ELI JOHNSON
MARISA ANDERSON and William Tyler’s new LP Lost Futures is haunted by two cultural figures no longer with us. Both Anderson and Tyler played at Bike Chain Rain, a tribute concert to Silver Jews frontman David Berman in Portland in January 2020. “David was a mentor and friend and his passing was very hard and strange,” says Tyler. The pair hung out, played a little guitar, and resolved to make a record together. That record borrows its title from Ghosts Of My Life: Writings On Depression, Hauntology And Lost Futures, a book by the late writer and theorist Mark Fisher. “My manager and friend Ben Swank had given me the book based on my interest in how to integrate this whole concept of hauntology into more idiomatically folk and American music,” says Tyler. He had the book in his bag as he and Anderson hunkered down to make the record, and at first the title was just a placeholder. Says Anderson: “To me the phrase is about the choices we have at any given moment, and how by definition, the action we choose leads to a different outcome than the unchosen action. A perfect analogy for the act of creating and improvising music.”