- [Woman] Welcome to my sanctuary.
Welcome to Palo Santo.
♪ You're the darkness in me ♪
- [Man] Can you dance?
- The inspiration for 'The World of Palo Santo'
kind of has come from so many different places.
Growing up, I really loved sci-fi and fantasy,
I read something fancy like novels
and stories and stuff,
and I was really a big fan
of Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin,
these female writers,
and they would write these dystopian,
almost like feminist takes on future societies.
I love Star Trek, Star Wars,
and all of Fifth Element.
I think that all kind of went into my brain along the way,
and then when I sat down, I was like,
"Alright, what should this next album be?"
And I wanted to create this fantasy world
that old music can go along with,
so I kind of just went back of
all the stuff that's inspired me through my life
and kind of tried to put bits together
to make this world, like a quilt,
like a patchwork quilt
of all these things that
I've been thinking about for a long time.
♪ So don't break (don't break) ♪
♪ Sanctify my body with pain (with pain) ♪
- I've always been really inspired by really just imagery,
and I think for a few different reasons because
first of all, it's so powerful and so dramatic
and I love a little bit of drama,
and also I grew up near a church,
and I myself, I'm not religious,
but I found it a bit fascinating
and also how historically
the church has shut out gay people
and I'm kind of doing my little bit to reclaim that
and sort of, I like submerge
mainly 'cause it's just fun,
I get a thrill out of it.
I think, also, when I was finding my identity,
like forging my identity in my early twenties
I spent a lot of time going out, to gay clubs,
and it felt like that was our church in a way
like we'd all meet at the dance floor
and that was like the act of communion with each other,
and our first album's called 'Communion.'
- Communion, spoiler alert.
- There we go.
So, it's a common thread, yeah.
♪ One minute you say we're a team ♪
♪ Then you're telling me you can't breathe ♪
♪ Well you should set me free ♪
♪ Baby, if you're over me ♪
- I actually had a conversation with my therapist,
maybe halfway through the album,
and I've realized I was holding on to all this anger
about exes, stuff from my childhood,
like family stuff, like all these kind of like
deep anger that I hadn't let out
and it took us a long time for the album to really get going
and I felt like we really stalled
and nothing was really working
and then I realized that I guess,
the anger in a way was sort of like a bit of a fuel
to the fire, to really get the music done
and get the visuals the way that I want them to be
and to really just keep going
and when I'm listening to the album now,
the song that makes me the most uncomfortable
when I listen to it because
I said some things that feel a bit raw.
It's probably 'Lucky Escape', just because
I was trying to make myself feel better with that song,
tryna be like, yeah, I got out of that relationship
and I'm much better off without him.
I made a lucky escape, you know.
Which is in part that's true
but also it's one of those things that you do
when you're trying to make yourself feel better,
like you're tryna rewrite your own narrative.
♪ And the memories are filling up with smoke ♪
♪ You'll remember me and I start to choke ♪
- We all need a chance to escape, right,
or to go to a place where things
are more shiny, more glamorous, more exciting,
and for me that's what pop music always was.
So often I was relating to these women who felt
larger than life and felt like
they were in command of their sexuality, their bodies,
and they have something to say,
and they wore such amazing outfits
and I looked at them and was like,
I wanna be like that, you know.
Especially for a young gay guy,
for me, I felt like I wasn't
the men that were out there
making music and in the charts, which is not,
I didn't feel like they would like me.
I felt like I couldn't hang out with them.
They would probably be like,
I don't know,
I just didn't feel safe.
Whereas with the girls and women,
so much of their music and their identities
were kind of shaped by queer culture, you know.
I didn't even know it back then but now that
I'm older I'm looking back and I'm like,
Oh I get this, I get it,
I get it, why we were drawn to this,
why so many gay men share this love.