LISA CUTHBERT
Irish singer-songwriter gets lost in darkness
if you’re into gothic and doom rock/metal, there’s a chance that you’ve seen Lisa Cuthbert onstage before. The Irish-born singer who now lives in Berlin has featured as guest vocalist for
Sisters Of Mercy, Draconian and Helevorn before releasing her last solo album, Hextapes – now rereleased on vinyl – in 2016.
Having been diagnosed with PTSD shortly beforehand, the record was Lisa’s attempt to focus solely on herself and her healing process. Recorded and produced within her home and shelter with limited resources and engineering skills, the result is deeply personal, organic and genuine.
“I decided to make an album using what I had and I released it as it was because I just fell in love with it that way,” explains the singer. “I wanted to capture everything that I was living at the time – my mood and the atmosphere in the room where
I was kind of hiding away from the world. It was like making a painting of where I was in terms of sound.”
As a result, Hextapes uses samples of different ambient noises, like the wind howling outside Lisa’s windows or rain falling down to earth.
This mode of practice isn’t the only parallel to Chelsea Wolfe you’ll find in the work and career of the Irishwoman; drones and psychedelia were also later additions to Lisa Cuthbert’s cosmos. Her 2013 debut album, Paramour, contained polished piano-pop that had little to do with the current heyday of spiritual and ritualistic music. “I wouldn’t be surprised if people who like Paramour would absolutely hate Hextapes. To be honest, I don’t like the album anymore,” she admits in regard to working with producers who banished reverb and experimentations in order to make an album that could keep up with industry standards.
“With Hextapes, I didn’t want to be controlled by the question if someone wants to put their name on an album or whether or not it’s gonna sell. Because it wasn’t about selling, it was about creating it.”