Top Three: Married In Berdichev (the art and noise edition)
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As Married In Berdichev, Brittany Gould builds dreamy, layered songs with noise and her ethereal voice. At the same time, she has cultivated a following as a visual artist, taking on an array of media as diverse as her musical landscape. While Gould sees the two outlets occupying completely different spheres—art as meditative and music as cathartic—The A.V. Club challenged Denver’s renaissance lady to combine her two passions. Gould paired three of her songs with three of her visual-art pieces, and told us why she thinks they make sense together.
“Golden Sheets” & “Untitled”
Brittany Gould: I got these scrolls when I was on the East Coast at the beginning of the month—they're from player pianos. The scrolls go for, like, 40 feet. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen by itself, so I figured I would add to it. This reminds me of "Golden Sheets," which is the first song I ever did in the vein that I'm doing now. It was originally for label Deathbomb Arc's Tapeclub. Brian Miller [of Deathbomb Arc] asked me to do a 10-minute song, and I was like "Oh, fuck." Basically everything I had done before that was pop stuff—really singsong-y, happy stuff. I wanted to do something different, and this song was nine minutes, 55 seconds long, and totally ended up being the best song I've ever written. I would pair these two up because of the color scheme, and the pattern-y, sprawling quality. "Golden Sheets" was the longest song I ever made, and this is the biggest art piece I've ever done.
“It Was Late At Night” & “Sunken Lake”
BG: The song is a little bit jarring—it starts out a little disjointed and kind of angry, but ends up being this really happy thing. I feel both the song and the installation have two elements: darkness and lightness. This [gestures to installation] kind of has to do with these two worlds: the human world and the spirit world. I think the song relates the the installation because it's about being late at night, and someone is coming down to see you, but it ends up being a not-so-good interaction with this person. At the same time, it's still kind of hopeful.
“Funnel Clouds” & “Touching In Light”
BG: I just recorded this, and it's something I'm most proud of out of everything I've written. It's also the first time I’ve used computers in a song. I'll pair these pieces because of the shimmery-ness. The song is from when there were funnel clouds happening quite a bit, when we were having all of those tornado warnings in Colorado. It’s about riding your bike and suddenly you’re covered in rain, and at first you're like "Fuck, I should get back," but then you're soaking wet and it doesn't matter anymore. You decide to take your time. Also that week, my friends Janie and Travis got caught underneath a bridge while they were riding bikes and it was raining and thundering, and they could see this funnel cloud. It’s the most beautiful thought, because it could be destructive, but it's also peaceful and beautiful. Maybe it's something like this [gestures to installation]. It's something that could be a sad thing—[in the image] he's missing his back limbs—but there’s also this magical, otherworldly thing coming out of him. It’s not good or bad; it's just the way it is.
