One of the most talented and superlatively evocative new symphonic metal band on the scene is the Texas-based Canadian band Tulip. First profiled on this website last year, the band has continued its meteoric rise with the recent release of its debut full-length album, High Strangeness.
Comprised of musical and life partners Colin Parrish (guitars) and the exceptional vocalist/lyricist Ashleigh Semkiw, who live full time in Texas, the lineup is rounded out by Toronto-based bassist Brandon White and drummer Ryan Claxton.
Semkiw and Parrish moved to Texas a few years ago, but when the Covid-19 pandemic became more pronounced, they returned to the home they kept in Toronto to be closer to their kids, who attend school in the city. As with pretty much every musician and band on the planet, any touring plans Tulip had for 2020 were cancelled outright or postponed, including an extensive jaunt opening for symphonic metal legend Tarja Turunen.
“The dates that we were supposed to have with Tarja in April have all moved to 2021 in March. So, we’re still doing all the same shows, and I think we’re even adding a bunch of shows, but obviously we have to fill some time between now and then,” said Parrish.
“It hasn’t been as difficult for us because Tulip is not our primary source of income. I actually work in the e-commerce sector as my day job, so I haven’t been impacted as badly as many other people because people are still purchasing online. Our touring has been affected and we have had lots of losses related to airline tickets and things like that. But other than that, our day to day life hasn’t been interrupted as much as it has been for some other people, other than the social isolating that we’re all doing. If nothing else, the situation provides some time to be indoors at your computer or in your studio working on stuff.”
“The album [dropped] on April 4 and we already had all the accompanying merch ready, so we hope that people who like us and love our music will support us and buy it, or stream it as much as they can,” added Semkiw.
Although the band only release their debut EP TULIP last year, it didn’t take long for the proverbial creative energy to start flowing again, resulting in a complete LP of brand new music – High Strangeness.
“We’re usually a good album behind where we are in terms of the release from an inspiration and sort of the seed of the idea. Even now we have the next idea that we’re starting to work on. We do everything ourselves in house, so it takes a long time to piece everything together from a writing inception standpoint. But this album, given that it’s a full-length project, has a much broader conceptional statement than the previous EP, which was just sort of a collection of songs,” explained Parrish.
“And additionally, the way that we went about recording this and producing this was a little more involved. There’re live drums on it, for example, whereas on the EP there was just programmed drums, so there are some improvements in that regard. We feel it’s a more complete thought, from front to back. With the last EP, the songs were written more individually and then we overlaid the lyrical theme on them. With High Strangeness, the songs were written in sort of a sequential manner, so that they flowed together more theatrically.
“We have been joking that we will just drop the term symphonic metal and that we’re trying to pioneer musical theatre metal. Everybody is talking about symphonic metal, and Ash is definitely from an operatic background, but if you infuse a more North American perspective on theatrical metal, it’s like the story arc of a musical theatre production. And that means the way that we write is a bit more pop oriented than it is classical.”
“We went to see Hamilton not that long ago and we were totally inspired. I love American musical theatre. It definitely informs a lot of the way I write, melodically and lyrically,” added Semkiw.
Another reason for getting High Strangeness completed and out to the public as effectively as possible is to embrace the popular and critical momentum that Tulip has garnered over the past year.
“There’s the momentum aspect, but also when fans are finding the band, they naturally want a lot of content to latch onto. I think we were finding that people totally loved the music on the EP but then they hit a dead end pretty quickly. So, we recognized that we needed to feed that demand. We did have the material mostly prepared by that time, but just the exercise of getting it all recorded and produced properly is what takes time. We wanted to get the album out there so that people who are discovering the band for the first time had a lot more to work with,” Parrish said.
“We picked up a lot of fans since the release of the EP and we got a lot of really good feedback and good reviews. People have been really generous. We have had people come to the shows and share their own stories about leaving the faith; they do a deep dive into our interviews with you or whomever and learn about our story. We have connected with people I would say on a really deep level, which I think is rare,” said Semkiw, warming to the topic.
“We are very open. We have lots of nice little discussions, we answer people’s questions, we don’t have anything to hide us anymore. So, this album is less about our exodus from Christianity as we talked about before, and which was more the focus of the previous EP, and more about being open to new ideas and what’s out there in the real world – delving into things that we weren’t allowed to discuss or even think about before. And so now we’re here; it’s the High Strangeness era for Tulip and it’s really, really fun.”
The concept, as it were, for the album is one of looking at various aspects of our existence, before finally realizing where the priorities are and were our focus as human beings should be, as Parrish explained.
“The album is called High Strangeness which is sort of a tongue in cheek reference to the UFOlogist community. And of course we’re going to get ourselves in trouble if we act like we are proponents of UFOlogy, but I think that mostly it’s irreverent and the album itself is sort of subdivided into three sections, and they are bookended by these little musical interludes,” he said.
“The intro is called Above; the middle section is Below and then the last section is Within. It deals with some of those sorts of metaphysical and existential questions about why we’re here and who we are and are there some more complicated ways of looking at the problem beyond just saying, in our traditional sense, that God created us. Or maybe is there something more complex to describe our place in the universe. I think conceptually, the arc is looking above, looking below and then looking within. And each of the songs kind of extrapolate on those issues.”
Semkiw said that the concept of self-examination and self-evaluation, of learning to think for oneself are concepts that were verboten within the former religious community that she and Parrish lived.
“Last time we talked about our background being involved with evangelicals, and the number one thing that you’re taught from birth as an evangelical, as we experienced it, is that looking within is the worst thing you can do, because ‘within’ is a sinful and depraved mess. The song Inner Light, which was the first single that we put out for this album, is exactly about that. It’s that in my learning and our deconstruction of the faith, is trusting your own instincts, trusting what you believe is right for yourself is actually the only way to live with freedom and it’s the healthiest way to live. So that’s what that song is about, for instance,” she said.
‘With the other ones, there are references to different relationships that have broken down, that I’m not sure when those people hear that song, they will know who they are. We’ve gone though a lot o pain and have come through the other side and are a lot happier and healthier because of it. And I feel this record is, above all, a celebration of where we are now and the joy in not knowing the answers to everything. That is actually really great.”
Although Parrish and Semkiw, as the primary songwriters for Tulip are broadening their compositional horizons, there is still a component of their songs, especially on the lyrical level, that deals with their former lives within the confines of a strict Christian sect.
There is, after all, a song called Communion on the record, one of the best and most evocative of all the tracks on High Strangeness.
“With Communion we are making obvious references to the Christian version of communion, but also to the [UFOlogist] Whitley Strieber novel and story. We kind of wrote it about both those things, if they can be linked at all. But I also introduced a lot of sexual overtones into that song, so it’s like the word ‘communion’ in its entirety and what that can mean between two entities, two people, two souls, whatever,” Semkiw said.
The song Entity once again touches on an aspect of their former lives as members of a fundamentalist evangelical Christian sect, that was very repressive and controlling and which they happily escaped a few years ago. But you can’t leave everything behind, including the memories of some of the ‘characters’ who were part of that former lifestyle.
“Entity had a different working title which I am not going to repeat at this moment. It was honestly written a lot about old church ladies and women who posture and pretend to be people they aren’t, and the really bad experiences that I had with women like that in the church. The appear one thing on the outside, but they’re really monsters on the inside,” said Semkiw.
“I am still being chased by a lot of those people and just tying to stay away from them, and how they continue to try to suck you in at every turn and get you to come back ‘to the Lord.’ But we’re done with that. And I think even now, especially with American evangelicals, although it is coming up into Canada too in the ‘megachurch’ context, you have this kind of caricature of what a very wealthy woman, who is in a position of leadership of a church, who will ask your for prayer as a guise to basically get gossip out of you. And then they go to the other women and say, ‘I have a prayer request for our dear sister so and so,’ and it’s really just an opportunity for them to gossip with the other ladies. I watched that happen so many times, for so many years. So, that’s what Entity is about.”
Parrish picked up the discussion of the meaning behind the song.
“I do think you’ve got to be careful with painting everybody with the same brush. But the church does create a breeding ground for a whole host of pathologies. You’ve got the idea of an infallible church leader who can decree by diktat the way that people should live their life and they can never be challenged even if it’s a complete sham in terms of the way they live their own lives,” he said.
“And then you have the mental health issues that come in at the bottom because they feel that God is either sticking to them or protecting them, which creates a dynamic there where you get these sociopathic narcissists percolating to the top of the hierarchy and the poor and those with legitimate mental health issues are down at the bottom and that just creates a pretty vicious dynamic.”
For more information on Tulip, High Strangeness, and any forthcoming tour dates for the post-Covid-19 world, visit the band’s social media channels or https://wearetulip.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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