When Emily Dickinson Meets Post-Rock: A Collaboration That Shouldn’t Work—But Does
There’s something almost absurd about pairing a 19th-century poet’s words with modern instrumental improvisation. Emily Dickinson’s cryptic, centuries-old verse? Set to a six-minute ambient jam session? On paper, it sounds like a pretentious art-school experiment. But Black Duck’s collaboration with Elena Setién—specifically their track "Funeral In My Brain"—proves that the most jarring contrasts often birth brilliance. This isn’t just music. It’s a cultural collision, a conversation across time, and a masterclass in how to make unlikely ideas feel inevitable.
Why We’re Wired to Doubt This Will Work
Let’s address the elephant in the room: Most people assume literary adaptations in music are doomed. We’ve all heard the snooze-worthy Dylan Thomas recitations drowned in synth pads or the cringe of pop stars quoting Rumi. There’s a reason these attempts often feel like homework. But here’s what many overlook: The failure isn’t in the concept—it’s in the execution. Too often, artists treat literary references as a shortcut to depth, slapping words onto chords without interrogating why the marriage matters. Black Duck and Setién, however, aren’t just setting Dickinson to music. They’re translating her.
The Secret Sauce? Letting the Text Breathe
Take Dickinson’s original poem, "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain"—a feverish exploration of mental collapse, written in 1861. It’s visceral, chaotic, claustrophobic. Translating that into sound could easily become melodramatic. Instead, the band strips away urgency. The track’s six-minute runtime unfolds like a slow-motion implosion. Guitars ripple like wind through a graveyard, Setién’s voice hovers like a half-remembered whisper, and the rhythm section feels less like a heartbeat than a metronome counting down to silence. It’s not a literal interpretation; it’s an emotional autopsy. Personally, I think this is where most adaptations fail—they try to illustrate the text instead of inhabiting it. This crew lives in the subtext.
The Chicago Connection: Why This Collaboration Makes Sense (And Why It Doesn’t)
Black Duck’s roots in Chicago’s experimental scene—via members’ ties to Tortoise and Eleventh Dream Day—make sense. That city’s music scene has always thrived on intellectual ambition, from Wilco’s literary references to The Sea and Cake’s cerebral rhythms. But pairing them with Setién, a Basque artist, feels like a left-field move. On the surface, it’s a clash of worlds: Midwestern post-rock meets Iberian avant-folk. Yet dig deeper, and it’s genius. Both traditions share a fixation on atmosphere over structure, on mood as a narrative device. What many people don’t realize is that this collaboration isn’t about blending genres—it’s about finding shared emotional languages.
The Bigger Trend: Literary Music Isn’t Dead—We’re Just Doing It Wrong
This project raises a deeper question: Why do so few modern musicians tackle poetry successfully? The answer, I think, lies in our relationship to canonized writers. We treat Dickinson, Whitman, or Neruda as untouchable monuments rather than flesh-and-blood artists wrestling with timeless human questions. When we hear their words set to music, it feels like a museum exhibit, not a living conversation. But "Funeral In My Brain" breaks this mold. The band isn’t reverent—they’re reactive. They treat Dickinson’s poem not as scripture but as a starting point for their own existential musings. From my perspective, this is the only way to honor literary giants: not by embalming their words, but by letting them haunt new forms.
What This Means for the Future of Collaborative Art
Let’s zoom out. In an era where algorithms dictate creativity and genre boundaries are already blurred beyond recognition, collaborations like this one feel less like outliers and more like inevitabilities. The real innovation here isn’t the Dickinson reference—it’s the willingness to let disparate influences coexist without compromise. Imagine a world where a Basque poet’s words, a Chicago band’s textures, and Patti Smith’s 70s swagger aren’t contradictions but collaborators. If you take a step back and think about it, isn’t that what art’s supposed to do? Challenge our reflex to categorize? Force us to hear familiar voices in unfamiliar ways?
Final Thought: The Best Art Is Uncomfortable
I’ll admit it—I wasn’t sold on the concept until I hit play. Six minutes later, I realized why this works: It’s not comfort food for indie hipsters or poetry nerds. It’s unsettling. The track’s power lies in its refusal to resolve, its embrace of ambiguity. Much like Dickinson’s poem, it leaves us stranded in the funeral of the mind, surrounded by the echoes of what we thought we knew. And maybe that’s the point. The next time someone tells me a song “feels like a book,” I’ll be asking: Does it really? Or is it just trying to sound smart? Black Duck and Setién’s work doesn’t just adapt literature—it resurrects it, drapes it in new skin, and makes it walk among us again. That’s not just clever. It’s alchemy.
