Like Pulling Teeth – Clawing´s new album Labour and a talk with Matt Finney

Finney´s poems exist as the sound of his voice. Forming the band Clawing with Austin Gaines and Jeff McLeod the artist released the album Spectral Estate (Dullest Records) in early March and shortly thereafter a very different album, Gospel with the composer Sivash Amini on Opal Tapes. Now Clawing have blessed us with yet another release, the 30-minute epic Labour tackling the pandemic of addiction in a personal and yet surrealist way. Moving to dark music aficionado label Grey Matter Productions for this and fittingly releasing on Halloween, Clawing as a band also sees the addition of new members T. Platt, J. James and K. Miller to the mix. 

In between the terrifying soundscapes of his fellow artists Finney´s voice surfaces like speech beyond language. In Spectral Estate Finney, blurs the lines between reality and dream, visions and fears constitute a perception impregnated by sexual abuse and depression. On Gospel, these terrors step into the light. Explicitly and in the frame of his own #metoo, Finney speaks about the sexual transgression suffered at the hand of his father. The shattered voice of clarity of a victim, going all out and stepping into a life after the fact within the soundscapes of Amini. Therapy becomes audible here, a conversation of the musicians and Finney, mutual amplification, unsettling and wounding each other in the name of processing trauma. Finney mentions Raymond Carver (1938-88) as an inspiration – a representative of the realism that was tagged “dirty” – and by this steps into the genre itself. Nonetheless, his collaborations and the transgressions of sounds and words remain the pulsing vein of his oeuvre. A high-school dropout, simultaneously reading Bukowski as well as experiencing universal emotional resonance in the work of rappers like Kevin Gates.

With Labour, the hauntscapes of Clawing take yet another turn. Spelling out the connection to the meth pandemic plaguing the south and making its peculiar way into Finney´s own family, the scope of Spectral Estate, trudging between waking and dreaming takes another liminal turn, morphing into the deceptive realism of drug addiction and coping with the destruction of self and surroundings. Sleep or the lack thereof find their way back into the mix, but the most jarring feature lyrically and sonically is the insomniac act of digging a hole.

The character in Labour contemplates life in a way of sacrifices within the act of digging a hole. Starting off in an organic field of drones and field recordings, even with some Tool-ish guitar (think Parabola) blending with folk feeling, the aural fissure begins with rattles breaching what feels aquatic and resolute. After a short silence and by means of soundplay, the first sounds of a shovel hitting the ground appear and build the aural plotline of Labour throughout. The visceral soundscapes, from being open-ended and ghostly to becoming grating industrial beats played with sticks and stones mark the steps of a slow descent, elongating the disintegration of a slow suicide. On Labour and with the addition of three more musicians, Clawing as a band have grown and become more expressive in their approach. It is hard to discern which elements are contributed by whom, but every detail furthers the narrative and a sense of loss in the sounds. Going with the reverence of David Lynch and the collaborative spirit of Matt Finney, Labour plays as the unified vision of a team of directors, writers and editors working on both the pilot and final episode of a series on the newest plagues haunting America. Now Gaines, McLeod, Gaines, Platt, James, Miller and Finney emerge as the sad iteration of Slipknot, constructing a life-world to exist in, for us to listen and at least by sound spectate to the man-made pitfall of addiction, maddeningly dug until the nails bleed and "no one sees you anymore". 

As a continuing conversation over the last few months, I had the privilege of talking to Matt Finney about his first inspirations and gain deeper insights into his work. Luckily, Finney never loses a certain sense of irony when stepping into a world that might become graspable through his words, but only becomes a felt reality-of-self through listening to these haunting soundscapes.

1. Why poetry? How did you come to record poems, go from writing to speaking words in combinations to sounds?

Matt Finney: I think it's mostly because writing exhaust me. I put so much into it and I slave over every line, I don't know if I could manage writing longer works. I've tried in the past and I just get restless. In the middle of it, I'll come up with some lyric and need to run with before they vanish. It's the quickest way to pack a punch. I got introduced to poetry around 8th grade. I was really into emo music and the band Thursday. I became obsessed with their album War All the Time. I found out that it was named after a Charles Bukowski book, then I became obsessed with him. If we're talking about what hooked me on lyrics/poetry it was probably Kurt Cobain. It seems his music was always in my life and he's what turned me onto really listening to lyrics despite everything going on around the music.

2. Do you have anything close to a role model or someone you look up to in your poetry? Maybe something from the authors or things you read?

MF: Absolutely! The older I got the more I drifted away from Bukowski. A lot of people worship him but I found solace in the writing of Raymond Carver. His work hit me like a sledgehammer. It was so deceptively simple, I couldn't believe the beauty in it. The more you read it the more it rings true. His work breaks my heart and makes me strive to be half the writer he is. I'm also a really big fan of Margaret Atwood. People know her from her novels but her poetry is breathtaking as well. If people like the kind of stuff that I do I'd recommend Richmond Fontaine to them. The songwriter Willy Vlautin is a genius as well and he has some really great novels out there.

3. Did the projects with Clawing and Siavash have a therapeutic effect on you?

MF: They were incredibly therapeutic, a catharsis! All of these currents were running through my music for years, some of them popping up since about 2009 when Finneyerkes was just starting. Looking back across all of my projects, I didn't have the right words for it then. I might not have them now either. But I felt like I was being crushed beneath the weight of it and was on the verge of taking my life if I didn't. I talked it over with Siavash and he agreed to help me and I believe in the process he exorcized some demons of his own. It is a gift to have a collaborator and brother like him. As for Clawing, I kind of blurred the lines somewhere between real life and dream. Very much inspired by David Lynch. Gospel with Siavash is probably the most personal of all of my projects. It's both of us committing, sinking or swimming together, it’s the one where I don't pull any punches. Heinali (i.e. How We Lived, released 2017 on The Flenser) is someone I trust completely. He's my brother as well and it's very much like two surrealist painting on the same canvas. Riding the vibe of each other, especially lately. A lot of agonizing goes into it, but this allows the most freedom out of all of the projects.

4. Do you think that you could take your writing into a different non-personal direction in the future? Is there the possibility of finding content and peace with your haunts and being able to write after it?

MF: I’ve been trying my hand at writing a novel, but it's like pulling teeth. It’s about life in a small town, not a huge of a jump from what I do with my lyrics. Think the work of Kent Haruf but everyone is on meth. It would be difficult for me to write something that I wasn't attached to. Even the things that aren't directly about my life the Angels tape I did with It Only Gets Worse are personal. We're doing one about the life and death of Jackson Pollock, and it feels one hundred personal to me. I have to have a stake in all of it or I won't be able to get two words out. I don't know if I buy into the whole suffering artist thing, but I also know I’ve only ever been happy in fleeting moments. It never lasts too long. I think I might be afraid of ever not being depressed. But don’t worry everyone, I will always be a miserable bastard.

5. Going with your work on a novel in contrast to your work in collaboration with other musicians: Is there a sound to your novel? In other words, does working on your own leave a sonic gap in your written words?

It's funny you should mention if there is sound to my novel. I'm about 50 pages deep into it at the moment and there are a few songs that I name drop. It's mostly a book about my mother's life. She's lived a hard one but it's also about what it's like growing up in the South and trying to make a life down here when there isn't really much of anything. Most of the songs are references to the kind of music she loved. Elvis, George Jones, that song "Last Date" by Floyd Cramer. When I hear it I think of my mom because whenever it would come on the country station she'd stop whatever she was doing and get lost in it. It meant that much to her. There's also some gospel music. My dad really liked r&b, the Commodores, in particular, so I'm trying to cover the important stuff. I hope when you're reading it you can hear the sounds of cicadas, a breeze through a screen door, radio stations turning to static because you're too far out in the sticks. I don't know about a sonic gap but I hope it's as close to my lyrics as possible. I wanted it to tell the story as simply and as plainly as I could without a whole lot of fuss. I'm crossing my fingers about it.

6. How do drugs and alcohol play a role in your life? Is there a relation to drug use and your hometown, the living conditions there? I myself come from a fairly rural area in the south of Germany and despite many people believing in a life in harmony with nature and away from the evil city, people here pop a lot of pills and binge drink like crazy from an early age.

MF: I’ve never actually done drugs. In high school I'd steal medication from my mom on occasion, just to sleep, never to get high. I’ve had difficulty sleeping ever since I was a child. I’d go for years on end off of just a few hours. I needed something so that's what I ended up with. Not proud of it and it's still something I struggle with now. I mostly just try various cheap sleeping pills. My dad was a heavy drinker and a pill popper. Alcoholism and addiction run in the family, so it's not a big surprise that I never felt compelled to try anything to be creative or escape. I have a mom who is very, very anti-drugs and alcohol and I just never wanted her to see me as weak. That’s how she described all of that to us. As a weakness. So that's what I associate with it. It’s funny you should mention drug epidemics. We definitely have our share of folks drinking as if they're cast members of Deadwood, but the big plague here is meth. It has ruined so many lives here. Where I live, you can't go into a gas station without running into a hollowed out meth addict clenching his teeth and wincing. That Angels album was written about a meth addict, close to where I lived, who killed his family. But yeah, I write everything sober! I haven't touched a drop of alcohol since I was 16 years old.

7. You revisit meth addiction on Labour from a different standpoint now. The metaphor of digging a hole is a striking way to tackle addiction, surreal and physical at the same time. With your experiences of meth addiction hitting close to home and in your everyday life, is there still empathy for addicts left in you?

It's all been beaten out of me, honestly. I know people around here who have sold their children for this shit. There was a local news report here a couple days about dealers painting meth like candy and giving it out to kids for Halloween. I can't get my mind around it. I understand addiction, I know it's a disease, but still, meth heads are the biggest pieces of shit to walk this earth. It's ravaged my home and people I know. I'm too close to it.

8. Do you have a favorite painter and/or filmmaker? What are the visuals that are the most intriguing to you and what has stuck with you?

MF: Jackson Pollock and David Lynch are up there. No answers to be found in any of their work, but they touch my soul in ways that others just can't. I was never really an art guy until I saw Pollock's work and it led to people like Rothko and Magritte and Miro. I´d end up staring a lot more artwork for inspiration to get lost in rather than in other writers. The older I get the more I take from Lynch's style. Never really being coherent, going for a feeling more than really making sense.

9. There was the compilation of your poetry named "Loss". Would you ever be willing to publish your work again? And further into that, would you consider publishing the lyrics of your albums as separate poems or do you feel that these words shouldn´t be entangled from the soundscapes?

MF: It was weird putting that out there and it's still weird thinking of ever publishing something with just my name on it. I love the excitement of collaboration so much, it'd be hard to break that cycle! Currently, I'm working on a zine with my friend Christian Degn Petersen, an incredible artist out of Utah. Mindblowing stuff! We’re doing a project where I send him poems and he provides illustrations. Going back and forth between these two forms. I’m really excited about it and I need to get off my ass and get to writing. It would feel weird publishing those writings separate from the music. I wrote them for these guys and they're too tangled up for just me taking center stage. I don't think anyone who is listening to these incredible composers is doing it to hear me; I´m lucky to be working with them.