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STEPHEN SANCHEZ on his album, Angel Face Club Deluxe
WORDS by Tessa Swantek TALENT Stephen Sanchez PHOTO Gabrielle McLoughlin PR °1824
The Death of the Protagonist
Choosing to kill your protagonist is intentional. In Stephen Sanchez’s album, Angel Face (Club Deluxe), he creates a 1950s fictional character, Troubadour Sanchez, whose love story with Evangeline is chronicled throughout the album. While the album is a love story, it is perhaps more accurately a Tragedy with the death of Troubadour Sanchez in the twelfth track. As Evangeline’s mob boss boyfriend, Hunter, kills him, he sings “Oh, my love they’ve come for me / They’ve one bullet saved to gun me down / Though in the ground, my heart for you will stay.” It’s important that the album ends in devastation, with a whole finale packed in a single bullet. The death of Troubadour Sanchez amplifies everything - the love between him and Evangeline, but also the hatred between him and Hunter, jealousy, desperation, and war.
Stephen Sanchez meets us on Zoom with polished-back jet black hair wearing a perfectly pressed red silk shirt and a clean black and white polka dot tie. His appearance is immediately intriguing because it is that of Troubadour Sanchez. When he talks, it almost feels as if he's Troubadour Sanchez sharing rare glimpses into the reality of Stephen Sanchez.
When speaking about the album, he says, “‘No One Knows’ opened up the world for this [album] to be a love story - it’s about how people who love each other actually hate each other sometimes too. I thought it was important to have that be a thing in the record because this character is longing for that in Evangeline. He wants the opportunity to not be in love with her so that he can remember how much he does through their choosing each other.”
While "No One Knows" is not the album’s first track, the fact that the love story as a concept started with this turbulence almost foreshadows the ending. The love story is amplified against this backdrop of hatred and chaos in the same way as it is in the "Death of The Troubadour" through Hunter’s hatred. The album’s story is also intensified by the sheer vitality of the 1950s setting - baby blue silk, shaking hips, blood red roses. “Shake” in particular helps ground the setting of the album as he sings, “Well, she was, uh, shakin' to the east / Shakin’ to the west / An Elvis-movin' pelvis / Underneath, uh, that, uh, dress.” Stephen says, “As much as we want to pull people into the world we are creating, we want to put a time stamp on it that these other artists [like Elvis] exist in that world too.” This widens the album’s setting and makes it that much more cinematic.
When asked about films that inspire his writing, he says, “I watched Lost in Translation which is about two people escaping their realities and creating their own together. I think love is a wonderful escape from reality a lot of the time. Then it becomes real when you shake off all the clouds. Movies like that remind me of that magic but the reality of heartache and circumstance pulling people away from each other.” Most of the album is told from Troubadour Sanchez’s point of view, however, we get a rare glimpse into dialogues between Troubadour and Evangeline and dialogues between Hunter and Troubadour. Lost in Translation includes only a little over ten minutes of dialogue within the hour and forty minute film. With much of the focus being on the chaotic and alien backdrop of Tokyo, their silences, body language, and brief conversations are deepened. Stephen Sanchez achieves the same effect in Angel Face. Yet, in both the film and album, the outside world nags to poke a bullet-sized hole in their thinly protected intimate reality as the tension, confusion, and desperation builds.
You can hear this tension in “Be More” as Troubadour Sanchez begs Evangeline through trembling lyrics, “It must be more than I want you / More than I caught you / Be more than dancing in raindrops / Falling to touch you / Oh, just to touch you.” Near the end of the song, he is nearly wailing. Once you get to “High,” he becomes more desperate to take her away from Hunter as he sings, “Little honey, in the summer / Fell in love with Hunter / Oh, I can't have this.” The electric guitar gets louder throughout and the metronome hastens like a clock that ticks toward the inevitable tragedy, quicker now.
"I think love is a wonderful escape from reality a lot of the time. Then it becomes real when you shake off all the clouds."
Death Of The Troubadour by Stephen Sanchez
OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO
“Doesn’t Do Me Any Good” sets the tragic ending loose as it starts running now towards Troubadour Sanchez. He sings, “They said a man rich with love / Could go crazy / Spendin' all his gold / Bettin' on a maybe.” When Stephen talks about this song, he says, “At the time of writing it, I was having such an anger-infused day and had a situation with someone I liked. It’s a love song but not really, it’s kind of a diss track. It’s about being annoyed that I’m so entrenched in liking this person that I would come running if they asked.” This track continues the story between Troubadour Sanchez and Evangeline, and is the album’s most restless track. The finale happens in “Death of The Troubadour” but in the deluxe album, the story continues with Evangeline’s descent into madness which we hear in “Howling at Wolves.” The album is a fight between outside turmoil and inner simplicity as tracks like “I Need You Most Of All,” and “Caught In A Blue” sound angelic and airy, set fully in the lover’s gazes and arms. This removes them from the world around them for a little while, but we know it can’t last.
This era of Stephen’s music too won’t last. He talks about not wanting to “regurgitate the same thing.” When Stephen talks about writing from the perspective of a character, he says, “When I utilize music to get me through a personal thing, once I’m through it, I’m not as connected to the song. But if I’m writing with a character who is telling the story through their lens, I always feel connected.” He continues, "For the Troubador, he meets this girl but there’s the antagonist - Hunter - who kills him in the end and there’s a battle. It’s just a ton of metaphors to say what I don’t want to directly say. It’s more fun to be in the 50s kicking the shit out of gang members and I get shot and I don’t even get her in the end. It’s so much better than being like ‘We had communication problems and we broke up.’”
"If I'm writing with a character who is telling the story through their lens, I always feel connected."
Don’t miss seeing Troubadour Sanchez on tour all through the end of the month and October. As for what to expect from a show, Stephen says, “You can expect the real thing as if you were back in the 1950s seeing Troubadour Sanchez live. When we played in Toronto, I was on the balcony and danced with a sweet little girl and sang to another girl, and put her cowboy hat on my head. It’s been flirty and fun.” He also told us that the tour has included Kate Hudson standing side-stage at one of the shows and kissing him on the cheek.
Maybe his life really is turning into a movie.
Listen to Angel Face (Club Deluxe) Here
Be More by Stephen Sanchez
OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO
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