No Coward Soul is the Norfolk Serpent

A new song inspired by Emily Brontë's poetry appears in the latest album by J. Wiegold, Norfolk Serpent:

An album about representation, love, suffocation, euphoria, suicide and the places where they weave together. my quietest release, probably, but also probably some of my prettiest guitar work. I went into all of these tracks writing only five-or-six-layer harmonies and then singing random syllables over them; many of the surviving songs keep the repeating patterns that I would play over and over again for ten or twenty minutes at a time. it was a very very cathartic experience, recording this at one of the lowest points in the year (and in my life thus far) turned it from the high-octane dream-pop record I originally planned into something much more delicate. I am extremely proud of it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do :)

Our Culture Magazine interviews J. Wiegold:

Konstantinos Pappis: ‘No Coward Soul’ is a reference to Emily Brontë’s ‘Last Lines’. What significance does that poem have to you?

J.W.: It’s less about what the specific poem signifies – although I do love it – and more what she signifies as a writer. Wuthering Heights and by extension her poetry were so carnally obsessed with nature and will as destructive forces that it was sort of like the evil twin of the romanticist era (which I am doubly inspired by). The idea of euphoria being mixed with depression and suicide is something that the album has in droves. No Coward Soul Is Mine is to me the crux of the themes that appear in all her work, though in the extreme – talking of “withered weeds”, “suns and universes ceased to be” – I’ve read it so many times I could recite it backwards. My song named after it doesn’t so much trace a singular story like the other songs but is in a similar way more of a summation of the themes of the album using Brontë as a reference point. It’s the album’s centrepiece in a way.