Survival Guide Greets Death with a Song

Recurring dreams involving your own death might cause some people to try to avoid sleeping. Survival Guide, however, used dreams of her demise to inspire a new album.

Survival Guide is the performance moniker of San Antonio, TX-based artist Emily “Agent M” Whitehurst, and her dream inspired album is the aptly titled deathdreams. Due out October 19th via Double Helix Records, deathdreams is filled with dark layered synths to match the subject matter, with a few sunnier tracks mixed in for good measure.

The effort is Whitehurst’s fourth under the Survival Guide name after previously fronting the punk rock band Tsunami Bomb, and the synthpop outfit The Action Design.

I caught up with Whitehurst over Zoom to find out more about the album, and she revealed what helped bring her deathdreams to life, as well as why you should want to go crate digging with her, and how she went about mixing the perfect drink for murder.

The inspiration for deathdreams came from several dreams you had involving your own death. What was your initial reaction to those dreams when you woke up from them? 

I was surprised that I had these dreams in the first place because I don’t tend to even remember my dreams very much. I’m not much of a vivid dreamer, so that’s why it stood out to me even more.

It was over a decent period of time, it was like a number of years where I had these dreams, so they were spaced out pretty far, but it just seemed really strange that I kept having different types of dreams where I was dying.

That was going to be my next question – were they different dreams, or was it the same dream every time? 

They were different dreams, and the thing that was the most interesting to me about them was in each of these dreams I was not panicked. It was like I knew I was gonna die, and I wasn’t freaking out about it, I was very accepting of it, and just kind of going with it, which is kind of all that I can hope for when I actually die. {laughs}

That’s sort of the goal, I guess. 

Yeah. It wasn’t scary. It was just a thing that happened.

That said, did you find yourself avoiding certain situations because of those dreams, like, “After last night’s dream I’m gonna stay away from driving around that mountain today”? 

{laughs} Well, one of them did involve driving, although I didn’t stop driving after the dream. It was a dream with an accident. There wasn’t any marked difference in the way I carried myself after that, but I probably drove a little bit more carefully for the next few days.

What was it about death that inspired your creativity? 

My family owned a funeral home in the town that I grew up in, and I think that it kind of just … it’s not like I was immersed in death constantly, but I feel like it did sort of give me a sense of the importance of life because of death, and the importance of just remembering how fleeting life is, and how anyone can die at any age, it’s not just old people that die. I think that is a really important concept to keep in mind as we go through life.

I think that coming from the funeral home aspect also sort of made me appreciate the darkness, too. I consider myself a really optimistic, and happy person, but somehow I’m drawn to, in music, in creativity, at least a little bit of a dark edge. My music might not sound oppressively dark, or heavy, but I just feel like there’s, if not overt darkness in the lyrics, at least a hint of darkness, even in the happy songs.

Was your first job at the funeral home? 

No. I never worked there. I played there a lot. {laughs}

My cousins, and siblings, and I would use the office part, and type up newspapers, and do all kinds of fun projects with office supplies at the funeral home.

What an interesting life-death dichotomy right there – a funeral home with kids playing in it. 

Yeah, there was also an organ there, so we would sometimes mess around with the organ, and that was fun.

Was that your first instrument? 

I would not consider it that. I took piano lessons when I was young for a short period of time, but on the organ at the funeral chapel it was really just messing around like it was a toy. It was fun.

Moving from death to life, the song “wordswordswords” includes one of my favorite lyrics on the album – “Let’s remind ourselves that everybody hurts, and no one knows what we’re doing on this earth.” Where did those ideas come from, and how often do you remind yourself of them? 

I feel like that’s something that I have learned progressing through life, and the hardships that come up. You just don’t know what someone else is going through.

I think about this often when I’m on the freeway, or just driving, and someone is driving weirdly. It’s easy to be angry at them, it’s easy to be super annoyed at whoever is driving so poorly. It especially comes to mind if someone is driving really slowly, not necessarily someone who driving recklessly, that’s just endangering everyone. 

That you can get annoyed at. 

Yeah, that’s OK. {laughs}

But you just don’t know, what if that person’s just coming from a funeral, or hearing some horrible news about someone that they love? When those things happen to you, you don’t act like yourself, you don’t fully know what you’re doing sometimes, so to me it’s important to try to stay compassionate when you don’t know what’s happening.

deathdreams will be your fourth full-length album as Survival Guide, but it’s a first in a lot of ways because you had a huge learning process on the way to its realization. How much have you grown, musically, with the creation of this album? 

I feel like it’s … I shouldn’t say night and day from the first Survival Guide record … I have Way to Go, which is the first official album, and then in the last two years I’ve released two covers albums. That was me spending the time to learn how to demo myself, how to record, it gave me ideas for taking a song that’s already written and kind of rewriting it instrumentally, and the feel of the song. So that gave me a lot of skills that I was able to use for deathdreams. As I was developing the songs I was able to cultivate more ideas because of those covers albums.

Before I started writing deathdreams I had zero confidence … well let’s say 5% confidence that I could do it. {laughs}

You can’t start at zero. 

I had to have some, right?

You wouldn’t have done anything if you were at zero. 

Right, so I had a tiny shred of confidence that I could write an entire album by myself, all the music and everything, and doing those covers albums were my stepping stones to writing deathdreams. So I’m pretty proud of myself. Thinking back to before I had done those, I didn’t know if I was gonna keep going in music. That’s how little 5% confidence I had.

Wow! But you did those albums, and you learned all these skills throughout the process. What’s the one skill you now have where you’re like, “I can’t believe I can do this now”? 

I guess composing the music for a full album, that’s really what I didn’t think I could do. I’ve been a lyricist, and I’ve been composing melodies for vocals for years, and I’ve done pieces of songs, I’ve done keyboard bits for songs, but I had never, until any of the songs on this album, I had never considered myself to be a complete songwriter. Now I know I can write a whole song. I feel like that doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, but it is a really big deal for me, having been a vocalist for so many years, and not had the responsibility of also providing all of the music.

You say it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but if anyone were to look at the liner notes of any of their favorite artists’ albums they would see co-writer after co-writer, and co-producers, and all these other things. For you it’s one name. 

Yeah, I feel really good about that, because I do look sometimes to see who wrote some of my favorite songs, and it usually is not just one person. Sometimes the artist didn’t write the song at all.

Musical growth isn’t new for you, as over the years you’ve shifted from punk rock (Tsunami Bomb) to synthpop (The Action Design), and now you’re working with darker layered synths. What sparks your desire for this constant change, and evolution? 

I think it’s just my own shifting appreciations for different types of music as a fan.

When I started out in punk rock that was literally all that I wanted to hear. Other music was like annoying to me. {laughs}

Gradually I started getting into other things, things that were on the fringe of punk rock, like The Smiths, and then I got into Bjork, and then I started to really appreciate other instruments being in music besides just drums, guitar, and bass, and then I incorporated that into The Action Design with the sort of synth pop.

My listening tastes continued to evolve, and I felt like I wanted to do more with electronic stuff to just open up everything, any possibility.

What musical rabbit hole are you currently diving down? 

Often I’m listening to random records on vinyl that I found in the bargain bin.

I love it! We have a place just a few miles from me where the basement is nothing but used vinyl that’s $5 or less. 

That’s awesome. I love that. I’ll just find … some of my favorite ones are very random, like Spanish piano music. I love vintage Hawaiian music. It’s so great to put it on, and have it going in the background. I love Astrud Gilberto. I love Brazilian jazz from the ‘60s era.

It sounds like you’d be open to people hitting you up with recommendations. 

Oh yeah, for sure.

Getting back to changes, you’re a murderer in the video for your lead single, “Blood Perfume.” How much fun was it getting into that role? 

It was super fun. I got the treatments from the video production company, they’re the ones who suggested the idea, and I was like, “Yes! I love it! Please let’s make this short horror film.”

I just showed up, and did what they told me to do, and it came out awesome.

You got very into it. 

{laughs} I mean, I just went with it.

Do you think any former significant others may have watched it, and thought, “Yikes!,” or “Yeah, that checks out”? 

If anything they probably thought, “Woo, I’m safe, I’m an ex, so I’m not in danger anymore.” {laughs}

How can I make a good transition from that … speaking of liquids, what’s this I hear about you creating unique cocktails for each song on the album? 

Oh yeah, I am formulating one cocktail for every song, and they’re themed.

I love making cocktails at home, and I have a variety of cocktail books that I continuously work out of.

It’s been super fun to formulate … for example, the “Blood Perfume” cocktail, I wanted it to be blood colored, if possible, and I wanted it to be a serious drink, so it’s blood, but it’s also something that a serious, hardcore person would drink, like a murderer.

So in the near future we’ll get drinks for murderers. 

Yes. {laughs}

Something with whiskey. It’s not gonna be a light, fruity, sparkling beverage.

 

For more Survival Guide, check out srvvlgd.com.