Hayden Thorpe Is Experiencing All of the Metafeelings

Hayden Thorpe isn’t one for pondering the simple things in life. The 35-year-old Englishman, formerly of the now-defunct Kendal indie darlings Wild Beasts, is much more of a big-picture kind of guy. As keen to explore the wonders of the minutest chemical reactions in the inner wirings of the mind as he is societal-level shifts in thinking and action, and the vast and unknown wonders of the universe and beyond, the multi-instrumentalist is nothing if not intriguing.

His second solo album, Moondust for My Diamond — a smoothly enchanting 12-track collection of cerebral and propulsive pop featuring production by Nathan Jenkins (aka Bullion) — is clear evidence of this. Thorpe’s interests, from science, religion, humanity, the cosmos, sex, temptation, and contemplation of the end of days drip from every pore, filling the record with big questions and the wonder and anxiety of the possibilities of the things we don’t know, poised just out of reach.

It’s enough to make one contemplate several aspects of life and existence, albeit set to a slick soundtrack that builds on the sonic palettes of his 2019 debut album Diviner and last year’s Aerial Songs EP.

The tunes are charming and understated, but it’s Thorpe’s lyrical themes that prove most beguiling. In Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself,” and Thorpe seems to have been on a grand Vonnegutian journey during the making of these songs. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine him locking himself away in a dank library for months on end, devouring all manner of obscure texts on philosophy, science, and theology, before channeling it all into something he can set his countertenor vocals to.

“I’m an obsessive person, but I’m also a person who has fads,” he says. “So, if you combine those two things, you get obsessive fads, into which I entirely immerse myself in practice, writing or theory. It becomes almost carnivorous; I need to imbibe it, put it in myself, become it for a while. I think most of the richness of the words comes from there. I’m speaking like it’s quite a brutal process, but it is if you go quite deeply.”

Take lead single “The Universe Is Always Right”. Probably never before or ever again will references to genies escaping bottles, Excalibur being pulled from the stone, and “cosmic arrows” be made in a pop song — and certainly not one on an album that sounds as necessary as this. It’s clear from almost the get-go that Thorpe’s influences are many and varied.

“For this record, I got interested in Eastern mysticism, yoga, and alternative practices,” he says. “My other hobby is science, and I realized there are a lot of overlaps between the ways Eastern mysticism sees the universe and how science sees the universe. The difference is science medicalizes the body and our emotions, but Eastern mysticism doesn’t; it incorporates the body, the mind, and the sense of the universe.

“Perhaps that is what is lacking in our terminology and our language; this sense of something beyond and how to incorporate the beyond into our very being,” he continues. “What goes on in those language spaces are spells. People are casting spells, and I say that in a very functional way. Casting spells is just an alignment of words; it’s just placing things in order. If you put certain words in a certain order, it elicits a chemical response in the body. It’s a very extraordinary thing. I wonder why all our songs are about love and spirit. Well, it’s that invisible matter that stitches everything together. We can’t quantify it. We know how we build our reality.”

Exploring this meeting point between science and religion led Thorpe to investigate the phenomenon of psychedelic therapy and a pioneering project integrating music and psychedelic drugs; an experience which has found its way most clearly into tracks “Suspended Animation” and “Metafeeling”.

“Therapists are using this software while someone is in an induced psychedelic state; probably through psilocybin,” he says. “Musicians contributed to a soundscape that the patient is listening to. I sang and contributed vocals and got interested in both the practice of how I sing for somebody in that state and what I would do, and how to contribute. It made me reflect on what singing is and what making music is.

“I got interested in it through a seminal book by Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind. It’s so interesting because I think you should always judge a civilization by its drugs. Capitalism is very much the cocaine society, which is really about enlarging the ego. Whereas, in past civilizations, the mushroom or other psychedelics have been the central theme of their civilization. It’s inverse; shrinking the ego or dismantling the sense of self. Maybe we’re at a frontier now; we’re realizing we’re all going around being encouraged to be warriors in our own way, going forth, and it’s a dog-eat-dog-type world. But it’s clear that it is creating so much damage, and it’s not sustainable.

“Secondly, it fucks the natural world when you do that too,” he notes. “Paul Stamets is one of my hero mycologists, and he always states that the earth has already provided the operating manual for how we understand the natural world, and he says it’s psilocybin. We think the human point of view is the ultimate point of view, but I don’t think that’s the case, personally.”

While a cocktail of energies ooze from Moondust for My Diamond, ensuring it sounds like a record put together by an artist with a simple love for the craft of songwriting, the flip side of Thorpe’s expansive thinking means he’s never far away from tackling the next big topic.

“We’re living through a reckoning,” he says. “There is a grand narrative of our time, where growth, success, and aspiration are somehow virtuous qualities, and that is failing us. That is not working, and I’m so excited about what the music sounds like on the other side of that. If you think about it, music has always been co-opted by power. Hymns and church music have always been the property of the church, and therefore they have spiritual ownership over peoples’ lives. Now, when big business owns most of the music and hedge fund managers are buying up Bob Dylan songs and all the rest, you have to ask what is the spiritual value of songs now?

“I’m so interested in what is the other side of this; what language and what ways can we speak of the world beyond our own inner story. The legend of our time is absolutely our own inner world. We’re all encouraged to broadcast our every emotion, songwriters especially. We’re meant to wave the flag of our emotions so boldly, and that’s supposed to be our currency. After a while of doing this, I’m thinking I’m getting more interested in the flagpole than the flag. There’s something beyond that’s worth getting it.”

While Thorpe contents himself with pondering many of the existential questions in life, he’s also a realist. He understands that finding the time and headspace to write and record new music, never mind releasing an album, during a global pandemic. In the uncertainty of post-Brexit Britain, it is an achievement in itself.

“I think this moment does feel like one of the more extreme frontiers of record-releasing, bearing everything in mind,” he says. “The sheer manpower and force of will to bring music out now is significant, so I’m proud that the work has emerged as it has. I’m surprised by the album; it’s unlikely. It’s emerged in unexpected ways and brought me unforeseen adventures, and for that, I’m grateful. In the UK, there’s a kind of crosshair going on with the Brexit situation for musicians and the pandemic; but also, just the cultural landscape, the value system in which music works now. It’s been transformed. The metrics people judge value mean that it’s nothing but bold and chaotic to follow your music into that black hole.

“I believe in songs; their potency, their ability to convert a magical substance within the body,” he states. “It’s also an extraordinary thing to devote most of your waking hours to obtain a level of beauty. That’s not to be too high-minded. It’s a form of utmost expression and, at its fullest realization, a moment of beauty. The dissonance of a functional human being, as well as someone who is entirely entangled with the machinery of making music, is probably the challenge. But the more I make music in my life, things get even simpler, and you don’t need much at all if you have your devotions.”

His live band includes Frank Ocean’s bass player, Ben Reed, drummer Fabian Prynn, and saxophonist Chris Duffin, who, Thorpe says, will allow him to “live out all my Springsteen fantasies.” A tour of Europe and the UK is on the cards for early 2022.

“It’s been four years since I played with a band,” he says. “Our first gig was an extraordinary sensation to feel that music again. I like the practicality and theoretical way of doing gigs, which is me and a laptop going around, but it doesn’t have that virility that I want. I’m going to go forward with this killer band, which is a fabulous thing to be doing. I really want to live this one out properly.”

If Moondust for My Diamond is any indication, it’s sure to be a hell of a trip.