Sloppy Jane & Phoebe Bridgers My Misery Will Bury You.

"A big part of the project and why I did it," says Sloppy Jane's Haley Dahl of her SaddestFactory debut Madison, "Was because it felt similar to being a little kid and buying an outfitthat was too big that I'd have to grow into. I really valued from the start that making Madisongave me someone I had to become." The record, originally released in 2021, is a grandgesture, a statement about big love, and about growing into yourself in the process. Tocelebrate the one-year anniversary of Madison, Dahl has teamed up with former Sloppy Janebass player, Phoebe Bridgers, for a limited-edition 7" featuring two versions of "Wilt." Withthe original track on Side A and Bridgers' stripped-back version on Side B, this anniversaryrelease captures the essence of Madison in collaboration with one of it's earliest members. I met Dahl, who is now based in Los Angeles, for the first time in 2019 while working on aprofile of her for Vogue Magazine. We went to a Ukranian diner, Odessa, which is in the EastVillage. She ordered oatmeal and I ordered a plate of fried pierogies. As we ate, Dahl sharedthat she was planning on going to West Virginia to record an album in the cave. The cave, shetold me, came to her in the midst of a heartbreak so intense it completely gut renovated herlife and her art. It took a year and a half to look for the right cave. Dahl and her co-producers,Al Nardo, Mika Lungulov-Klotz (visuals), and Jack Wetmore, went on multiple trips acrossthe country. They lived in a freezing van, and would spend their days learning the ins andouts of playing and recording in them. They ended up in West Virginia, at a place called LostWorld Caverns. Dahl and her 21 bandmates recorded all of Madison there from 3pm to 8:30 am each dayover the course of two weeks (they also made four music videos on location during thistime). To access the space, they'd enter through the back of a gift shop, down a long tunnelwhere they'd walk down 200 feet of stairs to reach the entrance. Dahl and her bandmatesdid this steep walk with a piano. The ceiling of Lost World Caverns is massively high and is aperfect dome. The inside was also 98 percent humidity, leading to both stellar sound and alsoproblems with tuning and gear. Engineer Ryan Howe sat in his parents Subaru above the cavewith his mixing board and computer, and threaded cables down 90 feet through a hole inthe ground to the ceiling of the cave. It's the first time someone has ever recorded an entirealbum in a cave, and the results are pretty sonically stunning. That alone is a marvelous thing.Madison is an astounding, glorious record of melodrama of the highest order. Madison is a record with an audience for one. Each song is an attempt at a perfectgoodbye to someone. It is also a record that examines fantasy relationships. "It's like whenyou have something that lives mostly in your head: you can't break up with someone thatyou don't even speak to who you don't have a relationship with. It's this world that starts tolive and fester in your head," says Dahl of the record's conceptual underpinnings. One of themost lovely things about Madison is that the cave is an instrument. It is completely and totallyintegral to the record's architecture. The cave represents the concept of forever for Dahl. She tells me that caves take millionsof years to grow, and they grow in total darkness. She shares that stalactites and stalagmitesform at a rate of 120 years per cubic centimeter; if you touch them with your hands theystop growing completely. Love, in Dahl eyes, is similar. Immortal but not invincible. It issomething that you nurture, something that grows slow. The atmosphere on Madison is thatof slowness and stillness. It paints love as a complicated and fraught IV drip. Madison is arecord about doing things the hard way. It doesn't put a bow on any