Premiere: Karen & the Sorrows analyze gutting despair with new song, ‘Jonah and the Whale’

The Book of Jonah stands noticeably apart from other prophet accounts for its predominantly narrative structure. Hebrew prophet Jonah, son of Amittai, is instructed by God to travel to the town of Nineveh and prophesy against the city’s wickedness and oncoming destruction. Feeling uneasy with such a mission, Jonah flees on ship from Jaffa to Tarshish, but in route, an unexpected storm bubbles and wreaks havoc on the lonely, sea-tossed vessel. The ship’s crew begin casting lots and soon discover Jonah is to blame for their troubles. He soon convinces them to toss him overboard into the troubling sea below, and there, he is swallowed whole by a giant fish, often referenced as a whale in later translations. Jonah spends three days and three nights inside the belly of a whale knelt in prayer, and he recommits himself to God.

The Old Testament book’s themes of desperation, wavering faith and ideals, and fated consequence are woven into a fantastical, unbelievable tale whose early origins are traced to sometime between the fourth and fifth centuries. Even today, regardless of faith, or lack thereof,  there are indeed great lessons to be extracted and applied to modern living. Of Jewish upbringing, Americana staple Karen Pittelman ⏤ fronting Karen & the Sorrows ⏤ filters the story through her own uniquely evocative lens on a song called “Jonah and the Whale,” premiering today. “Don’t stop, swallow me whole / Don’t stop, body and soul,” she pleads, inhabiting the dank shallows of rock-bottom darkness. Such languid misery oozes from her lungs in thick, black blots, and the seductive slither of the production deceives the senses, playing both in melancholic shades and a chewy tilt.

“I was thinking about what it feels like to want to be consumed, to be annihilated even. To run toward the whale and ask to be swallowed and taken down to the bottom of the sea. There is something terrifying in it, but also, in the biblical sense of the word, awesome. And transformative,” Pittelman writes to B-Sides & Badlands over email. “There is certainly destruction in giving yourself over to something larger than yourself and letting go, but there can be power in it, too. This is that place where I think grief and desire intersect in secular and sacred ways and have the potential to smash us wide open to the enormity of both suffering and love.”

“Jonah and the Whale,” flecked with hand-claps and gospel spirals, is not Pittelman’s first turn with marvelous biblical adventures. “I was always drawn to Old Testament stories and metaphors, especially the ones about liberation and struggle. So, these biblical references often sneak their way into my work without my having any intention of putting them there,” she says, citing her last album, 2017’s The Narrow Place, as being shackled with Passover dramas. “Though, I also tend to have a weird take on those stories. One song came out of thinking about how cruel it was to punish everyone for worshipping the golden calf when they were just lost and afraid in the desert. Another came out of thinking about how sad Moses must have felt after the whole Egyptian army drowned in the Red Sea, because, even though they had finally won and everybody else was celebrating, he had still grown up as Egyptian. Some of those he had watched die must have been people he really loved.”

Listen to “Jonah and the Whale” below and get a clear read of Karen & the Sorrows’ new album, Guaranteed Broken Heart, expected everywhere October 18, in our wide-ranging interview.

Since your last studio album, there was a bit of a shakeup with the band. What was the hardest part of starting over with a new roster of musicians?

In the past, so much of my time and energy went towards trying to take care of my bandmates and making sure they had what they needed. When I wrote a song, I never let myself imagine exactly how I wanted it to sound. Instead, I would do my best to bring my songs to the band with as much openness as I could so that we could create the sound together.

With this album, suddenly, I was alone. I didn’t have to please anyone but me! I could make things sound however I wanted! I could ask anyone to play! Arrange the songs however I liked! At first, that freedom was a little terrifying. Then, I got over that fear, and I learned to love it. This is the first album where I listed myself as the producer; the first album where I made something that truly sounded like what is in my head.

The absolute stunner “When People Show You Who They Are” carries with it an obvious political weight. What is your emotional journey here?

Maya Angelou’s amazing advice to Oprah and Hilary Clinton’s comments about it aside, this song is also about something I keep failing to learn. I’m pretty good at seeing other people’s deep beauty, compassion, and tenderness, even if it’s something they’ve had to hide in order to survive. But if you want to know how someone is going to treat you and others, what matters most is not that deeper self but instead, what they believe about themselves. You may see their generous heart shining through, but if, for example, they believe they are selfish, that being selfish has kept them alive, they are going to make their decisions according to that belief above all. People tend to be super clear about those beliefs, too — they show you and even tell you outright again and again. I wrote this song to remind myself to listen. I certainly don’t want to stop seeing the deeper beauty in people, but I could do a better job of getting out of harm’s way when someone gives me plenty of warning.

You’ve spoken about how the art is shaped by what is happening around us. What did you find yourself feeling the past two years? And how did that guide the new music?

Every day of this administration has brought so much terror and suffering for so many people, including many of my loved ones, that I feel like even the air right now is heavy with grief and fear. So, that definitely seeped into many of these songs.

In my personal life, there was also a lot of letting go and loss happening. I parted ways with Tami and Elana, my bandmates of almost eight years. And though Elana and I had already split up as partners the year before, I hadn’t really let go — it’s not easy to let go of your musical soulmate. At the same time, one of my best friends was dying of cancer, and I was trying hard to be there for her and fly back and forth to California as much as I could to visit. I was also having this very passionate love affair — love affair sounds so old-timey, but I don’t know what else to call it! It was one of those things where you know exactly how it’s going to end and how painful it will be, but you decide it’s worth it anyway. All this led me to think a lot about the annihilation of grief and the annihilation of desire. About the similar places they can take you and how overwhelming but also sacred those places can be. About the power and transformative potential that comes from letting yourself break wide open. That’s where this album came from.

Throughout the record, you utilize humor or wit to reframe your pain. Was that an easy place on which to arrive?

That’s something I really aspire to as a country songwriter, especially when I’m writing in a more classic vein, and I’m so grateful and excited when I can get it right! Part of what has always drawn me to country music is how smart and finely wrought the best lyrics are. One of my favorite examples is Merle Haggard’s “Swinging Doors,” where he’s trying to tell a lover who left him that he’s got a great new home — which, of course, turns out to be the local bar:

“And I’ve got swinging doors, a jukebox and a barstool

And my new home has a flashing neon sign

Stop by and see me any time you want to

‘Cause I’m always here at home till closing time”

It’s the kind of dark humor that makes you shake your head and chuckle but also feel that bone-crushing ache at the same time.

What did you learn about your own pain through that process?

Some musicians channel joy and some channel grief, and I’ve learned that I’m the kind that channels grief. Not that there isn’t enormous joy in making and sharing the music that comes out of grief. But knowing how to tune into those emotional frequencies, to stay open to that pain and connect to others through it, is what I’m good at.

“You don’t have to live here in the past / So, go on and find somebody new” is a simple line that carries incredible weight. Who is the “Queen of Denial”?

I guess a lot of us are the Queen of Denial at one time or another! Letting go is one of the hardest things to do, and I have certainly failed spectacularly at it more than once and stood by my friends as they failed spectacularly at it, too. Sometimes, I think of this song as sung by someone trying to shake a little sense into her best friend. Sometimes, I think of it more as trying to shake a little sense into yourself. There’s a line in a Bob Dylan song “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” where he says, “You’re gonna make me give myself a good talkin’ to.” That’s what this song is.

“Why Won’t You Come Back to Me” is one of the album’s darkest, musically, with a creeping vocal from you, as well as some pretty gnarly lyrics. What was the impetus here?

When I was arranging this song, I kept telling everyone that it should sound like PJ Harvey went to a devil’s hootenanny. It’s definitely from the darker reaches of my soul! I’m always really interested in those all-consuming, violent, starving furies and desires that we are definitely not supposed to feel as women, and how cathartic it can be to put them to music.

I brought together this amazing band of bluegrass and old time musicians for the string band songs on the album. And when it was time to record this one, I sat them down and made them listen to PJ Harvey’s “Pig Will Not,” where she basically just howls “I will not” for most of the song [Listen]. Definitely not the standard string band fare! But of course, they all totally got it.

Musically, top to bottom, the record is a much richer display of your capabilities. You’ve noted how it is ’90s country through a Neil Young lens. Do you think that “challenge” to yourself unlocked something you couldn’t have expected initially?

I think some of it was the freedom of being on my own. Some of it was the confidence that comes from having done this a few times before — and having built a really great relationship with my engineer Charles Burst, who has worked on every album with me and understands even my weirdest requests. Truthfully, though, if you were able to peer inside my head you’d probably see Neil Young wailing a one-note solo that channels all the suffering in the world into a single moment while Tim McGraw is singing “Just to See You Smile” and Tori Amos is rolling around on that creepy mattress from the cover art for Boys for Pele. These are just the kind of things that inspire me. But this is certainly the first time I made a record that drew as deeply from those inspirations!

“Your New Life Now” is a rather delicate, yet raw, performance. It’s almost as if you’re rising out of the darkness through the clouds. What is your story here?

I dream a lot of my songs, and sometimes, I’m half asleep when I sing them into my phone. Sometimes, I barely remember doing it. I was listening back to some of my voice memos when I heard myself singing that melody, and I was just like, “What is this?” It definitely felt like a transmission from another realm. So, I was very careful to stay true to the eerie, childlike feel and strange rhythm of that core melody when I was building the song. We actually ending up using the scratch track of me singing it in the final recording. I tried again and again to redo it and make it more polished, but it was never as good as the original. So, that’s just me sitting on the floor of the practice space, plunking along on a keyboard, singing with my eyes closed.

“You’re My Country Music” seems an apt way to conclude the record, musically and thematically. It’s the kind of sparkling tune that really hits the heart. “Every tired old cliche that I dismissed / All it took was one damn kiss to make it true,” you sing. Is this your redemption, finding-new-love song?

Thank you so much! In a way, it’s my redemption-through-country-music song. I feel like the older I get, the more I learn that the point isn’t to say something new so much as to say something true. To put every bit of your being into that sound and mean it from the depths of your bones. I’m not interested in any of the stuff people say about authenticity when it comes to identity in country music. For starters, it’s ridiculous, because there’s no genre more constructed than country music — and that construction has a lot more to do with politics and the history of white supremacy than it does with who actually makes the music or listens to it.

On the other hand, I am interested in the idea of authenticity when it comes to meaning what you sing. Country music is a great teacher when it comes to this. Country music says: I’ve seen it all before, and that’s the point. That’s what bonds us to each other and makes us human. And I think this connection is where not only love and resilience come from but also solidarity and resistance. We’re not always tapping into that power, and that’s by design in terms of the way the industry has constructed country music. But it’s where country music came from and it’s still in there.

The album title “Guaranteed Broken Heart” is a wise summation of life — that we’re all destined for pain, sooner or later. What do you find you’ve learned the most from your pain?

I think the choices we make as we live through the hardest times are what really matter. We don’t have a say over how we’ll experience pain and loss, but we can choose to let them break us open and connect us to those around us, or we can harden ourselves and close off out of fear. So much of American culture is about defining yourself by what you’ve achieved and what you’ve accumulated. What I’ve learned — both from my own pain and from country music — is that what really makes you who you are is what you’ve lost. We all have to fall through the ring of fire in one way or another. But you get to choose how you walk through the flames.

Recently, the band also issued the music video for “Why Don’t You Come Back to Me.” Check it out below:

Photo Credit: Leah James

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