Andrew St. James Beautifully Mines The Past With “Home Demos, Vol. 1.”
Photo credit: Cesar Maria
What would it be like to have a conversation with your past self? How would you interact with a younger version of your DNA? Would it feel as if you’re talking to a different person altogether?
That was the kind of existential experiment that Andrew St. James recently grappled with while revisiting his vast back catalog of demos and home recordings—some dating back more than a decade.
“When I was going back to listen to these old songs, I would hear this energy there that I still personally react to,” said St. James. “It was nice to remind myself of that person who I was back then—someone who decided to make a life out of playing music as a 17-year-old. It felt special, and it definitely re-inspired me to continue doing this thing.”
St. James, the prolific singer-songwriter whose solo career enmeshes with group projects like Fast Times, Juan Wayne and Lucky, took to his archives this year in an effort to clear out dozens and dozens of previously recorded tracks that never made it to an official album. The result is “Home Demos, Vol. 1” an 11-song compendium released on April 10 that documents in real time the evolution, maturation and growth of a musician coming into his own.
Any collection that draws upon years and years of recorded material is sure to elicit big emotions, but “Home Demos, Vol.1” is particularly profound. That’s due to two primary reasons—the poignant tenderness of St. James’ lyrics and the bravado range of his vocal delivery.
Many of the songs on the album were written when St. James was a teenager or barely into his 20s and that youthful expressiveness is endearingly evident. When you’re young, the stakes are always incredibly high, and St. James conveys that thrilling immediacy throughout the record, most notably in tearjerker ballads like “The Great Divide,” which was written in 2017.
A shadowy and austere fingerpicked acoustic number, that song is an impossibly heartfelt rendition of regret and loss, with St. James pleading out lines such as “I’m sorry if I hurt you / It makes me want to die,” and “I love you all my life / And that’s forever.” (I mean, wow.) With confessions so rough and ragged, the normal recourse would be to keep them hidden forever. St. James is brave enough to finally air them out, nine years after they were first written.
“I was obviously writing and singing that song in an extremely vulnerable state where everything felt like it needed to be stripped down,” said St. James. “That’s one of those songs that I probably wouldn’t write now, but I clearly had these deep, intensely personal feelings at that time. I was drawn to that song now just because it is so personal.”
Adding to the resonance of those pleading words is St. James' voice, a magnificently warbly instrument. Recalling indie folk artists like Saintseneca’s Zac Little and Kristian Matsson of the Tallest Man on Earth, St. James natural register is one of mournful desperation, a craggy appeal that elevates every lyric into the contrasting realms of dire straits or unchecked euphoria. The recordings on the album are all in their infancy period, mostly just demos that have not been mastered—heightening the unvarnished and raw sentimentality of the songs.
While the album is deeply intense, St. James clearly had some fun with these songs. He elongates every vowel to ridiculously cheeky lengths on the Supertramp-indebted “Nobody Else,” and he caterwauls like the great Hamilton Leithauser on the jaunty waltz “Reasons,” which, at just two years old is the newest track on the album.
While St. James has been consistently writing music since he was a youngster—releasing his first solo album, “Doldrums,” while he was still in high school—over the past several years he’s devoted most of his professional career to collaborative efforts, from the desert rock trappings of Juan Wayne to the Strokes-inflected Fast Times to the alt-country leanings of Lucky, his most recent endeavor.
While St. James said those partnerships have been deeply rewarding, they also impelled him to revisit his back catalog. His last solo release, the wonderfully nostalgic “Light After Darkness,” was released nearly five years ago, an unexpectedly lengthy break between records.
“I made this choice when I was a teenager that this is what I was going to do,” said St. James. “There have been some successes, and maybe some failures, but it’s brought me to all these amazing different places and I’ve had so many great experiences. I made this agreement with myself when I was young that I would stay committed to this, and, in the past couple of years I’ve really been focused on playing with others in bands. That’s been great, but it’s also taken me away from the kind of thing I wanted to do when I first started, which is to put out music under my own name. You know, I’ve gone too far down this road to not honor all the time and effort I put into making my own music.”
As evidenced by the Vol. 1 name on this batch of albums, St. James has plenty more songs to release. He’s planning on putting out at least two more compilations of older material while continuing to work on new music. By drawing down on that backlog, he can renew his focus on songwriting—a sort of creative clearing of the cobwebs. St. James said he hopes to issue some of those newly penned songs for a proper album later this year.
When that new release comes out, it will add to a sprawling and impressive inventory, reflecting that vow St. James made to himself when he was just a kid—to see this life through as a creative person.
“I’m hoping I don’t overload people with all this music, but I think I need to put everything out at this point,” said St. James. “I’m looking to get as much done as possible. It’s funny, because I’ve been doing this so long, but this is a way of giving me a little more courage, I guess, with my personal output. I’m ready to put myself out there again.”
Andrew St. James “Home Demos, Vol.1” is available for purchase on Bandcamp here.