After an annus horribilis , the singer-songwriter finds secular ecstasies in traditional sacred songs

Like a lot of people, Veda Hille has a book she turns to in times of trouble, and if that book happens to be out in her garage–cum–rehearsal space, it’s because for the past few months it’s been reposing on top of her electric piano. Music, too, is another source of solace, and the past few months have indeed been difficult for the 38-year-old singer, songwriter, and producer. As she says on the line from her East Vancouver digs, 2006 was “a year when there was death and illness and birth in my family, in all sorts of places”.

Without going into detail, we can reveal that Hille herself very nearly died. She has, however, recovered from her trauma in such good spirits that she’s already written her next record, This Riot Life, which she’ll preview this month as part of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.

“It was one of those years where you come up against everything really abruptly,” says Hille, choosing her words with even more than her usual care. “I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to write about it, or whether I would even want to use it for writing. People always say that when you have these intense experiences you’ll get some songs out of it, and I rebel against that severely. I don’t think that it’s always the right way to go. But in this case I found I had a lot of desire to write, and that really helped me through.”

The aforementioned book—her late grandmother’s copy of The Hymnary, a United Church staple circa 1933—proved helpful in this personal and artistic rebirth. This Riot Life, Hille explains, is centred on a cycle of six songs based on hymns, some heavily altered, some left nearly intact.

“For one of them, an ecstatic song to Jesus, all I’ve done is change the pronoun to her and made it a song about a close friend,” she explains. “I’ve realized that there are so few pop songs that speak to the strength of friendship. It’s one of the richest things I’ve got going in my life, and it’s interesting how rarely that kind of passion has been written about.”

Fans and friends can rest assured that no matter how reborn Hille might feel, she’s by no means born-again. “I don’t have a Christian background,” she cautions, although she does find many traditional hymns, especially those penned by the prolific 18th-century poet William Cowper, “very interesting and powerful, in a secular kind of way”.

“I find them quite ecstatic, often,” she continues. “I find them very physical, and even sexual. I mean, you can transmute religious ecstasy into sexual ecstasy very easily, and I do believe in a sort of bodily worship, I think. And so I found these hymns very powerful, especially in dealing with illness.”

This Riot Life isn’t the first time that Hille has dipped into her grandmother’s hymnal. “Tuktoyaktuk Hymn”, from 2001’s Field Study CD, drew on that timeworn volume, and we’ll soon get a chance to hear how it compares with the new material. As Hille explains, Field Study is one of PuSh festival artistic director Norman Armour’s favourite records, and he’s asked her to give it a bit of a makeover as the opening segment of her upcoming show. (Veda Hille and her Swell Band play the Vancouver East Cultural Centre on Sunday [January 28].)

“I was happy to do that,” she confides. “The reworking is essentially just including the band instead of playing it solo. But I’ve kept it really simple: it’s just sort of a scattering of the other players opening it up here and there, and I think it breathes really, really nicely. But the second set will be a bit more of a bombast.”

That’s because, as part of her process of renewal, Hille’s also expanded her ensemble. Long-time drummer Barry Mirochnick is touring with Neko Case, so Skye Brooks has come in to handle rhythm-section duties alongside perennial bassist Martin Walton; cello virtuoso and former Hille bandmate Peggy Lee has returned to the flock; and clarinettist AK Coope, violinist Jesse Zubot, and vocalist Patsy Klein are also onboard. Their leader might claim to be a reluctant arranger—“It’s like doing taxes or something,” she notes—but she’s clearly enjoying the expanded possibilities of this new lineup, just as she’s once again fully engaged with the process of life.

“Tragic things happened; it was very, very frightening and sad,” she says of her annus horribilis. “But I’m alive and I can speak, so there’s been lots of grace, as well.”

No doubt that grace will shine through Hille’s new songs, in the most sophisticated and secular of ways.