Call me Searows

Searows, whose sound delicately rips holes in the heart, exposing the most profound intricacies of every human feeling, wanted to record his latest work in his home city of Portland, Oregon. Yet something beckoned him north. However fortuitous, the magic of the Pacific Northwest artist’s latest epic, Death in the Business of Whaling, was produced at Trevor Spencer’s Way Out Studio – which is indeed way out in the vastness of nature, about an hour and a half outside of Seattle. Everything about Searows’ look and sound are intentional and drenched in a sea-salty film of Pacific-coast mystery.

“I went to his converted barn studio,” Duckart says with a smile. “So beautiful. The perfect setting for making something like this. He had so much more means and ability to make it sound as big as I wanted it to sound.” That’s not to say Duckart’s sound hasn’t been big all along. Although his premiere album, Guard Dog (2022), was recorded, produced, mixed, and mastered all within the comforts of his own bedroom, it’s vastly voluminous. Duckart wields the power to make himself sound big, even in solitude, but getting to collaborate in a large studio space with a new cast of characters did bring to life an alternative sort of sonic saga for the artist’s second album.

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I have the pleasure of meeting with Duckart via video chat, as he sits comfortably in front of an elegant, upright bass. I ask about the instrument in question, and Duckart admits that while he doesn’t know how to play it, it has made its way onto the album. “In ‘Belly of the Whale’ I did the upright bass part. I wrote the part by playing it in the demo and putting it together, like splicing the few times that it sounded good into one thing,” Duckart laughs, ”and then had someone do it in a way that sounded good.”

Duckart’s musical journey started young. He began writing his own music in high school, just a boy and his guitar. Inspired by folk music he heard growing up, he eventually started putting sounds together in GarageBand and sharing tracks online via SoundCloud and TikTok without much expectation. The internet took notice. “I just wanted to feel like I made something cool for my own validation and then…” Duckart’s long pause stands in for the massive recognition he gained, suddenly scooping up an adoring fan base almost accidentally. “It definitely changed the things that I think about when I’m writing,” he says. “I think about how I’m going to talk about songs now, even though I try not to let that affect what I’m writing.”

A lifelong theater kid, Duckart is an ardent fan of musicals. As such, Death in the Business of Whaling is rightfully dramatic. It’s brooding, beautiful, and bold – honest, yet more narrative-focused than a lot of Searows’ past works. “I think when I wrote Guard Dog it was getting things out in a way that I hadn’t before,” Duckart notes. “I’m so glad that I made it this vulnerable, because other people can connect to that. It was still kind of uncomfortable to feel like it was all very out there.” The striking rawness of Duckart’s music, alongside his soul-wrenching voice and a knack for catchy, melancholic refrains, can draw a listener into a trance. But with Guard Dog, Duckart found himself exposed, tapping into his theatrical roots by creating a bit of a buffer between him and reality. “[Guard Dog] is so much more of a diary-entry type album. This one,” he says, “I wanted to be using my real feelings to say something that’s never happened to me.”

That said, in this current wave of overstimulating internet culture, vulnerability and open-hearted creation holds a high emotional value. It invites audiences into the deepest part of oneself, even when those parts feel tender and scary to reveal. Duckart’s latest work walks a fine line, connecting his inside world with a thoughtful, poetic lore consisting of trees, animals, and an eerie maritime aesthetic. With photos taken by partner and bandmate Marlowe Ostara, the Searows’ album imagery is Moby Dick-esque – striking and somber, yet truly stunning, like a painting. There, Duckart is standing in the guts of the Wreck of the Peter Iredale, off the coast of Astoria, Oregon, a majestic image that embodies both the poetics of the album and the depth of Duckart himself.

Ever earnest and raw, Death in the Business of Whaling cuts deep. Tracks like “Dearly Missed” and “Kill What You Eat” are haunting, with others like “Belly of the Whale” feeling playful and charming, with just a tinge of the artist’s melancholic signature. Coupled with rhyming lyrics, Searows’ words could live in literature, pairing story with a common, relatable feeling. In the track “Hunter”, we hear: “Damn it / I only left for a second / Now everything’s changed and I let it,” which hangs heavy in the air, a vague sentiment that clings to a wealth of human experiences. It’s this delicate relationship between the simple and complex, paired with a lilting, luring voice that hypnotizes the ear, pulling tracks together from one solemn song to the next.

Revisiting Duckart’s own knack for theatrics, his music videos tease a variety of performance. “Dearly Missed” is a moving track – simple as a guitar and vocal refrain, yet with such finely-tuned production that it feels epic in proportion. The piece serves as a reclamation, hinting at the horror genre known as “good for her”, wherein marginalized voices are able to avenge themselves, fighting back to reclaim dignity and come out alive by means of what Duckarts says can be a “a broad catharsis of hypothetically murdering your oppressors.” The piece was directed by Karlee Boone, a Portland-based visionary who is seasoned in writing and directing this style of horror – alongside an entire production team made up of Duckart’s own friends, a community-driven effort. “It’s fun to get to make stuff with your friends and crazy to be on a film set like that,” Duckart says. “This is a legit set and we’re making something that’s so cool, but these are all people that I hang out with on a normal basis! I’m very lucky to get to do that with them.”

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The same proves true in Duckart’s other visual efforts, with the video for “Photograph of a Cyclone” shot by Ostara as a charming and campy daytime vampire picnic. Duckart and friends rock some obviously plastic vampire teeth and Halloween-y capes, romping around in the grass with parasols. The group stumbles upon a human, only to turn them vampire by offering up what looks like a bloodshake in a diner – and poof! a sudden vampire. The group, hanging upside down like bats and taking selfies by the train tracks, is accompanied by Duckart’s crooning cries, creating a dissonant yet endearing video. Different still is Searows’ latest, the distinctive “Dirt” – directed by both Boone and Ostara – which marks a theatrical black and white debut with Duckart singing before white curtains amid shadows of cut-out trees and human hands.

“Putting these more classically beautiful words or imagery next to something kind of gross or disturbing, something that’s kind of equally as natural and around us, but not as pretty…” Duckart begins, speaking to grotesque elements of horror and his lyrical imagery of gutting fish and sitting inside the stomach of a whale – “I felt like it worked, with the ideas of duality and the contrast of the human condition.” Whether standing atop a rusty pile of ship bones, or recording a masterpiece in a once-was horse barn studio, Searows embodies an utterly Pacific Northwest tenderness that gives way to this duality – grey, overcast, yet blossoming with the brightness of community and care. Surrounded by friends and collaborating with a whole new production team, Searows is stepping out of the bedroom and into the woods.

With a new tour on the horizon, Duckart is gearing up to showcase his new work as Searows heads to the EU and UK in March. “I found so many ways to make touring fun, and getting to do it with people that I love to hang out with and play music with is really awesome.” A somewhat withdrawn person, Duckart likes to be home, making touring a big of a daunting task. Being surrounded by familiar creatures is imperative. Driving from place to place, he likes to flip on a soundtrack and stare out the window, contemplating and drawing inspiration from a milieu of landscapes.

“I feel like the creation of it is so solitary in some ways, for me,” Duckart recounts of his creative process. Once the music is out in the world – compiled, completed, released – he finds comfort in knowing that he can bring out meaningful feelings in others. There is an innate connectivity that comes with creation, that someone with a vast array of their own life experiences can take away something meaningful and profound from the experience of another is pretty pheonominal. “I know I do that with music that I love, and it’s a very cool thing how much it connects.” And if you ever find yourself in the belly of a metaphorical whale, know that Searows has a sound to pull you out, in holding space for the vastness of feeling.