There’s a fantastic jump-scare halfway through the second album by the indie-folk songwriter Alec Duckart when ethereal acoustic guitars give way to a terrifying onslaught of feedback.
If you don’t know what’s coming it’s absolutely terrifying, and it comes as no surprise to discover that Duckart, aka Searows, was inspired by “revenge” horror films such as The VVitch and Midsommar.
“Those are some of my favourite movies,” says Duckart, who believes that the desire for vengeance is universal. “I feel like it’s such a common feeling. It’s why people love those movies so much.”
There is a name for these films: the “good for her” genre, in which a female protagonist endures physical or emotional trauma only to finally snap and take revenge.
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That is the likewise the vibe of Dearly Missed, in which Duckart delivers the chorus as a visceral shriek into the void: “I sell you out / Is it so bad? / Are you still asking if she hates you now? / Slow down / Kicking and screaming / I really need you to help yourself.”
The effect is both haunting and disturbing. You feel the narrator has gone too far and that, as the listener, you are about to witness something truly disturbing. That, according to Duckart, is exactly the point. “It’s the desire we all have to have some sort of dramatic – murderous revenge or something. It’s a very cathartic thing to imagine.”
The moment is striking precisely because Searows’ music is generally a story of less adding up to more: the songs are hushed and self-contained, often consisting simply of a strummed guitar and the singer’s ethereally angsty voice.
That formula is hugely voguish at the moment, as seen from the success of artists such as Boygenius, Gracie Abrams and, when she went folk during the pandemic, even Taylor Swift. And so it is perhaps not surprising that Searows has quietly become a huge cult artist.
[ Gracie Abrams in Dublin review: No nepo-baby here. A real star stands before usOpens in new window ]
You can see that in Searows’ streaming numbers, which now run into the millions each month, and also in the crowds coming out to see Duckart play live. Now it’s time for Ireland to witness this songwriter on the up. Six months after attending a launch party in Dublin for new album, Death in the Business of Whaling, Duckart is back in the city in early April for a headline gig at Vicar Street, the sort of venue you play when you’re going places in a hurry.
That rise has attracted high-wattage admirers, including the country-goth megastar Ethel Cain and the aforementioned Abrams, who is such a fan that she brought Duckart on tour.
“It’s such a huge compliment for any artist I respect to like my music, to see me as an artistic peer or something. That is a very bizarre thing to wrap my head around, I guess. And also the impostor syndrome of not really understanding how I got here.
“It feels very strange. I love those artists. I love so much of the music that has inspired me. People who have inspired me listening to what I make is very strange – and an honour.”
Duckart uses he/him pronouns and is transgender. While everything in a person’s life influences their songwriting, gender isn’t necessarily a driving or defining force in his music, he says. It’s part of who he is, not something he thinks about every time he picks up a guitar.
There’s a lot of punching down against trans people, especially on social media, where it truly is a litmus test for empathy and compassion (and not being a lunatic). But that sort of divisiveness doesn’t necessarily filter into everyday life, says Duckart. Thinking about the subject, he suggests that because trans people are not always visible in everyday life, strangers will make more of it than the artist themselves might.
I didn’t go into the album thinking about it being inspired by Moby-Dick ... After the album was done, that’s when I connected the dots for what the themes were
— Alec Duckart
“It’s not something I write about in a specific way. I think there are just so few trans people in the public eye in general that it’s kind of, like, for some people, you’re the only one they know, or that they have seen,” he says.
“It’s not necessarily something I think about. I feel it’s weird on the internet, where you come across every type of person who will think whatever they think about you or about trans people. It’s weird. But I’m also used to it at this point.”
Duckart went through a Taylor Swift phase growing up in Portland, but since his teenage years he has been writing slow, sad alternative folk. He has long admired Irish artists such as The Cranberries and Sinéad O’Connor, although his influences are often as much literary as musical.
In the case of Death in the Business of Whaling, they include Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, the tale of an obsessed sea captain who destroys himself in his quest for revenge against an impassive and indestructible leviathan. Duckart says he wasn’t drawing self-consciously on those themes: having grown up with the book, they have always been part of the background noise of his life.
The light bulb flashed only when he listened back to the recording: in writing about the hunger for revenge against someone who has wronged you romantically, he had made his own indie-folk Moby-Dick.
“It’s something that, since I was in high school, has been in my mind,” he says. “I didn’t go into the album thinking about it being inspired by Moby-Dick. It was a story and a setting that I always found myself thinking about and inspired by. After the album was done, that’s when I connected the dots for what the themes were.”
As an American trying to make it through the Trump administration, he believes that art has a part to play in resisting oppression. But where his music fits into that calculus is something he is still working through. By nature he is not a political songwriter. Yet so much in the world is political nowadays, and navigating that challenge is “weird”.
I feel I’m still figuring out how to balance living your life and also knowing what is happening and not being crushed by it
— Alec Duckart
“It’s very strange. I feel like art has such a huge place in political resistance. There is a history of using art to fight against fascism. I feel like I’m in my own bubble of making art. It doesn’t feel like I can do anything with my art, even though it is out of my hands at this point.”
Living in Donald Trump’s United States is “weird all the time”. “I feel I’m still figuring out how to balance living your life and also knowing what is happening and not being crushed by it and also not looking the other way,” he says.
In fraught times, music can be a call to arms but also a source of solace, and it feels telling that many people on TikTok and across social media have described Searows’ music as a place of comfort. It’s a compliment he is happy to take. That’s what music is supposed to do: bring us comfort, make us feel connected, protected, safe.
“I feel honoured by it. Part of what drove me to make music in the first place is loving other music that comforts me, wanting to create something like that. It’s very strange. But I’m so glad that people feel that way.”
Searows plays Vicar Street, Dublin, on Sunday, April 5th
