motel void

MOTEL VOID: Your latest single, Fever Dream, has just been released — will it be included on your upcoming album/EP? Could you walk us through the inspiration and process behind writing and recording this track? This year you already released a single called Joan of Arc, how would you compare these two tracks?

CELESTE MADDEN: Fever Dream will be on the upcoming EP! It’s a complete re-recording of an EP I wrote this time in 2021, but I think to preserve the mystique I’ll keep the title secret (again) for now. I think people do remember the title, but the whole project has transformed so much I think the announcement deserves another go.

Both Fever Dream and Joan of Arc were written for that EP three years ago, at a time when I had just come out of my first relationship. Fever Dream is a lot more bombastic and frustrated, and I really wanted to reflect that in those sharp hits in the chorus. In some ways, I’ve lost a bit of that connection with some of the lyrics, which I think is just a sign of maturing, but strangely I feel more attached to the instrumental parts of the song. That being said, the bridge is my pride and joy. The release is so cathartic it’s impossible not to relate that to whatever I’m going through now.

Joan of Arc, on the other hand, is a lot more subdued. If I remember correctly, it was the last song I wrote for the EP and looking back, it really is the swan song of the entire project. I compare love to religion a lot in my songwriting because I do feel it’s a type of faith. To have unconditional belief and trust in another person deifies them slightly, whether for better or worse. Joan of Arc, to me, is complete defeat, a total giving-in of yourself as a last-ditch attempt to rekindle a relationship. Neither of them are happy songs, but I like to think of them as two sides of the same coin.

MOTEL VOID:Your music is influenced by 90s rock. Which artists have had the biggest impact on your sound?

CELESTE MADDEN: Oh man, let me get the list out. Pavement! Le Tigre! Elliott Smith! Hole! Liz Phair! Helium! The Smashing Pumpkins! Slowdive! Can I say Bjork even though she’s not really a rock artist? Well, not since The Sugarcubes, but she’s got a punk rock soul. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of 90s rock – or just 90s music – is texture. A lot of these artists are incredible lyricists, obviously, but I hugely admire their focus on creating a really broad scope of textures and atmospheres across their work, or even across a single song. It’s not as if we’ve lost that, but I think they really got it down to a fine art in the 90s, and I wasn’t even around to experience it.

As for the present day, I am obsessed with Snail Mail (who was taught guitar by Mary Timony of Helium), Phoebe Bridgers, Fontaines DC, Aurora, Lava La Rue… I have to stop because I’ll start rattling off my last.fm. I also really love Aretha Franklin, though I know I’m getting well past the 90s.

MOTEL VOID: Switching from film to music and sound design during the pandemic marked a big change for you. Did you formally study film, and have you stepped away from the film industry entirely?

CELESTE MADDEN: I spent a lot of years preparing myself for a career in film. I took Drama at GCSE (our school didn’t offer Media), then Film and Media at A Level, then finally went to university to study Digital Film Production. It was hell, and that hit me hard in a lot of ways. Lockdown obviously affected every inch of what was meant to be a practical course, and after three months of pixelated YouTube videos shared through Zoom, I realised I had to get out. I was bullied by one of my peers, and was determined to come out on top, but the course was rife with misogyny and homophobia, amongst other things. I became very unwell mentally, in part because the reality hit that I was not going to make it in an industry I had spent a significant portion of my life working to be successful in.

It’s taken a while, but I’m making a gradual return to film, although being able to change courses when I did has helped me realise it was never my true love. My friends Jenny Simpson and Ben Sitton, who have made the Joan of Arc and Fever Dream music videos with me, have both been kind enough to have me on as a composer for their respective short films, The Love Tea and Frogspawn. Composing is a complete change in process from how I usually write, but it’s been a welcome challenge.

MOTEL VOID: Your debut single Ghost from 2019 was a breakout success, amassing nearly 1.5 million streams on Spotify. How did that momentum come about, and how has it shaped your career since?

CELESTE MADDEN: I get asked a lot how Ghost gained that traction, and to this day I have no idea what sparked it. I remember opening Spotify for Artists at my sixth form one morning, and seeing it had jumped to about 10,000 streams overnight, with most of the streams coming from Jakarta, Indonesia. There were no playlists, radio listings, recommendations I could find online that explained it. It just snowballed from there, which I am immensely grateful for. I owe pretty much everything I have now to that song, even though I don’t like it and refuse to play it live. I wrote and recorded it when I was 16, and I think… a lot of the production reflects that. But regardless of how differently I feel about it, I am proud of how far it’s come and the doors it has opened for me.

MOTEL VOID: With your new music on the horizon, do you have plans for a tour?

CELESTE MADDEN: A tour would be amazing! I almost, almost had a support slot earlier this year, but it fell through. There were some amazing venues, as well. I’ve been thinking a lot as to whether or not a tour would be viable at this stage, and while I don’t think there would be much interest in a UK-wide tour, I might try and do a sort of South-of-England-ish tour. Mainly in all the university towns my friends live in. Tell a friend to tell a friend to tell a friend kind of thing.