Lonely and Touch-Starved? serpentwithfeet Has The Cure

Riddled between caressing falsettos and honeyed harmonies are profound words that hold your heart hostage. He fills electronic and R&B soundscapes with sometimes giddy, oftentimes sorrowful, but always soulful lyricism that refuses to leave a stone unturned.

But when we chat through Zoom, serpentwithfeet makes it clear that the lyrical trails he leaves are not entirely reflective of his own life. His upcoming album, GRIP, is “not autobiographical,” he says, and neither was the last one. None of his work is.

Instead of merging the intricate paths of his psyche into the music, GRIP focuses on a more visceral, lust-filled, haze of yearning for someone’s touch. Fixating on closeness and desire, serpentwithfeet narrates a thirst for intimacy, pleasure and connection.


VICE: I saw you perform at Phoenix Central Park in Sydney a couple months ago. You could hear a pin drop in that room – it was one of the most intimate concert experiences I've ever had. Do you feel like that's something that you naturally generate?

I think I'm always interested in creating as much connection as possible in the time that we have, in the space that we have. That's always an intention for sure. My goal is always the same. Whether it's just me on piano and drums or if it's me and seven other people on stage with lights and costumes, I'm always trying to establish a strong connection with the audience as much as I can and break that fourth wall as much as possible.

Your music feels naturally intimate. You can feel that from the first listen, it’s very vulnerable. Is that something that comes organically to you? Or did you have to learn to open up?

It's pretty natural for me. The art of it comes from learning how to be concise and focused so it's not just me spilling my heart out. It's about trying to establish familiarity with the audience to really get clear on what my agenda with each song is, what my big "so what?" is. At the baseline, I just want to be transparent.

Do you consider yourself a private person outside of music?

Yeah, I do think I'm private. I feel like I can share a lot of myself without getting into the details.

What can you share about the upcoming project GRIP? When did the vision and concept start to reveal itself to you?

The concept has been something I've been thinking about for a few years now. GRIP and Heart of Brick, the live theatrical dance show that I've been touring alongside it, I always knew that I wanted them to be complimentary works. So when working on the album I was thinking about different scenes that I knew that I wanted to have in the show, and working on the show I was thinking about what I wanted to do with the album. So they went hand in hand with each other, which was a very new, exhilarating and rewarding process for me. I've been thinking about it all for years.

Something I wanted to ask about was the intention behind queer storytelling. In some ways, there's a homogenised way of telling queer stories in the mainstream. Is there a certain way you try to honour and tell those stories?

I consider myself to be a full person. Hopefully I succeed some of the time, but I do my best to express my fullness as much as I can. So I think I start there. But everybody's different, y’know, another artist who identifies as a black, queer man, might express their fullness differently. It depends on the artist. For me, I'm inspired by film, TV. I love books and poetry and novels and something I've always loved is the stage, dance, theatre. Especially now with this album.

So because of that, I hope there's something for different people. If you love the theatre, there's something for you. If you love the club, I have something for you. If you want a pensive song, I also have that. I try to make it as full as possible, and if it's done its job, it will meet a diverse group of people.

What was the most confronting thing about making the album?

This album is more sensual than my past projects. It's more immediate. There's this quote that I love from Jazz, a novel by Toni Morrison. It goes something like:

"Songs that used to start in the head and fill the heart had dropped on down, down to places below the sash and the buckled belts. Lower and lower, until the music was so lowdown you had to shut your windows and just suffer the summer,".

It's a beautiful line in the book. I feel like a lot of my early music was concerned with the heart and the mind, and trying to make sense of my environment and the love or hurt I'm experiencing. I was trying to negotiate all of that with the mind and the heart. With this project, I was more concerned with the body. How does the body feel? What does the body want? A lot of the songs, even the most pensive song on the album, is about missing somebody's kiss. So I was really concerned with the body. That’s been the biggest, new challenge.

I’m curious, what's your love language? 

All of them. But I think it varies from day to day. As I get older, as much as I love talking and as much as I love waxing poetic, I'm less interested in words of affirmation. There are other things that I feel are a bit more tangible. I think it's easy to shower folks with words and I love words, I love language. But I think it depends on the day.

How do you best honour your experiences with love in the music?

What I hope to do is let my imagination run freely. I like to keep my private

life, private. A lot of the work I do is about the imaginative world. I like to think I'm a pretty observant person, I'm pretty sensitive. I try to collect data from day-to-day life, and have that live in me so when it's time to work I can imagine something new, something that is more than the sum of its parts. So I think I honour it by keeping the things that are really sacred to me private. But, also, I think it's just more fun to imagine something that could be distant or adjacent to my life, and giving myself the freedom to explore. I think it keeps me supple and young and full of breath.

That leads me to Heart of Brick, and the concept of utilising performance and storytelling to translate your music. Tell me about that production, and everything that encompasses it.

Heart of Brick is anchored by the music that is on GRIP. It's a love story about my character, Serpent, and the bouncer or club security guard and co-owner, whose name is Brick. It's a story about trust, where Brick and I have to learn to trust each other. There's a lot of navigating trust issues in the show. 

I was interested in thinking about my time at the club, specifically clubs that cater to black gay people and black queer people, and how it's such a wondrous and transformative experience. My time out at clubs raised me a second time. I wanted to not make a show that makes the club a utopia, but to explore the mysticism and magic that can occur there. I wanted to push the club to the edge of the universe as much as I could.

What was your favourite part about making the album?

The collaboration. I worked with so many wonderful producers, so many different people that help breathe life into this album. It was fun to sort of crack the code of each song, and figure out how to make it cohesive. And ,also, the laughter and meals that were shared in the process. Ordering food and staying up til 3am trying to figure out a song. That, for me, just brought so much joy. I think that was my favourite part.

Do you get nostalgic often?

I think initially, when the moment is over, I think, wow, that was really great. But then there's always something new to work on. Now, I'm preparing for next year and the next batch of work I have to do. Something I've learned is when you work with really great people, and you have great synergy, there will always be more. It's not the end.

What do you hope people take away from GRIP once it's out?

I hope that they can recall a time when someone's touch transformed them for the better. Or, hopefully, they can recall a time when their touch transformed somebody else for the better. And if they haven't experienced either, I hope they can imagine a time when touch – loving, caring, sensitive, consensual, gentle touch, could transform them with someone else.

’GRIP’ by serpentwithfeet will release on February 16, 2024.


Adele is the Junior Writer & Producer for VICE AU/NZ. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter here.

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