Discussing Montell Fish’s ‘Charlotte"‘

Minutes before Montell Fish’s set at Kilby Block Party, on a weekend that had otherwise been fairly clear, a menacing wind took flight. Charcoal colored clouds populated overhead.

Twenty foot screens clattered against festival speakers and were soon lowered to the ground, haphazardly leaned against the stage like fallen pillars.

And, for a brief moment, thick rain beat down from a sky split open and dramatically weeping.

If you’re familiar with Montell’s music, you might be thinking, how perfect. It’s moody. It’s contemplative. It’s emotional. At times, it’s quite dark. It elegantly lends itself to the likes of a stormy evening. So when Montell began his performance, draped in a cloak by Japanese brand Number (N)ine, he assured us all that the weather was nothing to worry about. Together in time, he said, we were “opening a portal.”

Montell’s most recent project “CHARLOTTE” is second in a trilogy of works taking to megalithic questions of, among many, faith, love, eternity, and grief: an ongoing investigation greeted by deeply reverberant curiosity and tenderness. I was able to steal a few minutes with him before his set:

How have things been?

Things are good! This year, I’ve been experimenting a bunch. I’ve been putting a lot more energy into my side project, dj gummy bear. I like to experiment with getting into new phases and new chapters, and to find new characters.

What made you want to separate these projects? How is dj gummy bear a different character to you?

I feel like there can be a lot of pressure with trying to make art that has been received by a lot of people. There’s also a lot of expectations, especially when someone listens to a project over 100 times, 200 times. They grow into shaping you in some way in their head, and the thing about a new artist is that you just take them as they are. You take what they give you, and I love that feeling. It feels like something completely new and almost foreign. I think expectations are kind of funny sometimes, and they get in the way of making art.

What kind of expectations do you feel you’re facing?

I think that people really enjoy boxes, because it’s easier to communicate. It’s easy to say, if you like this artist, you might like this other artist. It’s much harder to describe a person, and it takes way longer. It’s harder to be like, this person does a bunch of different genres. But I like that, I like living outside the boxes. I’ve never liked boxes, so I guess the expectation is that if someone has heard me make a sad album, they probably have the expectation that I’m going to make another one. And if someone has heard me make a darker album, or a freaky album, they’re probably going to want to hear me do that again. I always want to grow.

Right, I hear that. So when you’re talking about transitions in genre or content, I’m curious about the shift you set up when making JAMIE and then CHARLOTTE. Did you feel any particular musical, spiritual, emotional changes during that time?

Yeah, definitely. A lot of changes. When I released “JAMIE” and then “Her Love Still Haunts Me Like a Ghost,” I really wanted to lead people into those next places that I was interested in going to, specifically with production. “JAMIE,” on a production level, is pretty bare and pretty stripped. It’s just guitars. There’s drums on one song, but it’s mainly guitars. I just wanted to, again, evade boxes. I didn’t want people to fully accept me as that, so the same year I released that project, that was the beginning of “CHARLOTTE” for me. I moved out of my hometown, I wasn’t in New York, I was traveling more to Paris and going out to more clubs. I grew up very religious, so I didn’t go out or do anything until my early 20s. So when I started going out and exploring the world, that influenced the music I was making. So I started “CHARLOTTE,” and it took a while. I hate the word deconstructing, but it took a lot of me trying to understand why I believed what I believed. A lot of asking myself if I actually believed what I believed or if those things were just always told to me. So I feel like there’s this weird contrast with “CHARLOTTE.” It has these dark, existential questions, but it’s also really upbeat and has some funkiness to it. One of the main things I was trying to showcase was duality and to create a contrast to “JAMIE.” A completely different world.

Something I’ve found really interesting when reading other interviews you’ve done is how shocked some people are that you haven’t removed any of your older, more religious music from the internet. I interpreted leaving a footprint like that as you just figuring yourself out. Figuring the world out. What has your experience with faith looked like over time?

It’s a journey for sure, and it’s not over. The way that I was raised was very fundamental Christian, where everything in the Bible is sacred, and you don’t question anything. There’s a lot of harshness in trying not to question things. I would get into so many debates with friends at school where I didn’t really have any answers. I just had what I thought was faith. I feel like I understand a lot of those Christians, because it’s a touchy subject. People hold faith very close. I do think that I have some kind of role in showing people that it’s okay to be yourself. It’s okay to not follow traditional rules of the church. I hope that there’s more open mindedness, because I think religious art has really fallen flat in the modern age, when at one point it was really beautiful. And I think there’s a reason for that. The boxes that force you to believe that God can only be this, or God can only be that. There were so many early Christian painters that challenged this. Hieronymus Bosch, even Leonardo Da Vinci. And religious music has gotten so boxed in. So hopefully there’s a wake-up and a shift. You don’t have to accept me, but maybe if there’s someone who looks more like me, you don’t have to be so quick to judge them. Let them be, and maybe there will be a new revolution if you let that happen.

Yes, completely agree. The shift I’ve noticed is one of iconography over everything. Ideas and representations of faith as a whole are being stripped down and limited, despite being inherently subjective. It feels like throughout all your work, you’re both asking these questions and answering them.

Yeah, and I think there are a lot more questions I’m asking than answering. I try not to tie myself to an idea too strongly, because we’re always growing. We meet people, we evolve, and we see people in different situations that might shape our perspective on the world.

Do you see all of your projects having this same throughline?

Yeah, and it’s really a book. I found an article on the process of grief, the stages being denial, isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. So I wanted to create this trilogy project, starting with “JAMIE,” the middle project being “CHARLOTTE,” and the end project being “MARSHALL” to follow this huge fear I have of death, probably because of my religious background. I wanted to address that head-on, through music. So “JAMIE” was the beginning, the isolation. “CHARLOTTE” represents some of the anger and depression and bargaining. And I hope the last project has a little bit more light and is a bit more freeing. But I have to get there first. Like you said, it’s a journey.

Is there any art or music that you remember engaging with as a kid that first made clear to you that this was a path you wanted to take?

Oh yeah, there’s so many. The first concerts I went to were mostly rappers, like Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino. But I heard gospel music in the house growing up. I heard worship music in the house growing up. I heard R&B. Music is so deep. The music I listened to when I was 16 is still the music I listen to now. A lot of hip hop, alternative R&B. I was getting into King Krule, Sampha. But I also feel like I pulled influence from everywhere, specifically my early teens.

So sonically, you’re pulling from a wide breadth of inspirations. What about visually? At what point in the process do those become clear to you?

Yeah, the visuals are very in tune. I think they happen at the same time the music does. I feel like I have synesthesia or something. I mean, I feel like most people do, if they think about it long enough. Certain colors make you feel certain things. I work really closely with my best friend Caleb, who is also my creative director, and he helps with a lot of the world-building and gives me books to read, things like that. There are things we like doing that hopefully help build the world out a little more for people. Like, he helped me write the five chapter book for dj gummy bear. I love the whole picture. My first concert was Childish Gambino, and he was one of the first artists that had his website match the screenplay for his album, and all of that matched his merch. Everything made sense. It feels like it’s embedded in me, to think that way. Or that’s what I aspire to be.

That rocks. You can feel that energy in what you make. And what’s inspiring you today?

I’ve been falling in love more with EDM and electronic music. Going back to that experimentation thing with dj gummy bear, I just want to try more house and industrial and techno stuff. But it’s also still so scattered. I listen to Prince a good bit. I love Beach House, I caught a little bit of their set yesterday.

If I could see any artist that has ever lived, I would without a doubt pick Prince.

I know, right! That would be it!