{"id":2421079,"date":"2026-05-18T00:51:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T00:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2421079"},"modified":"2026-05-18T00:51:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T00:51:28","slug":"salem-get-to-know-the-prodigal-sons-of-witch-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/salem-get-to-know-the-prodigal-sons-of-witch-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Salem: Get to know the prodigal sons of witch house"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Salem \u2013 autumn\/winter 2020<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/header>\n

Gallery \/ 10 images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Welcome to the Archive Pull, a series delving into the 30-year history of our print magazine. To celebrate the surprise release of their new album Red Dragon, we revisit this interview with Salem, taken from the autumn\/winter 2020 issue<\/a>\u00a0of Dazed. You can pre-order a copy of our latest issue\u00a0here<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

There is a jet stream of polar air that passes over Lake Michigan and ends in Chicago, creating one of America\u2019s most severe winter climates. Cold\u2019s icy grip chokes away the particles of breath as they enter the lungs. Daylight shudders into a vanishing pocket of hours between morning\u2019s last cigarette and the afternoon\u2019s first malt brew. Car doors freeze themselves into an impenetrable block of metal and ice. You have to run on the spot to stand outside, and break into your truck with a prybar, or take your glove off to hold a lighter and melt a passage for your key, wondering what will give way first, the lock or the skin of your bare hand. In 2015, February in Chicago was the seventh coldest on record, and Jack Donoghue had reached a point of reckoning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not want to be alive any more,\u201d Jack tells me. His words blur together as if he\u2019s considering whether to share this information. \u201cI realised that if I didn\u2019t set a date to kill myself then I wasn\u2019t going to.\u201d He called his brother, who preternaturally summoned the type of response even the faithless can\u2019t dispute. \u201cHe said, \u2018I understand if you have to do that, but if you get on an SSRI for six months and leave Chicago first, I\u2019ll take it less personally. You don\u2019t have to stay alive but you have to make an effort to change your situation.\u2019\u201d Jack had been working a job as a studio mechanic. \u201cI felt so much pain; (I was) so tired, un-present in my own life and wiped out. I wanted some rest.\u201d Jack took his lifted Toyota Tacoma (and his German Shepherd, Misha) down to Louisiana where an acquaintance had said he could get him work on an offshore oil rig out of Port Fourchon. He was drawn to the long stints of work and limited distractions but, as soon as he got there, the industry took a hit. The Great Oil Plunge of 2014-16 has been described as the biggest price drop in modern history, decimating jobs due to deceleration from oil-dependent exporters. In other words, everyone got laid off.<\/p>\n

It had been five years since Salem<\/a> released their debut LP, King Night<\/em>, and four since the follow-up \u2013 and perhaps final \u2013 release, the I\u2019m Still In The Night<\/em> EP. They weren\u2019t putting out music any more. \u201cIt was partially about us wanting to self-release,\u201d Jack recalls, his voice trailing off. \u201cThere was some confusion about how to move forward without anyone feeling uncomfortable. We needed to find work and other things. We needed to survive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Salem<\/span><\/span>

Photography Annie Eversz<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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John Holland, Salem\u2019s other half (the lineup in those days also included Heather Marlatt), was in Michigan at the time. \u201cThere was a lot going on, and nothing at the same time,\u201d he says, offering a fuzzier take. Jack convinced John to take his \u201996 Honda Accord (\u201ca resilient car,\u201d Jack chimes, with the affect of a car salesman from his home state) and gun it down to the bayou. \u201cWe could work on music, or you could just get out of Michigan,\u201d he said. John, always running from something, was neck-deep in his own hot water and didn\u2019t need to be convinced.<\/p>\n

There, in a house wedged between Bayou Terrebonne and Humble Canal, the bulk of another Salem album was born. King Night<\/em> culminated with a track called \u201cKiller\u201d, sending the album out with the line \u201cYou know you\u2019re fighting for your soul.\u201d It became a premonition for the recording of their new album, Fires in Heaven<\/em>, which finally saw light of day ten years after their debut. (It was self-released last month.)<\/p>\n

Salem\u2019s origin story has become something of an urban legend, a refrain mutating from one article to the next, the natural progression of an account rephrased and rewritten, completely divorced from the source. It involves truck-stop hustling, drug addictions, trauma, violence, self-harm, and a late-00s music scene that would be spawned by mistake. What began as an anonymised internet curiosity \u2013 beguiling zip files of homespun records with titles like \u201cFuCKU\u201d and \u201cProm\u201d dropping on message boards \u2013 became an art-world fixation and sonic influence many musicians would be too self-serving to acknowledge. Mixing electronic shoegaze with house, disembodied trap drums and unearthly vocals, Salem arrived at something conclusively rare: a new sound, a private genre. Their music \u2013 often tacked on to the era\u2019s strangest subgenre, witch house \u2013 always embodied a certain threat, but also a salvation, even if by mistake.<\/p>\n

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\u201cFor years it felt like we were hoarding all of these little birds in a giant cage. It feels good to set some free. They belong to the world now\u201d \u2013 Jack Donoghue<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The boys have a somewhat rough exterior. Perhaps for survival, they donned armour of the communities they grew up in. And yet their music and openness about their struggles and sexuality stand in stark contrast to the silent-midwesterner archetype. They\u2019ve navigated many circles without being defined by any. But what connected so many fans to the music in the first place was that intangible sense of otherness, of an insular language being conjured through music and image.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise their second album grew out of that same spirit. Louisiana was a necessary escape, if not the antidote, according to Jack: as he puts it, \u201cour problems came with us\u201d. \u201cHavin\u2019 fun,\u201d John yells. Jack laughs like a deep southerner pulling donuts in a parking lot.<\/p>\n

In September, Fires in Heaven<\/em> was announced with the surprise release of \u201cStarfall\u201d. The music video was created with Tommy Malekoff and featured Salem chasing tornadoes across the American plains, staggering through cotton fields in a deluge of flash floods, and driving between motels and truck stops from one twister to the next. They drove from Tulsa to Dallas with a storm chaser they had contacted online, and a friend, Aaron Brown. It was an exalted exercise in following danger. \u201cWe made this video because storm-chasing was something we\u2019d both wanted to do, says Jack. \u201cI think we were more excited than scared at any time, but when we got to Dallas there were other drivers and more debris to watch out for.\u201d Adds John: \u201cYou could see the whole city black out for a second and then the sky would go green. I loved it. I want to go again.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Salem<\/span><\/span>

Photography Annie Eversz<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\u201cIt was this feeling of surrender and awe,\u201d Jack explains. \u201cThen when the storm passed we\u2019d have a sort of comedown from the adrenaline. We\u2019d go to a strip club and decompress… We went through a lot of emotions.\u201d John interrupts: \u201cI think I got Covid on the last day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The video is a reminder that Salem are nothing if not a product of the hinterlands, prodigal sons of the American Midwest. Their devotion to the region isn\u2019t purely biographical, nor aesthetic, compelling as that may be. It\u2019s more like a ministry: a prayer to a forgotten America, oft abandoned by artists for the coastlines. \u201cPeople don\u2019t represent the Midwest enough,\u201d Jack says. \u201cI feel the most comfortable here. There is a seriousness and depth here that has formed us. Salem is full spectrum.\u201d Much of Fires In Heaven<\/em> leans into the more euphoric side of things, not quite a rejoinder to King Night but an expansion. Listening to it in a plague year feels like an alarm bell, John and Jack\u2019s vocals escalating to drawn-out hollers. It jostles you to a time when bands made big sounds. If this is the apocalypse, the afterlife will bear no whispers, only crescendos.<\/p>\n

Despite appearances, Jack and John never quit recording. Working remotely was a mainstay. Often, the two would send tracks back and forth. The last time they were together was in a cabin in the Michigan woods, recording guitar riffs by the light of dozens of space heaters, until the landlord asked them to leave because the heaters were a fire risk. Sometimes working separately even when together, the two shared files and swapped laptops with different sets of headphones, labouring for hours over songs. \u201cI don\u2019t think any of the Michigan songs ended up on the record,\u201d John muses, mentally sifting through a constellation of their unreleased music.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPeople don\u2019t represent the midwest enough. I feel the most comfortable here. There is a seriousness and depth here that has formed us\u201d \u2013 Jack Donoghue<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The album was released the day before Halloween, and Jack describes the feeling as one of relinquishment. \u201cFor years it felt like we were hoarding all of these little birds in a giant cage,\u201d Jack says. \u201cIt feels good to set some free. They aren\u2019t ours any more; they belong to the world now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twelve years into their project, Salem could have stayed buried and almost did. There\u2019s nothing left to do but be completely honest. \u201cIt\u2019s cool if we inspired other people,\u201d says John, \u201cbecause the result is more music we like. I\u2019ve always liked that people hate us or they love us. Not caring is the worst thing.\u201d That tension is the river that runs through everything they touch, bridging their origin with their latest stop on what is becoming a longer drive than any gambling man could have guessed.<\/p>\n

Whether they tour a live show, release more hoodies, sell their trucks to Guatemalans or surprise a subreddit with a folder of demos, it will be the product of chasing the storm, following the kind of weather that threatens to pulverise them at each off-ramp. \u201cI am not actively trying to be self-destructive any more,\u201d Jack says. \u201cThe path we\u2019re on hasn\u2019t been straight but we have a lot of love for each other and continue to work. I hope there\u2019s some progression.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n