Conjurer: Me, Unself and I
Gently strummed acoustic guitar and quiet, folksy singing aren’t what you expect from a CONJURER album, but that’s exactly how their third full-length, Unself, opens with its title track. “This world is not my home / I’m just passing through”, croons guitarist/vocalist Dani Nightingale, the first time we’ve heard them truly sing like this. Unself as an album is remarkable not just for this soft opening, but for the sheer sonic dynamism and raw emotions that shine through more than ever. Ahead of its release, we caught up with Dani and co-guitarist/vocalist Brady Deeprose to talk all about this new era.
As Brady admits, this next step in their career comes as something of a reaction to previous album Páthos. “We identified a lot of things about the sound, the way that we functioned as a band and the whole recording process that we didn’t love and that we wanted to address in this,” he explains. “We wanted to bring more space into the sound, wanted it to feel more organic, wanted it to not feel rushed. All of these negative aspects that were mainly just a symptom of the situation we found ourselves in recording the last album in a pandemic, without being able to even play the songs together in a room before hitting the studio. So I think definitely the approach [to Unself] was a bit of a reaction to how that album felt.”
Grins Brady, “going in with the bones of an idea, with that framework, we got far more done in that first week [of pre-production] than we expected.” Whereas before, there might have been disagreements over direction or a lack of time to explore ideas, this time “a lot of the sticking points or things we might argue over as we made progress on the record, all of those started to melt away. We found ourselves agreeing far more than we were in conflict, which is again, not a regular thing for the four of us,” he laughs.
A big part of the reason for shifting approaches and finding that things were going more smoothly than before is simply that they’ve all grown as people in the intervening years, not just over the lifetime of the band. As Brady sums it up, this has all “played into the maturity that we’ve achieved on this record. It comes from having four people that are far more self-actualised and know who they are, what they’re about and what they want out of life. At least far more than we did four years ago when we did the last one!”
With the shift in personnel on the album (it’s Noah [See, drums]’s first time appearing on an album with them) meant that, along with the extra time they deliberately took for writing, pre-production and writing, there was a shift in attitudes towards trying new things and branching out. “Noah should get a lot of credit in this,” Brady begins, “because he loves a lot of the same folky stuff and indie bands that Dani is really into… he was way more supportive of those kinds of ideas from the jump.”
A new approach to writing also meant a new approach to writing lyrics, particularly given Unself’s far more inward-looking nature. It’s been rare before for Dani to appear in interviews, but Unself is a deeply personal album to them for a few reasons. Take, for instance, recent single Let Us Live a rallying cry of support for the trans community, a roar of desperate anger in the face of a consistently, virulently transphobic press and political climate. Over the last few years, Dani has come to understand that they’re non-binary, while Brady has seen his friend come to terms with this as well as many other friends constantly facing bigoted rhetoric.
“I’ve spent a lot of my life not knowing who or what the fuck I am,” Dani states plainly. “Pretty much immediately after Páthos released, there were a lot of realisations, not only being diagnosed autistic… the realising of my gender identity, that felt weirdly more like a bonus to the autism.” They continue, explaining that “realising I was autistic completely turned my world upside down, mostly for the better. I have a much better understanding of myself, the people around me, for better or worse, of the world around me.”
In many ways, Unself tackles neurodivergence too, but the word CONJURER are keen to stress is that of the “capital O” other. “The album very much speaks to feelings of otherness, neurodivergence, transness and marginalisation.” Brady agrees entirely; “for me, this record has been about empathy and about understanding where Dani is at now and where they’ve been at, and helping to get these songs to say how you feel, and it’s something that we worked on together and something that – the deepening of our friendship through Dani’s self actualisation and through my own journey over the last few years of actually getting to the point where I’m happy in my life has been so important to strengthening the friendship and strengthening the musical ties as well.”
In fact, in particular with Let Us Live, Brady approached Dani remarking that the constant deluge of bigotry in the UK and abroad had upset him deeply and that he was keen to talk about it on the album. “And Dani said, I’ve already started writing a song about it!” They were on the same page again for Hang Them In Your Head, that tackles the shitty life of perennial renters who seemingly only have housing at the whims of rich landlords who care little for them.
Unself acts not just as a diary and a way of showing solidarity with the marginalised, but as a rallying cry. “All of these barriers to happiness and fulfilment that society throws up in so many different fucking directions, a lot of them come back to capitalism. Hang Them In Your Head particularly, it’s a mantra to say no matter what, even if you don’t have it in you to take to the streets, don’t be complacent in your own head. Do not stop remembering this is not okay and don’t let yourself engage with these systems and believe it’s okay… I will not sit in utter complacency and as long as everyone holds on to that, it’s not complete power for them.”
Summing up their intent for Unself more widely, with the realisation of their gender identity and autism diagnosis, meant Dani was at a point that they refused to be silent on issues they care about, something Brady wholeheartedly agreed with. As Dani explains, “I personally may know myself now better than ever before, but it doesn’t mean the world does. This album speaks to people who do feel like this world is not their home; they don’t feel accommodated and they don’t feel seen or understood, and they’re outright demonised. I don’t want them to feel as alone and alienated and isolated as I have done for 30 years of my life. If we’re playing a show, I want to reach that one person there who doesn’t feel seen or recognised by society at large and to say, ‘we get you’.”
Unself is out now via Nuclear Blast Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS126 here:
For more information on CONJURER like their official page on Facebook.