(Brooklyn, NY) The story of Brooklyn born and raised prog-punk band Sister Helen reaches as far back as pre-school for Eva Lawitts (bass/vox) and Clint Mobley (drums). Officially forming in 2003 while the two lifelong friends were in middle school, Sister Helen would add Nathan J. Campbell (lead vox) in 8th grade and Chris Krasnow (guitar/vox) in 10th.
Having lived full lives as DIY musicians, despite still being so young, and with Campbell due to move to Istanbul, Sister Helen is now preparing to release a final, self-titled concept album due out January 13th.
With humble beginnings that stretch from all ages gigs at Liberty Heights Tap Room to present day, Sister Helen has been at the forefront of challenging, underground rock having been a played countless venues come and gone in the ever evolving NYC landscape. Touring the country on self booked tours in recent years, the band hit a collective breaking point having pushed each other to the brink. It was this desperate energy going into the studio knowing they were recording their swan song that informs the dark, dynamic sounds and concepts across the 12 tracks.
Chris Krasnow: With this new record taking the amount of time that it has, it’s slowly starting to seem like a sigh of relief, although it does confuse me to think about the future without Sister Helen
Eva Lawitts: Right now I feel a little relieved to be rid our ridiculous touring schedule, a little sad to be ending a musical project that I feel had so much more potential, and a little confused about every other aspect of the break-up. 15 years is a long time, this is easily the longest relationship of my life so…ask me again in February maybe.
So you are bringing out your self-titled album, are you looking forward to fans hearing it?
EL: I am looking forward to people hearing it, but I guess I’m more looking forward to knowing that people who have always supported us will have something to remember this band by. This album means a lot to us and we took the time to do it right. In that regard, I hope it’s received in a way that makes the effort feel worth it, but I’ll be proud of it no matter what.
CK: I think this is definitely our best album to date, we’re older and more refined. The songs are more refined now too, but they keep the same intensity level that we’re known for.
Tell us a little about the album
CK: Eva and Nathan can tell you more about the concept, but on the production side of things, we took our time trying to really get the album to sound and feel right as opposed to our earlier albums, where school and living in different cities gave us more drastic deadlines. Things sound warmer and more natural on this album.
EL: The concept for the album started forming in 2012 or so, when Nathan started writing lyrics for Sense of Self and Forest Fire. Around that time I had this vague sort of idea that they should be bookends to a concept album. Some of the songs are from all the way back in 2012 and some of them were written during the 2 year period where we were constantly on tour. Between the kinds of things that were inspiring Chris and I, and the lyrics Nathan was naturally writing, the lifestyle we were living, it started to become more apparent what the album was about, and then we started making things more deliberate, adding certain themes, lyrics, interludes, references into the songs on purpose. The album doesn’t really have a narrative, but it circles around two characters, one who is in dire need of help and support, and one who feels helpless in providing that support, and enraged by his own impotence. Different angles of their relationship are examined in each song.
How has the release of ‘Friend’ gone down so far?
EL: It’s going well. Friend was a big departure from pretty much everything else we’ve ever put out, a big stylistic change…it seems like a lot of people were surprised by it. Intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, outro is not our usual M.O., but most of what I’ve seen is positive feedback about the emotional content of it, the power of the chorus and the lyrics and so forth.
So your last show is in Brooklyn in January, how emotional will this be for you guys?
CK: Almost as emotional as the 2015 World Series, fitting to have it at Shea Stadium haaa.
EL: Ha. Depends on how many people show up I guess. I don’t think I can really imagine what it will be like to look out over a crowd and know that the next song we play will be the last time the four of us ever play music together. It’ll probably be bittersweet, like this whole process has been.
What has been your proudest moment as a band?
CK: That time we played a show when we were 19 and everyone in the audience was dancing and jumping off the walls and then everyone took all their clothes off. I honestly think my most recent proudest moment was listening to the final masters of this record.
EL: For me, maybe the first day of our first really big tour…or maybe the day we came home. I felt like after almost a decade, we were finally a “real” band, y’know? I remember being really proud of a show we did at The Drunken Unicorn in Atlanta in 2015. I was delirious with joy working the merch table that night. Maybe I was proudest of the album we put out when we were 15 though, it’s hard to say.
What was your funniest moment?
CK: Definitely every moment on tour off stage. What a funny bunch of guys we are.
EL: Um. One time we got scammed out of some money in Alabama, and we were just having a really bad night. We went to a huddle house somewhere near the Georgia border and we couldn’t stop laughing. Chris said he thought the name of Who Framed Roger Rabbit was “yo, who da FUCK robbert rabbert!?” That might be solidified in my mind as the hardest I’ve ever laughed on tour. We were so tired…
The next day our van broke down in Nashville and we were stranded there for four days. That was funny too.
Is there any chance at all you will reform one day?
CK: Nathan’s just going to Istanbul to smuggle back nice hand hammered ago cymbals, so the quicker his hands are, the faster we’ll return.
EL: On the other hand, Nathan can’t even walk across a room without losing his keys and his wallet and his passport, so it seems unlikely. But the world is chaos and i guess anything is possible
How much does your fans mean to you guys?
CK: A lot. Even if we feel we’ve had some bad shows in our run, the emotional return from our fans is always super high and I’m, happy we can reach them no matter what.
EL: I’ll just say…if you‘ve ever seen us play anywhere, if you‘ve ever listened to our music and thought it was any good, then I owe my life to you.