5 Songs I Love w/ Scout Paré-Phillips

We sat down with the incredibly Scout Paré-Phillips upon the release of her new single 'Claw', to find out more about what is behind her unique sound. Be sure to check out the new single at the bottom, and follow her along her journey!

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds & PJ Harvey - Henry Lee

I’m starting with this song because of its significance to the creative process of my new album, Lupine Daughter, and the massive impact these two artists have had on me since I was a young girl. Nick Cave and PJ Harvey are my North and South stars. Lupine Daughter began after reconnecting with two of my collaborators, George Cessna from our band, The Sterling Sisters, and David Nelson, who I’d done a European tour with. As I started writing the music which would become this new album, David and I warmed up by recording a cover of Henry Lee, also looping in our pedal steel player from The Sterling Sisters, Eric Paltell. Male-female duets have always been my musical home base, and this song and its music video have all the right elements and chemistry. There is such power in their performances, you can forget the video is a single scene – I wish there were more music videos this simple!

Jeff Buckley - Grace (live at Palais Theatre, 1996)

Jeff Buckley is the artist that gave me confidence that a seemingly sweet, falsetto soprano could still soar with power over a writhing rock band. We all know his voice on cue, as well as his effortless, sparkling riffs on his Telecaster. But since we lost him far too young, most people are only familiar with Grace as a studio album. What many are not aware of was how grungy and heavy Jeff Buckley’s live performances were: full of screaming, improvisation, jamming, and endearing skits he’d do between songs. This live cut of Grace is from my favorite live album of his, Mystery White Boy. The new Amy Berg documentary, It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, explores his identity as a performer well, and brought myself and my bandmates to tears. She also examines his sort of haunted feeling of living in his father’s shadow – despite barely knowing him – because of their physical and vocal likenesses, which resonated with me in my own narrative with my father’s musicianship.

Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man - Tom the Model

It’s difficult for me to not include Portishead on this list, but I feel this song captures so much more of my dynamic love for Beth Gibbons, and her proficiency as a vocalist. I remember hearing this song as an adolescent and falling in love with the slow build, crescendoing into the crashing orchestral entrance, all delicately following her vocal line. This song was a close second to the Górecki: Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) performed by Beth Gibbons and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, where she trained her contralto into a soprano (and learned Polish!) to immaculately perform these classical pieces. I’ve always looked up to Beth, and hearing her sing opera was a salve to my soul, musically. I feel Tom the Model melds both of her singing styles throughout the development of her career.

Rowland S. Howard - Shut Me Down

It was a challenge to narrow down which Rowland song to choose, but Pop Crimes holds a special place for me, due to my memory of grieving Rowland, an artist who’d been in my headphones while wandering the halls of my school as a kid. The documentary that came out after his death, Autoluminescent, is a must-watch in my household. Shut Me Down has a direct reference to that powerful song, beginning in the same key, with the same droning, tremulous note. I’ve always paid special attention to the work created by artists I admire as they face down their own mortality (such as Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker), and Pop Crimes delivers that existential confrontation, with the help of HTRK in the studio. Rowland is the reason I play Jaguars with that trebly, jangling tone that cuts like a knife through everything else. And for a reference when Rowland was at the height of his powers, of course check out These Immortal Souls or The Birthday Party.

Neko Case - Blacklisted

You may notice that many of my influences sound quite dissimilar from my music, and it’s true; I never have a perfect explanation for how a girl who trained in a classical voice program and almost exclusively listened to post-punk ended up composing the music I do. When preparing to go into the studio for Lupine Daughter, I made a specific effort to revisit all the female vocalists I hold dear. I bought a Neko Case LP box set in Nashville on one of my trips there, and it prompted a deep study of her catalog. Blacklisted’s bending, descending chords that are never quite perfectly in tune, while Neko belts atop the lushly arranged band, swinging like a sinking ship, is a production paragon. I also appreciate her ability to incorporate country as a reference point in her sound, without fully being a country artist, which is something I try to balance, with my father’s background as a country musician. 

Claw - Scout Paré-Phillips