Say the name “Mark Waldoch,” and Milwaukeeans will recognize the former Atomic Records clerk, a friendly face behind the pine or a poetically gregarious voice onstage, booming over a caterwaul of distorted guitars (or all three).
Waldoch lives and breathes music, particularly the bittersweet goth and Brit rock variety. Backed by his band of musical brothers, undertones of shoegaze, punk and pop shine through his stellar debut full-length that was years in the making. The Hallelujah Ward’s Everybody Swoons puts a pin in a long journey that’s far from over.
In a recent email interview with Waldoch, we delved into the new record, a song that sprung from a “terrible therapist” and what exactly a “hallelujah ward” is.
Catch The Hallelujah Ward at the Leavitt AMP Sheboygan Music Series this Thursday. The free show at the City Green (on the corner of New York Avenue and North 7th Street) starts at 6 p.m.
Your debut took years. How do we get the next album sooner?
If it takes this long to make another album again, it means someone died.
What is Everybody Swoons about at its core?
I don’t think there is an “about at its core” or anything; it’s just a composite of ideas or mosaic of musical pieces quilted together. It’s a cumulative of wherever my head was at when it was time to finish the lyrics.
Where does the title Everybody Swoons come from?
“Death Swooned” (as in the grim reaper swooned). “Death Swoons” (still too “grim,” if you will). ”Everybody Swoons” (hooray).
Songs like “Your Uncertain Shadow” share the stories of late artists like Scott Hutchinson of Frightened Rabbit. What inspired that particular one?
“Your Uncertain Shadow” was started around the time of Scott Hutchinson’s death. His suicide was the impetus of the song, but it’s not really about him. I wrestled with my own depression and my own suicidal thoughts and fight that every day. I was trying to work on myself, and this was a result of one day after meeting a terrible therapist.
Your most enduring relationships are this project’s foundation: Paul Hancock (bass), Dan Didier (drums) and Kevin Dixon (engineer). Though built from heartache, was making these songs with longtime friends comforting?
I don’t think Everybody Swoons would have been conceivable without the comfort and security the company of these gents gave me. That is a gift. They are a gift. These are my people for certain (and thank god).
Did you write this record as a group, creatively?
Yes, absolutely. All for one and one for all. The songs will start with me. The top line, verse and chorus, etc.
What's a "hallelujah ward"?
So glad you asked. You’re the first ever to ask. Really! I suppose it’s an imaginary place, like a wing or sector of an asylum or hospital, perhaps (if your brain was such a building). If I wrote a manifesto to be embossed on a bronze plaque at the threshold of such a place, it would likely say this:
The Hallelujah Ward is a place:
For the angelic troublemakers, the pariah and the pawns.
For the detainees and the waylaid still vibrating from a timbre of an actual everyday honest song.
For those who were unfairly, generationally and fallaciously taught by the cunning and cruel that they are in some way inadequate or incomplete.
A happy place for the ostracized and those branded crazy.
A contented point in space where being touched by madness gets you through the door as well as protects and carries the others around you.
A seeker’s beacon forms a crown of light day or night. And here, oh only here, will the lonesome feel confidently and contagiously loved and safe.
