collective. “I think most people looking at the artwork would assume that the figures are band members – in fact there’s one that has seven figures in it, just like the seven of us in the collaboration – but that’s just another deception from THOU!”

The discussion moves back to their performance, and we ask if May Our Chambers Be Full will see another live incarnation. “Yeah for sure,” KC tells us assuredly, “if anyone ever gets to perform again that is.” “We were supposed to tour with Emma this year, here in the U.S. and elsewhere,” laments Andy. “The plan is to pick that up again as soon as possible: Europe next year, if we can. The next THOU tour will be a collaboration tour, and we’re all excited to play these songs live.” “I want to write more,” disagrees KC, eagerly.” “Please, no more!” Andy protests. “Well you can take a backseat and me and Emma will just hangout and write stuff,” beams KC, as they laugh together. It seems as though another collaboration could be a possibility, but Andy isn’t convinced: “The whole thing was extremely exhausting. We all put a lot of effort into this. It’s a hard question. This was one year of our lives, from writing to recording it, and I don’t know if Emma is ready to give us another year!” “I definitely don’t feel like we’re done working with Emma,” disagrees KC. “There’s definitely more songs which didn’t come out the first time.”

May Our Chambers Be Full is out now via Sacred Bones. 

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