Wicca Phase Springs Eternal has certainly earned the final word of his eye-catching moniker. The Pennsylvania-based singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist seems to draw from a bottomless musical well, releasing new songs at a fittingly supernatural clip and never resting on his creative laurels. Now Adam McIlwee has returned with Midnight at the Castle Moorlands, the latest chapter in the ongoing WPSE story.
Last year McIlwee released Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, a record that brought a cosmic scope to his ever-evolving sound, and had barely seen the light of day before he was already back on a writing streak. “For this new EP I ended up recording 15 songs over a couple weeks, a bunch of them were songs that were either leftover from the self-titled or even songs that I’d written and forgotten about or lost,” laughs McIlwee. “I don’t even really understand how that happened but they just never made it into the studio. I never have a shortage of songs ever, I’m always writing.” His ability to write so many songs that they could actually be misplaced is a testament to McIlwee’s prolific nature, and also to the workmanlike approach he takes to creating truly otherworldly music. “More than a performer or an entertainer, I just consider myself a songwriter,” he says. “But you have to show up–you have to pick up the guitar or go to the computer and really try to put the time in. And the more you do that, the more you finish songs, and the more prolific you can be.”
When it came time to follow up the self-titled record, McIlwee knew he wanted to fully self-produce the release. “I wasn’t always a producer,” he explains. “I wasn’t fully comfortable with that side of it until more recently, but I’ve always had this desire to fully oversee a release from start to finish. Recently I think I’ve really understood how I want my songs to sound.” With Midnight at the Castle Moorlands, that meant going deeper into the mystical, ancient feeling sounds that McIlwee had only scratched the surface of on the self-titled album. “I really love the idea of creating different environments,” he says. “I grew up reading comics, and playing video games, and watching fantasy movies–but everyone around me was into music so songwriting became my outlet for making those kinds of worlds.” While Wicca Phase Springs Eternal was widescreen and maximal, Midnight at the Castle Moorlands pulls things back, aiming for an unexpected kind of naturalism within WPSE’s pointedly supernatural world. “I’m always trying to figure out how to immerse the listener even more–whether that’s sonically or lyrically,” McIlwee explains. “And for these songs that meant reining things in and grounding them. I didn’t want to keep getting bigger and bigger, I wanted something looser and more lo-fi.”
To achieve this careful balance, he teamed with engineer Matt Schimelfenig (Spirit of the Beehive, Golden Apples, Slaughter Beach, Dog) at his studio, The Bunk, in the Poconos. A longtime fixture of the Philadelphia indie scene, Schimelfenig helped McIlwee bring a tangible grit to Midnight at the Castle Moorlands. “I knew Matt would let me do whatever I wanted,” McIlwee says. “We’d run synths through guitar amps and tape machines to get these warm, tape hiss, crunchy sounds–I wanted to make the most organic sounding album I could while using electronic production.”
“Puritan Prince of Pain” opens the EP with a menacing beat and blown-out synth as McIlwee sets the scene: old Americana, the Salem witch trials, ties to ancient realms, reckonings, and salvations…all filtered through the lens of Wicca Phase Springs Eternal’s carefully curated lore. “I want people to see what’s in my mind through a song, which is not a visual medium, so that’s the challenge. I really live on escapism and I want to make somewhere that people can come to escape as well. That’s what I’m going for–it’s fantasy in the sense that you can listen to the songs and go somewhere else, but I get to dictate where you go.” Tracks like “Pure Fields” or “I Know The Raven” highlight McIlwee’s unparalleled ability to craft imagery and mood through eclectic-yet-cohesive songs–the former a beat-switching ballad and the latter a rollicking dose of acoustic guitars and crooning melodies. “It doesn’t totally excite me to tell linear or super literal stories,” he says. “It doesn’t interest me and I need to be interested to keep doing it. But a big part of the balance is making a song that still feels modern and still feels like something that someone could enjoy without really going deep on all the lore in the lyrics.” On “My Name Is The Endless Night” McIlwee strikes that equilibrium by applying rap elements–a brash, boastful tone, stuttering 808s, skittering hi-hats–to the esoteric and haunting themes of WPSE.
Midnight at the Castle Moorlands closes with “Venti Iced Americano,” an enveloping cut of pillowy synths where McIlwee showcases the expertly dialed blend of mystical, mundane, and melancholy that’s made Wicca Phase Springs Eternal so compelling and enduring for all these years. The chords manage to feel uplifting and longing all at once, a sort of in-between that’s both sad and satisfying that McIlwee is always chasing. His creative drive might be eternal, but even he can take a moment to appreciate the rare feeling that all musicians are seeking: “When I listen to this record there’s times where I really think, ‘we got it–that’s what I heard in my head.’”
