KYE ALFRED HILLIG – at the crossroads of dark humour and discomfort
“I’ll spare you the details, but fair to say my life was falling apart.”
Kye Alfred Hillig
OUT of the West Coast city of Tacoma, songwriter KYE ALFRED HILLIG unveils latest single ‘Ezekiel Bobbing For Apples’ an early taste of upcoming ‘All-Night Costume Company’ album, due March 4th.
With an all-embracing indie rock, alt-country vibe, ‘Ezekiel Bobbing For Apples’ positions itself at the crossroads of discomfort and dark humour, a familiar location for Hillig’s tunes.
“The song is really a bit of singing up from the bottom of the well,” said Hillig. “Everything feels kind of screwed and hopeless at times, but the message is ‘I am with you.’ There’s something freeing about saying that out loud.”
Recorded at Seattle’s Ex Ex Studios, the single was produced and mixed by Johnny Nails.
Leaving art school in the early 2000s, Hillig built a life split between social services and songwriting, and is joined on his latest long player by David Bilbrey (guitar), Bill Nordwall (organ/piano/synth), Yoswa (bass), Jasen Samford (drums/mandolin/percussion), and Annie J (backing vocs).
“The album only exists because the guys in my band sent an escape ladder down into some serious depression of mine and encouraged me to climb,” adds Hillig. “In November of 2024 my band played for a full house at a theatre space in Tacoma called Edison Square. For the past several years leading up to this event we’d mostly been inactive.
“This inactivity was entirely my fault, as I’d come to believe that music had done little but abuse me and I sought to evade my perceived attacker. After releasing my double-album ‘In All Colors Singing Back’ in 2022, I thought I’d dust my hands of the whole fine mess, go milk some cows or stare with bemused delight at the sea – whatever it is that normal people do. What I didn’t realize is that I am eternally chained to the machine, a blood in/blood out sort of arrangement. The further I walked away from music the sicker I became.
“I’ll spare you the details, but fair to say my life was falling apart. I truly did not realize how badly I needed music. That all of the cliches about music saving people’s lives weren’t merely gag-worthy platitudes, but a deep and reverent truth. After that show in November of 2024 my band demanded a record from me. I felt I owed them one for their faithful service and with years of music backed up inside my creative intestines, so to speak, I wrote what became the songs for ‘The All-Night Costume Company.’
“With this something surprising happened – I woke up to the only church I know. It’s my band that deserves any praise for this record and more importantly for bringing me back towards my true purpose on this planet. Without them I would not have made my favourite album to date. Without them, God knows where I’d be now.”
Connect with Kye Alfred Hillig HERE
(Photographs (c) Kyle Latham, cover design Barry Blankenship)
