Interview: Callum Pitt feels a tug between heaven and hell

Life is a tidal wave. It’s an illusory experience, a constant ebbing and flowing in any given moment. One second, there’s literal heaven on earth, but moments later, fire laps around your feet like some carnivorous underworld devil. There’s rarely a grey area, so it often feels as though living can only be felt in extremes. Musician Callum Pitt certainly seems to think so, as evidenced with the aptly-titled “I Feel a God and Devil in This Room.” With percussive elements smacking against strings, the song puffs up and deflates with Pitt oscillating between life’s prickly needles. In talking with co-writer Jodie Nicholson, the two began a conversation by observing “the spirituality and connection I feel at a gig through the community with audience members,” Pitt tells B-Sides & Badlands, “basically something bigger than me, and this led me to pick apart the beauty in the every day and try to value the things in my life more.”

In witnessing “manifestations of both those descriptions on earth,” there comes “both unimaginable beauty and suffering in the world,” he adds. In his own life, the pendulum swing can be found in his emotions more than anything else. “I’m a very up and down person,” he says, “so am generally either really high up or really low. I definitely feel quite a give and take from both extremes regularly but certainly wouldn’t say no to a little more emotional stability.”

With such a sharp dissection of human existence, brandished with a razor-like lyrical edge, you can’t help but wonder what or who might lie beyond the limits of human understanding. “I find it difficult to not believe in some sort of fate or plan, purely through some of the stories I relay on the album and the crazy interconnections,” he explains. “While I don’t personally believe in any of the religions currently, I do believe in some sort of higher power or a purpose to us being here, which could be anything the feels otherworldly really, like the connections we make, community, love.”

“I Feel a God and Devil in This Room” first unravels with haunted ooo’s, spectral-like and eerie. Then, strings creek into the arrangement to blanket the deeply profound ode with an almost sorrowful, yet still airy, coating. Flute (or perhaps it’s a piccolo) flits and tumbles into the mix, as flighty as a hummingbird. “I felt a God within my veins, as your drums started playing,” sings Pitt, his words thorny against the brain. “Pushing the endorphins ‘round my brain / In a sea of people shouting to release their pain.”

The song anchors Pitt’s forthcoming debut record, In the Balance, slated for release June 2. Along with “Mayfly,” there’s an indication it just might be one of the year’s best releases.

Below, Pitt goes further into detail about the new song’s musical build, playing banjo for the first time, and other album essentials.

You said you don’t believe in any religions. So what things do you believe about the world and life?

I try not to think too big as that’s often when I struggle with mental health issues, so thinking small, doing little things to effect good every day and taking things step-by-step is my general approach.

The song builds and builds, musically, until the guitar work in the last minute or so. How did the arrangement come together?

This song was written on classical guitar so was initially a very soft song throughout; I have always loved to have a lot of dynamic movement, builds and drops in songs so I was always going to add a number of builds in this! I had initially demoed the song to have one last chorus then a big instrumental ending but my producer told me it was very anticlimactic, so after the instrumental we put another chorus to end the song.

I know this is your banjo playing debut. What led you to try out the banjo?

Sufjan Stevens was probably the musician who most made me want to play a banjo and find a place for it in my own music, especially from his earlier albums and songs such as ‘Casimir Pulaski Day’; it’s got such a lovely texture, especially for a lead line.

Does the banjo have a different emotional quality for you than other instruments?

As someone whose local music culture doesn’t make massive use of the banjo outside of traditional folk, it feels so rural American and immediately makes me think of rolling mountains, big rivers and just large, empty spaces. For this particular song, the banjo line felt quite gothic folk, and a good fit for the themes sang about.

How does this track fit into the scope of the album?

This song is quite typical of the album: multiple harmonies, string quartet, lots of builds and alternative percussion. It’s personally my favorite song on the album and feel is one of the best representations of the sounds a listener will hear on the whole album.

Based on the album tracklist, I’m most curious about “Black Holes in the Sky.” What can you say on this song, both lyrically and musically?

Lyrically, this is a story of a friend who left my house late at night to watch a lunar eclipse on the Town Moor while on acid, overdosed and was saved by a passing dog walker in the early hours of the morning; I think this is a really vivid and quite existential-feeling scene, and I think is a good example of some sort of fate that he gets to live the rest of his life, or just really, really good luck, who knows.

You have another song called “The Will of the River.” What’s this one about?

‘The Will of the River’ is about a friend who I used to spend loads of time with as a teenager writing music and jamming out in each other’s bedrooms; he sadly died of suicide almost a couple of years ago now but this is just a song about how much I admired him and loved the time we spent together creating.

What about “Moths and Butterflies”?

‘Moths and Butterflies’ is about being raised in quite a masculine culture, keeping emotions down, then being at a funeral and having this overwhelming spill of emotion – realizing it’s amazing to feel so much rather than stuff it down!

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