White Moth Black Butterfly: Beauty From Tragedy

If there is one benefit that we could take from a year of pandemic-driven isolation and relentless solitude, it’s that it gave musicians the time to write to their hearts’ content. In the case of WHITE MOTH BLACK BUTTERFLY, it was business as usual given that they are by definition a remote band. Spread across three continents, the contributing members revelled in the downtime formed by the void left when other projects ground to a halt, and compiled the recently released album The Cost Of Dreaming.

We were fortunate to sit down for a late evening zoom call across a laptop from Dan Tompkins and Jordan Bethany, discussing all things WHITE MOTH BLACK BUTTERFLY and their journey towards putting together a pretty exceptional album. Even something as life-changing as a pandemic did little to dampen this collective’s momentum, with them being perfectly geared and well drilled in the art of remote music making. Files shared across WhatsApp began to form strong ideas for tracks, and as the band describe it, a lightening quick workflow allowed them to craft a finely tuned album without any face to face contact at all. Dan told us, “not to be over confident about it, it was genuinely such a nice process. There were no obstructions, everyone gets on so well. There is no ego, which is one of the biggest things.”

This outpouring of ideas and freedom of expression allowed the band to focus their energy on what they liked the sound of, rather than what they felt others might want to hear. “It’s not that we had no real vision, but we didn’t have any expectation as to what the album would sound like this time around. We’re quite lucky because we have some exceptional songwriters involved who’d put together some wild demos. I think a few of them are actually being pitched for TV and film as well as for proper A-List artists. I remember listening to a few of them and just having lots of ideas and I said ‘do you know what if you don’t have any luck with those just keep them in a folder and we’ll see if we can do anything with them’, and they were a few that had never been used, so I started to demo on them and we enjoyed what we were listening to.”

And as such they moved forwards, inching towards the project’s conclusion. Despite the lack of any fixed plan, there were always certain important elements that were considered. As Dan says, “the main thing I wanted to achieve was to give Jordan more of a platform to sing and showcase her voice, and that’s why she has more of a presence on the album this time around.” Both vocalists shine on the record, having found a capable balance that never feels reliant on either’s ability. Musically, it is the kind of album that could only be written with an open mind, following on from foundations laid by their previous album Atone, yet pushing the envelope. “We definitely wanted to have some strong hooks. We wanted an album that was ‘all killer no filler’ even while being contemporary pop. We just wanted strong songs, and memorable melodies. I feel like we’ve achieved that. I actually feel like this is one of our strongest records, I feel for me it’s been of the most enjoyable records that I’ve been involved with for a long time, especially working with Jordan and the guys.”

With Dan and Jordan being very much on the same wavelength when it comes to writing, putting together the lyrics was barely a challenge either. They wrote for each other, sharing ideas and completing each other’s thought process with ease. “Generally it’s easier to try and seek a melody before a lyric so I often find that subconsciously I draw out ideas that begin to form and become more cohesive. The more I change them around and lyrics begin to pop, they sit and they stay and start to form and inspire other words, but there’s always a subliminal thought or emotion. It’s very hard to explain.”

These themes began to form largely of their own accord, but there were at least some ulterior motives when starting the project. The white moth and the black butterfly have always been seen as something of a dichotomy; polarised opposites of each other. Chaos and peace perhaps, or good and evil. “It’s very hard to not be impacted by the last year, and we didn’t want to come across like we’d just written a COVID-19 album, woe is me. We actually wanted to write songs of happiness and joy, but also to think about WHITE MOTH BLACK BUTTERFLY and what it actually represents. Even though we have good times and we try and be optimistic, there’s always something there that’s just wanting to pull you back and give you a hard time. Heading into a lockdown, being an ex-police officer my first thought was, ‘what about people with mental illness, people suffering with domestic abuse that couldn’t get out of the house anyway and are trapped even more?’ So there are some serious topics but there are also lots of songs about love in there as well, and dreams, like the excitement at the birth of a dream.”

Jordan talks about how being locked in a space hasn’t just made us confront the craziness of the pandemic, but also the beauty of life, and how they feel they covered that whole range of topics, from the start of a dream to the end of life. Dan also talked about the exuberance of youth, revealing that whenever he starts to write a new album, he always goes back down memory lane, taking a trip to the street he grew up on. He just drives around and remembers all the good times had as a child, all the innocence and happiness that he experienced. It’s an important part of him taking stock of life and seeing how far he’s come.

Aside from some of this rather high-brow thinking, The Cost Of Dreaming is an album that is quite simply enjoyable, and memorable. It allows us to ponder the best, and sometimes the worst, parts of ourselves, and dwell on what a future where we can hug and shake hands with each other again might look like. It is a record as pleasurable to be around as the people that wrote it, one to soak in, savour and indulge.

The Cost of Dreaming is out now via Kscope. 

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