Your Heart Breaks is the indie pop vision of Northwest musician, artist and filmmaker, Clyde Petersen. In a drafty house full of artists in Bellingham, Washington in 1998, Petersen learned to weave experimental, textural sounds into traditional melodic pop progressions. Between the dirty dishes, overflowing ashtrays, empty 40-ounce Lucky Lager bottles and Y2K-induced anxiety of the world, Clyde’s lyric-driven songs found form and comfort in describing the analog aspects of a lifetime steeped in D.I.Y. culture. Love, friendship, late-night adventures, obscure films and literature, queer identity and self-reflection are often topics you’ll find Petersen pondering. For 25 years, Your Heart Breaks has centered the importance of musical collaboration and has created recordings with LAKE, Kimya Dawson, Karl Blau, R. Ring, Danny Denial, Lori Goldston, Earth and Wynne Greenwood to name a few.
The Wrack Line by Your Heart Breaks
Out 7/7/23 on Kill Rock Stars
On planet Earth, the wrack line is a collection of organic material and debris left behind on the shore after a high tide. As you walk the wrack you’ll find kelp, seagrass, shells, driftwood, dead sea creatures, agates, remnants of humanity, and once in a while, secret treasures thrown overboard from a container ship caught in a storm. This album is my wrack line. A summation of the past few years, a lifetime of friendships, feelings and memories, broken free of a gyre and left upon my shoreline. Take off your shoes and walk the beach.
The Wrack Line is a collaboratively written album between Clyde Petersen and many special guests throughout the world. These songs were created through numerous exchanges of concepts, hooks, riffs and emotional conversations, processed through tin-can telephones, carrier pigeons, twilight dreams and shooting stars.
In the summer of 2022, the Your Heart Breaks studio band, made up of Eli Moore and Ashley Eriksson from the band LAKE and Katherine Paul from Black Belt Eagle Scout, gathered at the Unknown studio in Anacortes, Washington to record the basic tracks for each song. We learned 2 or 3 songs together each day and recorded them together, live in the studio. Nicholas Wilbur produced and engineered the album, guiding us with ease, running the board and giving honest feedback on each attempt. I am grateful to all of the artists involved for their willingness to be open and vulnerable in the process of collaboration. I urge you to seek out the music of the accompanying artists on this album. Each of their projects is truly magical and has been deeply influential in my life. Thank you to Kill Rock Stars. It’s a teenage dream come true.
No oceans were harmed in the creation of The Wrack Line.
Clyde Petersen (2023)
Photo by Clyde Petersen
Your Heart Breaks Studio Band (2023)
Nicholas Wilbur, Ashley Eriksson, Clyde Petersen, Katherine Paul, Eli Moore
Photo by Dre Gordon
Drone Butch Blues (Sofaburn Records 2019) is a queer concept album based on the writings of historic and contemporary GLBTQI authors. With a focus on stories surrounding queer community, Drone Butch Blues touches on topics of secret and forbidden love, sex with strangers, the lives of hustlers, the impact of AIDS on homosexuals, historic events and rebellion all interwoven with the personal narrative of Clyde Petersen. Striving to examine the contemporary gap between generations of queers and their elders, Petersen turns to written materials to find buried remnants of gay culture and creative vibrant humans, lost to the plague of AIDS. What emerges from this exploration is Drone Butch Blues, the 9th full-length album from a twenty-year career as Your Heart Breaks.
Produced by Karl Blau and engineered by Nicholas Wilbur at The Unknown in Anacortes, Washington, the base of the album is drone. Each track containing it's own unique drone element, and is then layered with folk instruments. You won't find any drum sets on Drone Butch Blues. Instead you will discover rhythm in the textures of the strings and pianos. Drone Butch Blues lives somewhere between a memorial service and a queer anthem, trying to encapsulate or understand such a historic loss of a vibrant generation of artists, while celebrating intimate moments shared in queer communities.
DRONE BUTCH BLUES BAND
Karl Blau (K Records, Laura Veirs, Earth)
Kyle Field (Little Wings)
Kelley Deal (The Breeders, R. Ring)
Kimya Dawson (Moldy Peaches, Juno)
Dylan Carlson (Earth)
Lori Goldston (Nirvana, Earth)
Adrienne Davies (Earth)
Wynne Greenwood (Tracy & the Plastics)
Jordan Smith(Jordan O'Jordan)
Zach Burba (iji, Dear Nora)
Jacob Jaffe (Younger Shoulder)
Jonas Haskins (Earth, Low Hums)
DRONE BUTCH BLUES READING LIST
Stone Butch Blues / Leslie Feinberg
A Restricted Country / Joan Nestle
The Carnivorous Lamb / Agustin Gomez-Arcos
City of Night / John Rechy
Lesbian Poetry: An Anthology / Elly Bulkin, Joan Larkin
Valencia / Michelle Tea
In the City of Shy Hunters / Tom Spanbauer
The Pox Lover / Anne-christine d'Adesky
Rubyfruit Jungle / Rita Mae Brown
Since I Laid My Burden Down / Brontez Purnell
Tomboy Survival Guide / Ivan Coyote
First Spring Grass Fire / Rae Spoon
Close to the Knives / David Wojnarowicz
Switch / Carol Guess
Fun Home / Alison Bechdel
About a Girl / Sarah McCarry
Where the Words End and my Body Begins / Amber Dawn
Not my Father's Son / Alan Cumming
Carsick / John Waters