Editor’s Note: This interview was
conducted as a conversation between
friends
and
does
not
intend
to
present an objective viewpoint or the
perspective of The Michigan Daily.
Ever since I heard Lily Talmers
sing “Hope, You Whore” live at 707
Lawrence St. in March of 2021, I have
counted down the days until I could
hear it again. Still a socially distanced
and masked show, the song made all
barriers fall and removed inhibitions;
people began dancing — in their
squares, mostly, but I recall about
five attendees who linked hands
and started turning in a manner
resemblant
of
Matisse’s
iconic
painting, “Dance.” The melody of that
song would be stuck in my head for
weeks.
I had met Talmers previously that
semester when I interviewed her
on the release of her debut album
Remember Me As Holy, and I grew
enamored with everything she made —
her heartbreakingly beautiful lyrics,
the curation behind every melody
and the wisdom behind every silence.
Since, Talmers has become my most
listened to artist on the 2021 Spotify
Wrapped, a music collaborator and a
good friend.
It only made sense for me to
follow up on the recent release of
her sophomore album, one I had
been waiting for since I heard that
hypnotizing melody on a still-too-
cold
Saturday
afternoon.
From
her apartment in Brooklyn, New
York, Talmers revealed in a virtual
interview with The Michigan Daily
the ins and outs of her latest record,
Hope is The Whore I Go To, which
she released on July 29. I asked her
about the recording process, where
she
found
inspiration
and
most
importantly: Why hope, and why is
she a whore?
She explained that there is a Balkan
saying that describes the state of mind
in which people wait passively and
continuously for something better —
longing for a different job, a problem
to be solved, a lover to love more
strongly. The saying, “hope is the
greatest whore,” refers to the human
condition in which one waits for the
world to change — nothing but a futile
attitude that leads to frustration and
wasted time.
Talmers, a Michigander herself,
said the concept for the album
happened naturally, as a result of the
effects of the pandemic on her life.
She said, “(The album) is like, spurts
of hope and spurts of something
getting better or even being better
finally, and then a sort of eventual
letdown or realization that what you
idealize is not coming to fruition.”
In
those
years
of
global
unprecedented
changes,
Talmers
resolved to channel all her emotions
into
music.
While
studying
at
the University of Michigan, the
Birmingham-born
singer
recorded
and released two EPs. Her first
studio record, Remember Me As
Holy was released in March of 2021
and was composed of songs such as
“Maybe It’s Madness,” “No Woman”
and “Middle of America,” where she
writes about the throes of living in the
Midwest, feeling small in the vastness
of it all and the itching desire to be
remembered as something good.
I knew that whatever Lily Talmers
released next was going to surprise
me, and she did not disappoint.
Her latest record is a mélange of
impulses. One couldn’t pin it down
in a genre, an era or a region. It is as
cosmopolitan as it is crude — lyrics
unfold
like
honeysuckle
flowers,
while the sound of drums faintly
resembles the stomping of feet on
a wooden floor in Greece. It is the
world in the palm of her hand. Hints
of L.A. Americana — the Blake Mills
and Madison Cunningham type — of
Brazilian Bossa Nova and of French
Cabaret abound.
She
said,
“There’s
a
sort
of
reductionist
view
(that)
folk
music or indie music is like being
indiscriminately
sad,
and
I
like
the way that this music is deeply
sorrowful and grieving and disturbed
in certain moments. But it’s also
driving and groovy and exciting. I feel
proud of this music because it’s not
like a sort of simplification of itself, or
like, you can’t pin it down in a certain
way. And I think that represents my
life, my inner life as a musician and
as someone who is moved by music,
and it represents what I listened to
in a different way than the stuff I’ve
written before.”
Composed of 10 songs, Hope is the
Whore I Go To is a perfect voyage of
emotions. One can sway with “Hope,
You Whore” and forget the weight of
every word, every silence, every jolt.
She sings: “To the rhythm of your
interest, I will easily unfold / And
make you promise to remember me
as good” — in a nod to her incessant
desire to remain kindly thought of.
One is placed in a climactic movie
scene with “Hope is a Human” — the
strings vacillating, as if someone
was making you spin until your
surroundings became blurry. One can
dance with “Life’s So Fun” while the
world goes up in flames. It is ironic,
satirical. It is the epitome of life.
She encounters hope again in “Hope
at Table, Talking Shop (La Solitude),”
and she addresses her as a loving
whore. Talmers describes hope as “a
mirror of versions of yourself that
you want to inhabit.” Throughout the
album, her conception of hope ebbs
and flows, but ultimately, like the
human she is, remains unpredictable.
In the aforementioned song she sings:
“She’ll embrace you for a moment,
then she’ll turn and kill the mood /
With some heinous imposition, like
‘I thought you understood’.” And
yet, like in her song, “Saudades (Over
Now)”, she says that “she doesn’t mind
at all to hear about the lonely troubles
I run into.” Talmers confesses that
she always returns to hope at the end
of the day, in hopes of being told that
it will be alright.
“I’m really propelled by my hope in
and love for other people, and that I’m
always in cycles of being disappointed
and that there’s a resilience that you
develop in going on that journey, but
sometimes it’s too much and you have
to write about your grief,” she stated.
The
pandemic
propelled
these
thoughts that she turned into poetry.
This period of time, nonetheless,
also played a part in the magnitude
with
which
her
sound
matured
from her first album to the second.
She mentioned that Remember Me
as Holy was recorded in the midst
of the pandemic, at a time when
performing the songs live was almost
inconceivable — making it a much
more stripped-down and intimate
album than her latest one.
Yearning for performance, Talmers
and her incredible band recorded
Hope is the Whore I Go To fully
live.
Composed
of
various
U-M
alumni, including Geoffrey Brown,
Ian Eylanbekov, David Ward, Aidan
Cafferty and Ben Green, Lily Talmers
brought music to life, literally — “I
trusted that impulse and kind of
wrote down exactly what I thought
should happen in the song.”
Photos courtesy of Lily Talmers
“I’m kind of against perfectionism.
Like, if a record is a remnant of my
life as a musician, then it should be
authentic to that and then willing to
like, if there’s like a vocal mistake,
then that’s what happened. It’s fine.”
Most of these musicians contributed
to her previous record, which has
resulted in a conjunct sonic growth
that is clearly palpable in every song.
These one-take songs reflect a mode
of songwriting and producing that
clearly enlightens the talent of each
and every person involved in the
project. “We didn’t make a lot of those
very sterile momentary decisions. It
was much more holistic as a whole,
which is kind of the best way, I find,
to do music, and also the best way that
I can think about what I want from a
song,” Talmers said. She mentioned
that she felt “much more righteous
and free” with songs being “more
technically demanding of me as a
musician.”
With this record, Lily Talmers
leaves the Midwest and makes the
world her backyard, in what feels like
the homiest and most intimate patch
of earth. There’s no room in this
record for monotony. It will make you
celebrate that you’re alive, and then
make you cry for just the same reason.
It is not anonymous. It is grandiose
but not brutalist; it is frustrated but
not self-deprecating. It’s a cinematic
opening, a folkloric village scene, a
sweet lullaby, a soulfully defeated
chant.
Hope is the Whore I Go to
is
exquisite
storytelling;
a
live
performance;
a
one-on-one;
a
confessional; the things we cling
to; the search for answers; solace
in solitude; the life of the party. Yet
another incredible album by an artist
whose trajectory will flourish like
the spring, persevere like perennial
trees, age like fine wine and become,
at every stage of one’s life, a hand to
hold onto. And I can’t wait to follow
along — like a dog on a leash, like the
moon to the sun, like an encore to a
good thing.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
A human, a whore, all that and more: Lily Talmers releases her
latest album
CECELIA DURAN
Daily Arts Writer
Content warning: This article contains
cartoon
mentions
and
philosophical
discussions of suicide.
“Smiling Friends” is an Adult Swim
cartoon that is insanely absurd on every
level, and it potentially holds the secret of
happiness. The animated comedy is about
colorful cartoon characters operating a
hotline whose sole purpose is to make their
customers smile. It has made the Internet
more than just smile, however: So far it’s
garnered massive amounts of positive
reception and earned plenty of memes, a
full-length fan animatic and even a video
satirizing praise of the show. As the show
becomes the target of my weekly obsession,
I find it important to discuss the impact of
absurdism — both in comedy and by French
philosopher Albert Camus — and therefore,
the impact of the Internet on the show,
starting with its creators.
“Smiling Friends” is made by YouTube/
NewGrounds creators Zach Hadel, an
Internet-identified online goblin (known
as psychicpebbles on the site) and Michael
Cusack. Hadel is primarily known for
his unique animations but has also made
his way into other corners of the Internet
in podcasts, Let’s Play channels and an
uncannily accurate Trump impersonation
beating the likes of late-night TV hosts
everywhere. On the other hand, Cusack
has his Internet animations in addition to
more mainstream success with his Adult
Swim show “YOLO: Crystal Fantasy,”
Australian ABC Comedy pilot “Koala
Man” and an absurd Australian “Rick and
Morty” special. Hadel and Cusack uniting
to animate a show together was a feat given
the contrast in their styles — the former
employs
stylized
smoothly-animated
cartoonish characters in amusing and often
hyper-violent situations, while the latter
uses sketchy, often-jerky reflections of real
life, deriving more humor from everyday
awkwardness.
The visual resolution of this conflict is
“Smiling Friends”, a combination of the
two creators’ character styles into a cast
that makes the cartoon’s world as chaotic
as possible, mixing media styles on top of
the hand-drawn 2D animation, such as 3D
animation, live-action and rotoscoping.
Hadel and Cusack get their giggles from a
variety of different jokes: conversational
dialogue that is both manufactured and
improvised, constant background gags that
contribute to the show’s liveliness and the
creators’ philosophy that the funniest thing
for their cartoon characters to do is to exist
how humans do. Hadel elaborates on that
last part best: “… they’re just real. That’s
the joke. They blink and they have heart
problems … these characters don’t hit a
wall and flatten out. If you hit a character in
the head with a hammer, they would have
like (sic) a seizure.” Unlike the invincible
creatures stemming from the rubber hose
animation era, the “Smiling Friends” cast
holds up a chaotically cartoonish mirror to
reality.
This execution of the creators’ vision
and transition to a mainstream format
is believed to be attributed to their top-
down management of the project. Part of
most YouTubers’ unsuccessful transition
to traditional media is due to going from
an online site where they have total
control over every aspect of production
to the restrictions by traditional rules of
TV and film teams. On the other hand,
Hadel and Cusack — who had already
been animating, writing and voicing
their shorts successfully for years — were
involved with every step of the cartoons’
production. Hadel commented, “… we’re
probably one of the few rare shows where
the creators are literally going through and
like, approving every prop, every fucking
finger on every character, like I say, we’re
really getting a bang for our buck.” Unsure
if the show would be greenlit, the creators
gave the pilot their all. However, “their all”
includes humor to the absurdest extent
when the cartoonish main characters
— Charlie and Pim, voiced by Hadel and
Cusack, respectively — are assigned to a
client named Desmond who holds a gun
to his head, threatening to kill himself in
front of them if they can’t make him smile.
Yes, this show is a comedy. In order to make
light of a threat against one’s own life, we
can talk about Albert Camus and, in the
philosopher’s words, “broach the notion of
suicide.”
To discuss the topic on Camus’ terms, we
have to “purge it of its emotional content and
know its logic and integrity.” The previous
two quotations come from The Myth of
Sisyphus, Camus’ essay conceptualizing
“the absurd” as the chaotic consequences
of everyday existence — that is, the vast
amount of contradictions in rational layers
of irrational modern life as we know it.
Camus rejects suicide as an answer to the
agony of this absurdity because he sees it as
a contradictory assertion of life’s meaning.
To end your own life means that you can’t
find the truth of life and you’ve decided
that the truth is that you must end it. That
very same contradiction is what defines
absurdity — learning to find joy in these
contradictions and an unreachable journey
toward the truth can give life meaning.
The essay presents the Greek myth of
Sisyphus — a mortal king who was punished
for cheating Death by being forced to push
a boulder up a hill for eternity, only to have
the boulder always fall back down just as
the peak is reached — as the absurd hero.
Camus uses this as an allegory for the
contradictory insanity and mundanity
of everyday life but subverts Sisyphus’
suffering: “One always finds one’s burden
again … this universe henceforth without
a master seems to him neither sterile nor
futile. Each atom of that stone … forms
a world. The struggle itself toward the
heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One
must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Perhaps we can do more than just
imagine when we look at the Eastern
version of Sisyphus — Malayalam folklore
figure Naranath Bhranthan, who pushed
boulders up hills of his own volition to laugh
wholeheartedly at the sight of them falling
back to the ground. Interpretations of this
particular version of the myth include the
journey towards detachment due to any
efforts toward materialistic happiness
ultimately being in vain. However, we can
stay at the surface and respond to absurdity
the same way Naranath does — with
laughter.
It is true that the looming suicide of
“Smiling Friends” is a plot point that is
used to create comedy, but contrary to this
infamous review, suicide is not the joke.
Not only is the absurdism of the show not
used to mock suicide, but it also teaches
us one of our only ways to cope with such
subjects. Suicide in its contradictions is
absurd, and so is living. However, Sisyphus
keeps pushing, and Naranath keeps
laughing. At the end of the pilot, Desmond
finds a purpose for himself and motivates
the “Smiling Friends” employees to keep
going on with their jobs. Hadel and Cusack,
in the contradiction of combining their
comedic and visual styles together to create
their own absurd universe, put everything
they had into their pilot and their response
to the premise of suicide, what Camus
referred to as “the fundamental question
of philosophy.” However, in succeeding to
air such a dense and well-received pilot and
then being commissioned for a season, how
did the two motivate themselves and find
more to put into the show? What would
Sisyphus do if he finally made it up the
mountain, only to see a new peak emerge?
Their attention to detail is in itself
absurd — every layer of animation is
checked repeatedly to maximize its
comedy. Hadel has discussed many driving
factors of making the show at length,
but the two major components are his
personal philosophy of always being goal-
oriented and the need to leave behind a
legacy. “Humans need to have goals or else
you go insane. It’s better to be miserable
and fulfilled than content but listless.”
While you can disagree with the goals
of humanity in his own philosophy, the
display of his drive cannot be disputed,
nor can the success of his show. From his
failures, his friends, his fixation — Hadel
has unceasingly marched his way upward.
He and Cusack created something that
is not only adored by the Internet — a
refreshing dose of absurdism in the face
of existentialist cartoons like “Rick and
Morty” and “BoJack Horseman” — but has
infinite reinterpretations.
Doing research for this article was
the first time in my life I enjoyed reading
YouTube comment sections, as everyone
gives specific bits of what they liked
on clips and compilations of the show.
In their monotonous work, Hadel and
Cusack gave the Internet a show that
has absurdly enjoyable repetition, as
I myself have watched the pilot seven
times and the entire season three times.
Let’s go back to Sisyphus left at the foot
of the hill. Sisyphus strives to push the
boulder and gets stronger. If Sisyphus and
Naranath knew of each other, they could
share laughs over their struggles. In the
seemingly unrelenting absurd repetition of
everything, “Smiling Friends” finds a way
to make you laugh — and for a kid raised
by the Age of the Internet and its artists, it
always makes me smile.
‘Smiling Friends,’ psychicpebbles and Sisyphus
Design by Madison Grosvenor
Wednesday, September 7, 2022 — 3
Photo courtesy of Lily Talmers
SAARTHAK JOHRI
Daily Arts Writer