Within their lush sonic landscape, The Ophelias interweave emotive tales of nostalgia, dreams and womanhood. While the guitars are hazy, the storytelling is crystal clear as they write songs about catharsis, queerness and relationships. These ethereal tales are explored in new heights on the indie rock group’s new album, Spring Grove, released April 4 via Get Better Records.
The Ophelias — composed of Spencer Peppet (vocals, guitar), Mic Adams (drums), Andrew Gutmann Fuentes (violin) and Jo Schaffer (bass) — created Spring Grove following a transformative era of Peppet’s life. The primary songwriter for the band, Peppet found herself four years ago being visited by the ghosts of her past, facing continuous visits in her dreams from people she had not spoken to in some time. To express the emotions which surrounded these occurrences — and to finally say what needed to be said — Peppet wrote what soon became Spring Grove, resulting in 13 tracks conveying the unmistakable vulnerability and wonder that dreams often give to the dreamers.
The album is a cumulation of unreleased tracks written and recorded during the pandemic, and The Ophelias had fate on their side when Julien Baker told the band she wanted to record their next record. Marking the first time she has ever produced for another artist, Baker and The Ophelias spent ten days recording the album at Young Avenue Sound in Memphis in 2021.
Ahead of the record, The Ophelias released numerous singles, including “Cumolonimbus” and “Salome.” The former tells the story of how a relationship bittersweetly ends, leaving what was left unsaid to forever hang like a gloomy cloud. The latter offers a grittier means of expression from the group, utilizing the Biblical tale of Salome beheading John the Baptist to tell a story of a woman becoming involved with a much older man. Similar to the paintings of Caravaggio, The Ophelias intertwine mythical tales of brutality with a modern lens to highlight themes of misogyny, feminism and relationships.
The Ophelias maintain an artistry that evokes a vast array of images. In their musical universe slasher films may coexist with orchestral indie rock, resulting in a project that sonically oozes and glitters, and women throughout the most impactful stories in history are finally given the platform they deserve – through a modern, relatable retelling.
To celebrate the release of their new record, The Ophelias will embark on a North American tour throughout April and May. In light of these successes, Peppet sat down with Melodic Magazine to discuss the sustainability of the DIY genre, feminist doomsday cults and the healing properties of Spring Grove.
I did want to ask about the single and music video, “Salome.” You say it’s about older men in the music industry as well as the story of Salome and the beheading of John the Baptist. I was very interested in how you came across that story and how you resonated with it.
I went to a suburban Ohio Catholic high school and I first came across it there. And then Jo — our bassist and my partner — is really into Pre-Raphaelite and Renaissance art. So when two queens maximized their joint Salome slay, we both realized that we were interested in a lot of the same imagery and stories. I think that Salome is a story that puts you right in the place where you need to be to think about things like misogyny or negative experiences. I think it’s a really poignant story and I think it’s even more brutal because of how young she is. As a band, we started when we were in high school, and so for a lot of the experiences that I was thinking about, we were very young. Part of it also is misogyny gets really boring when you think about it. So instead of going through and being like, “Then this happened and this happened and this happened,” this story encapsulates a lot of the feelings of even those very minor interactions. I think interactions big and small can both lead into this feeling of having to run through the woods with a knife, you know?
Going off of this concept, the band itself is called The Ophelias, and you have this major theme in your music focusing on female characters throughout history. How did you first come to realize that you connected with these stories, or when was the point you decided this should be the core theme for the band?
The band started when we were in high school. So I’m 18, I’m rereading “Hamlet” in my AP English literature class, and I started getting really into auxiliary essays and stuff on Ophelia, specifically about the subtext of a lot of the different things that my English teacher probably would not teach us because, again, all girls Catholic High School. A lot of the stuff I was reading about was stuff like how a lot of the flowers that she had are flowers that were known to cause abortions, so there’s the theme of perhaps she could have been pregnant. Or how committing suicide would have been a huge offense to her family, so doing that was a very strong response on her part. I was really interested in a lot of that more auxiliary stuff and was really drawn to Ophelia as the most interesting character in “Hamlet.” I don’t think it was ever a purposeful thing of, “This will be the core of our band.” I do think that we were drawn to a lot of those types of stories, and I think that it’s cool to draw from things like historical figures, Bible stories, plays, paintings and stuff like that.
The “Salome” music video was said to be video game-inspired; how did this concept play into the message of the song?
I don’t know if it’s super connected to the message, but for the “Cumulonimbus” music video we had a really wonderful cinematographer, we had a lighting team and it felt like a big production. With this one, we wanted to do this more DIY. Jo and I, we also co-direct the music videos together, and I think she has a lot of really cool ideas about how music videos are the last bastion of experimental filmmaking in the mainstream. With camcorder videos specifically, our question is always, “What can we do to make this different from other camcorder videos that we’ve done?” I think because they’re so easy to use, the texture is immediately recognizable. We’ve done a camcorder video that was all in a circle and that was really fun, and then this time we did the POV shot. Jo built a POV rig that we would set up and then tape the camcorder to it and I would hold my hands out and walk around. It just felt like fun, experimental filmmaking. And also kind of campy, because we were going for this campy horror movie vibe.
The band really value this DIY approach to music, I’ve read that you even thrift a lot of your wardrobe, even valuing DIY in that sense. Why is that sustainability aspect of it all so important to you?
That’s a great question. The clothing one is easy. I sew a lot of my tour outfits, and I try to thrift pretty much all of my clothes. That’s just an environmental thing. Regarding music, I think it’s the discovery. I think that the feeling of discerning and uncovering things is what makes DIY so special. We do have a booking agent, so we’re no longer doing DIY booking, but for a while I was our booking agent. We’re very lucky to now have a booking agent because I was not a very good booker (laughs). But wearing something on stage that you sewed and selling merch that you’ve embroidered to a crowd that you booked, there’s a process of discovery through all of that. I think that is something that I’ve always really liked is that there’s always new stuff to be learning and trying, and I feel like DIY really just encourages exploration and tapping into the thing that you really want and then figuring out how to make it happen.
I really love that. There’s an education aspect to it, but there’s also a sense of uniqueness and ownership as well, whether it’s making your own music video or sewing your own outfit. You didn’t have somebody else do it who maybe had more funds to do so, but you can now say it’s yours.
I think it’s because I just care a lot. I want this to be the way I see it in my head, and I care enough about it that I will do it right. Even if it is difficult or even if it takes a lot of time or even if I have to learn something new. If I care about it this much I will learn how to do it.
Going back to the music video, I also loved how you filmed it. The video was filmed at this cave which was used by a cult called The Society of the Women of the Wilderness. I was wondering if you knew about that place before the video happened or if you discovered it while you were making the video. How did all of this happen?
We figured out that we were going to shoot in Philly because it was the easiest place for us all to meet. We were trying to find some cool spots, and then Jo called me and was like, “I found a cave, it was used by the first American doomsday cult” (laughs). And I was like, “Why is that perfect?” So we went the first weekend to scout and it was pouring rain. The cave smells like incense and there’s candles inside, like people are still going there to leave offerings. I’m covered in water and dirt and singing this song, and then the rain stops. But immediately after, two massive trees fall because of these insane winds. We were like, “This place is haunted, we got to go.” We come back the next weekend because we have to do the rest of the shoot, and we brought an offering to respect the cave and respect The Society. The cult itself was pretty tame by today’s cult standards. It was a group of monks who went out to the river to make music, do astronomy and chill out because they thought the world was going to end. It’s cool because that cave is the last remaining structure that they built. And you can kind of feel it when you walk in. People have been here and it means a lot to them.
That’s just such a cool story (laughs). Going back to the album and everything relating to that, you have the tour coming up after the album comes out, which is very exciting. What are you most looking forward to with all these shows that you’re going to play?
We’ve been sitting on this record for like three years, and we’ve played some of these songs live before. We’ve played “Cicada,” we played “Salome.” But I think I’m most excited to play all of the other ones. I think “Parade” is one that I’m really excited about and I want to play live. I really want to figure out a way to just make that feel huge and lush and dark, so I’m excited about that one. I’m excited to do “Open Sky” live. I feel like that’ll be fun. I guess that’s the answer, just doing all the ones that we haven’t done live yet.
It seems like a really exciting tour and such a big milestone for you all. I know that the album as well represents a new visual era for you, and the album shows you amping it up a little bit when it comes to your visuals and aesthetics. We’ve talked about pulling inspiration from stories and myths, but where else do you draw visual inspiration?
I think film is huge. Horror movies are a big inspiration. I’m really inspired by a lot of things that get designated as “women’s work,” so stuff like embroidery, sewing, textile art, needlepoint. I’m inspired by a lot of fashion. Vivienne Westwood, old Alexander McQueen. I think a lot of those collections are just incredibly gorgeous, and I think that they do a really cool job of storytelling through clothing, which I’m very inspired by. There’s a lot of stuff that goes into every music video or every photo shoot. Originally being from Cincinnati, we shot the album cover in Cincinnati because we all happened to be there the same weekend. But that makes me really happy, because the beauty of the Midwest is something that is very inspiring. I have a lot of favorite things, but I think it also is the fact that it’s not just me and my inspirations, it’s the whole band. We all kind of meld together, and that creates the thing that is The Ophelias, rather than just being my brain.
The album was written after a period in your life when you were revisiting a lot of old ghosts, so to speak. People were coming back from earlier times in your life after not seeing them for a long time. I was wondering what was on your mind during that time or how you might have felt during that time in your life?
This was also during quarantine, and I think quarantine definitely put it into a very specific context because I had a lot more time to sit and think about what was going on. It wasn’t even necessarily that people that I knew were popping up. It was that they were popping up in my dreams. I would dream about them and we would have full conversations in my dreams and I would wake up and be like, “So I experienced that, and unless there’s some new dream technology that I’m unaware of this other person has no idea.” It was that feeling that clearly I have more to say to the people that I’m dreaming about. But by the end of the record I think you can hear me being a little bit done with it. On the last song, the first line is, “I would love it if you could stop coming to me in my dreams. I would love a minute just to figure out what it means.” I think it was definitely unnerving, but also it piqued my curiosity. I think that’s the reason this album exists is because I was like, “I’m actually going to sit with these feelings and sit with these one-sided conversations and these dream states and figure out what is there left to say.”
Now that the album is done, do you have closure now with those unfinished conversations? Or is the journey still happening?
You know, I don’t even know. You can say you have closure, but here I am still talking about it. I made a whole album about it and now it’s time to do press for it (laughs). I’m definitely not in the same place that I was a couple years ago. I think that, thankfully, a lot of this stuff has kind of moved on through my life, but I don’t know if closure is possible. Is it closure if you go on stage and sing about it?
That’s a very interesting concept though, because a lot of people might view closure as something that’s over and done. And I love the concept that you explore with dreams. Scientifically, we still don’t really know what they are, or what deeper meanings they might have.
I think dreams are a really good doorway to thinking about other experiences. Because on this record, I’m not necessarily writing down word for word what happened in the dream. But having the dream opened the door to think about other things that have happened in those relationships and then connect it to something that happened in real life. I think it gives you a set of tools. It feels like astrology to me. I love astrology because it’s like a shared language where you can immediately be weirdly vulnerable with people. Because if you’re like, “I’m an Aquarius moon” and someone’s like, “You’re an Aquarius moon? I am too,” they know exactly what that means for you. You can reach this strange level of vulnerability very quickly and I think that dreams are kind of like that. Because if you tell someone your dream, either people are annoyed with it or they’re super curious. There’s a lot to dig into with what the subconscious is willing to give you.
With all these themes that you explore and these personal aspects of your life that you express on Spring Grove, what do you hope listeners can gain most from the album?
I think catharsis. I’ve been saying this record has zero songs about breakups. It’s a lot about those strange, unclassifiable relationships. I also have been in a romantic relationship for many years now. I’m like, “What business do I have writing about romantic breakups?” But there’s so many other different types of relationships and types of loss, grief and emotions connected to those things. My hope is that people can listen to this album and that it will resonate in whatever way it does. I’m hoping that people can hear this in the way that I intended, but also in the way that works for their life. I think that is what I’m hoping people can get from it, is just resonance and catharsis for whatever situation that they are in currently. And also I really would like to have our shows be a space for queer and trans people. I would love for it to be that if you know you are going to an Ophelias show, you’ll be surrounded by other queer and trans people.
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