Written by Shea Roney

Under the name of Yours Are the Only Ears, Susannah Cutler released her first single “Fire In My Eyes” in 2014. It’s a warm folk song where Cutler’s caring and whispery vocals are edged out with a heavy and sodden synth. On the track, Cutler expresses some distrust in herself. “Am I a good person?”, she recites, until the question becomes a heavy handed measurement. Cutler, as an artist, is something special. Hailing from upstate New York, she has made a name for herself with her whimsical aesthetic and soft approach to trauma and rage. On her latest album, We Know the Sky, Cutler embarks on an uphill hike to answer that question she asked 9 years ago, opening up about uncharted inspiration, navigating musical barriers and learning to trust herself again. 

Growing up in a musical household, Cutler was environmentally disciplined in a specific lane of musical thought. With both her brother and dad as full time session musicians, Cutler described their influence on her as imposter syndrome; watching them destined to musical technique where she didn’t see herself fit. “It just didn’t fully dawn on me that you could be a musician in a different way” Cutler admits, “so I didn’t really feel like I was one until I started writing songs” in a way that felt comfortable and personally impactful. 

Where did the name Yours Are the Only Ears Come From? It’s a really intimate name when you think about it.  It’s actually from an of Montreal song on this album called The Early Four Track Recordings. All of the songs are named after Dustin Hoffman doing various things. The Song is called, ‘‘Dustin Hoffman Scrubs Too Hard and Loses Soap’’.  I was so obsessed with that album around the time when I decided to give my project a name, and I just liked that line a lot because it conveyed how I wanted my music to feel.

Before she was a musician, Cutler was an artist studying both visual art and textile design at New York’s FIT. Being a skilled visual artist, she developed a style of quaint and organic folkish art that you can find on her album covers. But between visual art and music, Cutler told me that her creative thought processes are completely different. While visual art is purely aesthetic and driven with precision from her thoughts, with song writing, she says, to an extent, there is trust in not knowing where her inner sentiments will take thematically. “I have to let my emotions lead and take hold of the song. It just becomes what it’s going to be”, Cutler conveys.

This unknown is where Cutler thrives as a songwriter. Allowing herself to sit in her conscious and let it speak for itself is the most honest an artist can allow themselves to be. But it is not an easy task. “It can feel really scary when you want to control how something sounds or is presented to the world,” Cutler tells me. “I guess it’s also kind of cool that you can’t always do that. You just have to trust that something valuable and aligned will surface”.

I feel like you and I share a similar respect for nihilism in the world. I definitely feel like nihilism helped me so much with playing shows in the beginning. I used to have really bad stage fright, but thinking to myself ‘well we are all just going to die, so does it even matter if I completely embarrass myself?’. I feel like there’s some aspect of nihilism that is really freeing.

Sitting on songs for years, Cutler released her first full length project Knock Hard in 2018 off of Team Love Records. “I feel like I was ready to release music before I ever did”, Cutler says as she discloses the discouraging logistics of making and releasing an album. On top of the financial barriers of producing music, Cutler also went through the tedious process of teaching herself how to record and produce herself from scratch while still in school. “In terms of recording and releasing music it can feel like there are so many barriers to entry, which can be frustrating,” Cutler says.  

But her most recent release, We Know the Sky, sonically speaking, was an ambitious project. Focusing on the minute details to make her most extensive landscape yet, Cutler created an album littered with guitar fills, wind instruments, resonated harmonies, and subtle percussion that paints a fairytale-perfect natural world tampered with stories of abuse and distrust. Although proud with how it sounds, “it was a little too much to be so perfectionistic about everything and I dont think it’s always helpful for the creative process,” Cutler admits. “I think for the next record I will probably try to be somewhere in the middle”

A lot of your themes are driven through your connection with nature and animals. What are some personal connections to the natural world around you that have inspired you the most? I’ve gotten really into medicinal herbs. Right now I work at an herb farm/shop, and I’ve been learning about common plants that grow all around us. Some of them are considered weeds, but all plants have healing properties. I feel like this also helped ease my nihilism, because especially when I was younger, I felt like everything was chaotic and meaningless. But just knowing that there are all these plants growing everywhere in abundance that can heal us, it’s wild. I think just having that pillar of faith in something bigger than me, even if it is just a plant or the intelligence of plants, is helpful for me to stay grounded and have faith that there is meaning. I can often feel ungrounded, but just knowing that nature is all around us and we are a part of it is calming.

In a sense, We Know the Sky is a love letter to Cutler herself. Although there is no denying that there is hurt behind these songs, the hurt is used more to push Cutler’s own personal understanding. After removing herself from a painful relationship, Cutler was faced with the undeniable reality of starting over. Relearning to love yourself is an uphill battle, full of doubt and a brandishing identity eager to be whole again. “I think the songs are kind of about that, ” Cutler recounts. “You can have so many layers that make it hard to fully access how you actually feel” that can come out when you begin to piece yourself together again. Although she can’t admit she is fully there, she tells me the biggest thing is to “put in the time and effort to show up and be there for yourself”.

Support Yours Are The Only Ears HERE: bandcamp