It could be argued that the ability to feel emotional pain is the defining human quality. Stress, fear, craving, attachment, even joy are all widely shared responses among other forms of life, but with few known exceptions, sorrow appears to be uniquely human. Heartbreak, grief, hopelessness — these aren’t just feelings. To us, they are all-consuming physiological reactions, affecting our bodies as much as our minds.
Sadness is fundamental to the human experience. On some subconscious level, we need it. Why else do we enjoy crying to sad movies and basking in the beautiful melancholia of The Smiths or Leonard Cohen? This is the very stuff the ancient Greeks were seeking with their concept of catharsis. Kurt Cobain called it “the comfort in being sad.”
This embracing of woe is also the main inspiration behind Dream Deleter, a new five-piece post-rock outfit that finally delivers the titanic musical and emotional tone that drummer and founder Jeremy Nelson has been chasing for years.
“It’s exactly what I’ve been wanting to do for a very, very long time,” Nelson said of the group that just played its first show.
He said that musically, “It’s definitely the genre I prefer and the kind of music I like, but more than that, it’s the meaning behind it. It’s from all that I’ve gone through and trying to find who I am again.”
Nelson said he started the project as an outlet to deal with his own emotions. He wanted to express his experiences, the types of challenges shared by all of us — loss of love, loss of loved ones, trials with mental health, a bleak outlook on the future — as a way to process them. An exorcism of sorts.
Though it’s acknowledged that the name Dream Deleter might be a subtle nod to the 2004 surrealist film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which the main character opts for an experimental procedure to remove his memories of a dissolved relationship to save himself the pain of experiencing that loss, Dream Deleter takes the opposite approach. Where Joel choses avoidance, Nelson and Co. intentionally lean fully into that pain. They embrace and employ it. They harness it with all the same focus and intentionality that Erik Satie employed with his piano minuets or that moved Edward Hopper’s brush.
“We all have those experiences where we wish we could erase them from our memory,” Nelson said, “those times when we wake up and wish this wasn’t real or that this thing hadn’t happened, that we could make it go away, but early and often, I would always reinforce, ‘This is why I’m doing this.’ The reason I started this was because I wanted to express these feelings, these emotions. I want the sorrow, the pain, to be present.”
Dream Deleter’s first offering to sit in that dysphoric space is “Reflections.” A video for the track released in October debuted last week. The first single from a forthcoming self-titled EP hits Nelson’s mark for matching weighty feelings with a colossal sound.
“It’s really about looking inwards,” Nelson said of the song’s lyrical content. “It’s about looking at yourself and facing the things we’re afraid of being, things about ourselves that we don’t want to admit or are uncomfortable with, things that, even though we try to avoid them, eventually we have to feel them.”
Nelson, being a drummer, needed to work through other musicians to give life to his vison. He enlisted singer/guitarist Addison White, former frontman of such ethereal and emotive outfits as Keanu Leaves and Mountain Kid. White’s partner in the latter, guitarist Nick Wittwer, joins fellow guitarist/keyboardist Patrick Martin and bassist Ace Salcedo to round out the lineup. The layered ensemble coalesces into an oceanic wash of mournful aural currents.
To say “Reflections” is “heavy” might at first seem a misnomer. The term is more typically applied to gore-inspired grindcore bands or cannabinoid-fueled doom-metal trios. Yet over the experience of listening to the track, as White’s soft, distant melody floats over the echoing guitar pulses and the dreamy verses give way to the rushing wall of sound chorus, pushing and receding, before finally exploding into the song’s monolithic climax, what other word could be appropriate? The full sonic and emotional weight is just as heavy as any of Sleep’s best two-ton drop-tuned, minor blues riffs.
A second single, “Find You Again” is slated for early December before the full EP drops in the spring. A sneak peek at the upcoming four-song effort shows a continuation of Dream Deleter’s voluminous enveloping sound aiming to reach deep into the painful parts of your consciousness. The impact is euphoric.
“People say there’s joy in suffering,” Nelson said. “It sucks to hurt. It’s terrible to feel that pain and sorrow. You can feel like the life is being drained from you, but when you come out on the other side of it, you understand that there’s something to learn from it. It’s almost like a privilege to feel it. It lets you know that you’re alive, that you’re not just some mindless zombie, that you have a soul. Even though it hurts, just that we’re capable of those feelings is a blessing.”
