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SHROPSHIRE, June 19, 2025
A Song of Grief and Growth
Jerskin fendrix’s new album, “Once upon a Time… in Shropshire,” dives into the complexities of loss and the beauty found in the everyday.
- Fendrix’s album explores grief, memory, and the complexities of life.
- It reflects on the artist’s upbringing in Shropshire and the recent loss of loved ones.
- The record incorporates a diverse range of musical styles.
What happens when life’s idyllic landscapes are shattered by loss? Composer Jerskin Fendrix explores this question in his latest album, “Once Upon a Time… in Shropshire.” The record,a sonic tapestry woven with post-rock,chamber pop,and avant-garde explorations,delves into the depths of personal tragedy and the resilience of the human spirit.
From Rural Bliss too Personal Turmoil
The album’s opening track, “Beth’s Farm,” captures the innocence of youth in rural settings. “I thought it was a really nice symbol of this naive innocence,” Fendrix says. “Trying to get across how bucolic and heavenly this was before it starts to get corrupted.”
Fendrix says that the “corruption” he is referring to in the album is from personal struggles, including the death of close friends.”We’re taught by songs or Hollywood films that someone dies and then there’s very slow strings and you cry for six months and it gradually gets better,” he says. “That’s not how it works. Sometimes it’s not as bad as you think,sometimes it’s way worse. It can be trivial, funny or sometimes it’s these massively different combinations at the same time. Death is the same thing as life – it’s as complex and kaleidoscopically lovely.”
Did you know?-Fendrix received an Oscar nomination for his score of the film “Poor Things,” directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. He is also scoring Lanthimos’s upcoming film, “Bugonia,” with a 90-piece orchestra.
The music embodies emotions, from moments of heartache to unexpected humor. He moved to London in the late 2010s to be in the band Famous, but soon began playing solo shows and collaborating with the likes of Black Midi. his 2020 debut album, Winterreise, touched on hyper-pop, warped electro and leftfield baritone ballads. It was a cult record but it caught the ear of acclaimed film director Yorgos Lanthimos, who has as employed Fendrix to score three films: Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness and the upcoming Bugonia. The former even landed Fendrix an Oscar nomination and he’s buzzing about the next one. “It’s gonna be sick,” he enthuses. “It’s a wild film. I’m very proud of it. We got a 90-piece orchestra, so it’s a big fucking score.”
Reader question:-How do you think the experience of living in a rural habitat shapes an artist’s perspective and creative output?
The Ghosts of Memory
For Fendrix, creating this album was a deeply personal journey. He lost his father during the writing process, a loss that permeated the record. He admits, “I really pushed myself… to have gone through so many things that were so unusual, new and testing, and then to make music that was safe and agreeable … it wouldn’t have been reflective.”
“I wanted to record it myself in my own little studio, and that was fairly brutal for my emotions,” he shares. “This was not very long after my father had died, and it was probably a good process, but it was a pretty heavy thing to impose on myself. There are some takes that just felt like self-punishment. I was very isolated, but I always felt people were with me. Having those ghosts there, of the living and also dead, was almost conversational.”
Fendrix reflects on his upbringing and the beauty of finding meaning in the ordinary. “A lot of people who grow up somewhere remote are like, ‘Oh, it was shit and there was nothing to do’,” he says. “But being bored is fucking great as you invent things. Even if that’s just being a dumbass. One has permission to find thier life beautiful and not a lot of people give themselves that, nonetheless of what your environment is.And that’s not necessarily somewhere idyllic or utopian but just to find a real deep, beautiful meaning in what’s happened to you.”
As the conversation concluded, Fendrix shared a poignant memory of a freind’s wake and the flooding of the river. “My friend who died, we had his wake here,” he begins. “And he really loved nature.” With eerie synchronicity, we are now cowering in a corner because the heavens have opened. Fendrix sucks down one last cigarette while looking out at the droplets hitting the flowing stream. “A thing that happened that day really stuck with me: the water came all the way up to here, and the entire town was flooded overnight. It was like the river rose up to come and get him.”
Once Upon a Time … in Shropshire is released via Untitled (Recs) on 10 October
