Photo by Kendall Bailey
Daughter of Swords, the solo folk project of Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, seems to exist on two planes with her May 2019 debut Dawnbreaker. On the first is just her voice, which delicately hits falsettos and stretches to meet notes you might’ve thought would be out of reach. It’s airy, but smooth and sweet, then settles like dust. Her hum sounds like it comes from the deepest pit of a human’s core. With these vocal variations, she creates melodies that feel like a road trip or a board game. Some are urgent, fun, with a story that needs to get told; Others are easier to wade within.
Once Sauser-Monnig mesmerizes you with these melodies, perfect folk twang, and voice, you’ll hear the second plane: her songwriting. Notice the repeating imagery of the outdoors: grass, mountains, snow, sand, pine. Her ability to hone in on a muse’s details breaks through on songs like “Shining Woman.” She’s somehow able to pinpoint these universally human feelings: a heartbroken realization in “Fellows,” a quiet pain in “Grasses,” a yearning for comfort in “Human.” These planes sit side by side, inevitably melding into each other where the album hits the strongest, like songs “Gem” and “Dawnbreaker” among others. On top of it all, the music of Daughter of Swords keeps it simple, where light production on her album only enhances the early-morning-dreamlike acoustic existence of Sauser-Monnig’s first official project outside of traditional folk trio Mountain Man, for which she’s known, singing alongside Molly Sarlé and Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath.
Ahead of her show on Tuesday, February 11th at Great Scott, Allston Pudding chatted with Alex about Dawnbreaker imagery, stumbling upon the tarot card that inspired her project name, and the specialness of folk music. Read our interview with Daughter of Swords below.
Photo by Kendall Bailey
Allston Pudding: Where are you on tour right now?
Alexandra Sauser-Monnig: It has yet to begin. I was in the UK for a week, and I got home on Friday and have the week at home. And then, tour starts Saturday.
AP: Oh, good, so you get a little time to recoup and then you’re out on the road again.
ASM: Exactly.
AP: How do you stay sane when you’re traveling?
ASM: Oh, great question. I try to exercise regularly. Meditate if I have the time. I like to find co-ops. If not a co-op then a Whole Foods or something to just make sure I have good food that I can eat while I’m traveling. And those are the main things that help me feel like I’m not completely losing myself into the tour vortex.
AP: Co-ops can be the best, they’re a little small slice of home.
ASM: Yeah, there’s something relaxing about walking up and down the aisles of the grocery store.
AP: What’s your favorite tour snack?
ASM: A head of butter lettuce.
AP: What music are you listening to right now?
ASM: Oooh, I’m listening to a record from the ’70s called Cobalt Hour by a Japanese pop singer named Yumi Arai. What else am I listening to? I have been listening to this Jon Hassel record called Vernal Equinox which is like, very far out music where a lot of the elements are sounds of the ocean and animals in the rainforest, with additional synthesizers and trumpets and stuff. It’s really good. And then also a record from this woman named Joanna Brouk, that’s also beautiful, kind of ambient, very peaceful music from the 80’s, I think.
AP: Very cool. Anything more modern or local to where you’re from?
ASM: Yeah! I’ve been listening to that new Wye Oak song “Fortune” and the Dead Tongues, who I’m going on tour with, just put out a cool new jam today. It’s really good. And I’ve also been listening to, this isn’t local, but the new Aldous Harding record that came out earlier this year has been in heavy rotation in my household.
AP: Love Aldous Harding! Do you read? What are you reading right now?
ASM: I just re-read the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
AP: That’s… amazing. I’m a huge LOTR fan.
ASM: Oh, good! And then my friend Nathaniel Russell, who’s a visual artist, just recommended the David Lynch memoir called Room to Dream, and I just downloaded that and had just started listening to that on my airplane ride back to the states last week.
AP: Do you have creative outlets besides music?
ASM: I do. I love to garden, and I love to draw, and I love to knit, like sweaters and mittens and hats and stuff like that.
AP: That’s great! I also love gardening! What made you decide you wanted to create a solo album?
ASM: I’d been writing a bunch of songs for several years, and had kind of dipped out of touring and recording after being a backup singer with Mountain Man for Feist. I’d been farming and working at a public library, and doing other things and kept feeling like all of those things were really interesting and I was learning so much from all of those other paths in life, but they didn’t feel quite right in the way that writing songs and singing felt right. So I’ve been accumulating all of these songs that I hadn’t recorded and I felt like it was time.
AP: How does it differ from your work with Mountain Man?
ASM: I think that’s a really good question that I’m still figuring out the answer to.
AP: I mean, I don’t know when you wrote everything, but it feels so new. You might need time to chill with it.
ASM: Yeah, I think Mountain Man and my solo record were getting made at the same time. I guess maybe the best answer is, it felt like there was an arc to my solo record that I could identify through the songs that I had already recorded and the songs that I had planned to add to the record. And if the song fit into what I felt like was the arc of the record, I made it a solo song, and if it didn’t, I made it a Mountain Man song or put it on the backburner for something else.
AP: How did you land on “Daughter of Swords”?
ASM: I was shuffling through a tarot deck and pulled that card. The card, when I read about it, resonated with me as I was looking at the image and reading about it. I thought, “That’s a cool band name and I think I’m going to use it.”
AP: What about it resonated with you?
ASM: It’s this image of this warrior standing on the edge of a cliff summoning horses made out cloud vapors made out of the sky, and it’s about not letting yourself be held back by your own inhibition and just being brave.
AP: I love that so much. What excites you about your album Dawnbreaker?
ASM: Having a creative endeavor that you really commit to feels so much extra. Like, life is already so crazy for everyone. Just meeting our basic needs and going to work is already so much to do. So I feel, as a person who tends to procrastinate, really proud of having made this thing come to fruition and having collaborated on it with a lot of friends and musicians that I really respect and admire. And having pulled it together and having it be out in the world for other people to experience feels really cool.
AP: I feel like that’s something a lot of people can relate to. Just like, my friends and other artists who I’ve talked to.
ASM: Yeah, like life is already crazy, and then to conceive of an idea and… make it happen. *laughs* It takes a lot of work. It’s gratifying and exciting as well as being a lot of work.
AP: What is some imagery that you love to include in your songwriting?
ASM: The natural world is a major source of inspiration to me. It seems to be where all of my songwriting goes. I guess, forests. The outdoors are really compelling and so rich with metaphor and symbolism.
AP: How did you make the music video for “Dawnbreaker”?
ASM: I wrote a treatment for it. And then made it with a friend in Durham who’s a filmmaker named DL Anderson. Basically it was just the two of us, and then my friend Molly Sarlé, who has a solo record out this year and who’s also in Mountain Man, helped me a little with making some things happen. There were a lot of weird crafts involved. I went to the thrift store and found a mountain of suitcases, and borrowed my friend’s truck, and got a lot of tinsel. We were able to go shoot in some botanical gardens here in North Carolina, which felt really special because it was peak springtime blooming. So, all the shots of flowering trees were at this botanical garden. It felt like a scavenger hunt, or a treasure hunt around town, like, “We need a body of water. I think that this swimming hole might work,” and “Maybe we can shoot the scene in the truck in my driveway.” It was really fun.
AP: It looked really fun! There are so many different types of scenes.
ASM: Yeah, it felt like a big art project.
AP: Totally! How did you find your way to becoming a musician?
ASM: I grew up hanging out at my parents’ music store in Minnesota.
AP: Well, that makes it easy.
ASM: Yeah, they started it together when they were like twenty, fresh out of college. It was down the street from my kindergarten, so I grew up hanging out there and trying to learn how to play instruments. My whole family is really musical. My mom plays the flute professionally and my dad plays guitar. So it was just around.
AP: Do you play a lot of different instruments, too?
ASM: I wish that I did. I feel like singing and writing songs feels like the part of music that I connect to the most. I just play guitar. I would love to learn some other instruments.
AP: You’ve got time.
ASM: I’ve got time! Definitely.
AP: Kinda segueing from that, I feel like singing and writing songs are the two cornerstones of folk music. So I wanted to ask, why is folk music important to you?
ASM: It’s the thing that has come the most naturally. I think the human voice is the original instrument. There’s something that I really respond to, when I just hear human voices, especially voices in harmony. It touches a primal nerve. Folk music and choral music are two of the most powerful, most easily, emotionally resonant forms of music for me.
AP: I’ve got to agree with you on that, for sure. I was at Newport this past year, and that’s how it is. You can’t describe it to anyone else, because that’s all it is. I know you were at Newport with Mountain Man this year. Do you think you’ll be there again?
ASM: Yes! I hope so.
See Daughter of Swords with the Dead Tongues at Great Scott this Tuesday, February 11th. Grab tickets here (18+). Stream Dawnbreaker via bandcamp below.