Shawn Kilroy - Hessian Love Songs

When Shawn Kilroy began playing guitar and writing songs in ninth grade, he was admittedly perplexed. “I couldn’t reconcile my love of the Beatles with my love of Bauhaus,” he says. “They seemed so far apart and so totally different from one another, and I felt like a phony if I admitted I liked both of them as much as I did.”

More than a decade later, with three solo albums under his belt, his view has shifted. “Now I don’t have that problem. Now I see the connection and I also don’t give a shit if they’re connected or not.”

Kilroy released the third installment of his trilogy, Hessian Love Songs , earlier this year. The new album is a collection of love songs written for a full band, while the second in the series, Kilroy says, featured songs about “hateful shit” written as a solo electronic project. The first was “more new-agey and spiritual.”

And yet, there is a common thread between them, an incredible conglomeration of influences from electro-synth like Ladytron to gothic folk a la Nick Cave to the classic rock of bands like the Who and maybe even Journey.

There’s also, Kilroy says, sadness. “I think I can be a melancholy person and so it’s always in there. Even a song like ‘Full Moon’ [off

]—which is pretty freaking cheery—has some lyrical content about the end of the world. I think I probably got into music to try to be less sad, to have a place to put the sadness. There’s a fundamental core of sadness to me. But in day-to-day living, I think I’m one of the more easy-going people I know and I think I’m kind of upbeat. I owe it all to music, for sure.

Shawn Kilroy is a musician, actor and filmmaker from Philadelphia...

MD: Tell us a little about the bands you have played with.

SK: I have had the privilege of playing with many of my favorite area musicians over the years. In my earlier days, I played with most of the Three 4 Tens guys, who I grew up with. I have also played and recorded with members of The Cobbs, Manta Ray, Black Landlord, Vibrolux, and Illinois. My last album features Mike SloMo Brenner pretty heavily, as well as Seattle legends Rich Stuverud and Jebney Lewis. Jenny Prescott and my wife Heather Kilroy round out the rest of the disc along with North Lawrence Midnight Singer Joe Boyle. Kevin LeBree is always in there somewhere too!
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This Saturday — AKA Valentine’s Day, for all you lovers out there — Shawn Kilroy & The Dream Queens (Mike “Slo-Mo” Brenner, Jamie Mahon, Jenny Prescott, and Mark Landlord) debut Hessian Love Songs, the final installment of a trilogy of albums that started with 2004’s Neon Gate followed by Thai Stick Dragon, at Philadelphia's Tritone. As might be expected of Kilroy (that's Townsman shawnkilroy to us!) - whose bio counts him as a “lover” along with the usually lonely combo of musician, singer, artist, film-maker, and thinker - ladies will not be charged admission.

Lover that he is, Kilroy’s never shied away from proclaiming his affection for England’s proto-goth, mid-’80s, moody pop — bands like Depeche Mode, Orchestral Manuevers in the Dark, and Love and Rockets. Much of that time and place scared the bejesus out of me when I would go upstairs at Revival to take a piss, making sure not to knock anyone’s line of coke off a urinal. Revival was a mixed bag in Philly’s rock and dance scene during the late-80s, but I loved it. Downstairs, in a big, open, noisy room in what used to be a Swedish sailor’s church, Revival put on underground rock shows: Camper Van Beethoven, The Mekons, The Godfathers, Tuxedomoon, Pere Ubu… Flaming Lips played there in support of Oh My Gawd!, when they were three barely known, hippie Okies playing teenage garage-band Floyd and Zeppelin soundalikes with bassist Michael Ivins operating a smoke-and-light machine with his feet. The sound pounded off the room’s exposed marble, plaster, and tile…in a good way. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!