6/19/15

MCB PICK OF THE WEEKEND: Heaven's Gate at JUMBO'S on FRIDAY, June 19th 2015

Heaven's Gate will be playing a Detroit show with PC Worship (both on Dull Tools) at Double Happiness 
at JUMBO'S on FRIDAY, June 19th.
In her own words, Jess Paps of Heaven's Gate talks about the writing of Woman at Night :
 
"I'm sure every person has their own affair with night time...
 
There is no time I feel more myself, simultaneously alive and dead. There is no other title for this record; simple, to the point.
Written by, about and for a woman alone with her own thoughts, reflections and deepest fears. Ever since I was a little girl, I remember being incredibly scared at night.
I suppose you might just call it anxiety. I was a kid in the 80's and 90's and there were a few high profile kidnapping cases. It hit me hard at a young age and I remember
following my mother around everywhere as soon as it got dark out. She used to joke and call me her shadow. As I grew older, it turned more existential and dissociative and I
remember looking in the mirror at age 10 and feeling like I didn't recognize myself or know myself anymore. As I became an adolescent and teen in the 90's my favorite
time was locked up in my bedroom at night, listening to records, pouring over lyrics, playing guitar, writing poems, having secrets. And that is still my favorite thing, my
favorite place. I suppose night encapsulates all my greatest joy and vulnerability, of being alive and fearing death."
 
"During the day I still read too much news; it's all about kidnapping, torture, murder and rape Rape in my backyard, sex slaves in another continent, three women chained up in a suburban home for ten years, finally seeing the light of
day. The impulse to write about my experiences as a woman and those of other women (fictional or real) was perhaps an attempt to process and master these circumstances and stories; and also to take back power and control.
The voice on the record is mine, though I suppose it effaces itself at times. I was so struck and consumed by what happened in Cleveland last year with the three women (Michelle Knight, Gina Dejesus, and Amanda Berry) who had
been kidnapped and imprisoned for ten years by Ariel Castro, I wrote the vocals for Amanda Berry about it. I still have complicated feelings about this song and titling it after a survivor but ultimately felt that it was a story that should
be told again. When Amanda Berry finally broke free from the home she was captive in for ten years with her daughter last year, she called 911 from a neighbor's phone and kept repeating 'I'm Amanda Berry.' That call is
essentially the chorus of the song. The tone in her voice during that call is truly one of the rawest and most haunting bits of sound I've ever heard and I could not shake it."
 
on