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Steven Wesley Guiles’ fifth solo album, I Was a Teenage Blood Sacrifice Cult Member (New Cool Now Music), is about reclaiming the life that was taken from him as a child growing up in a strict evangelical household. Yet the 12-track album isn’t what you might expect from a newly minted agnostic reckoning with a life spent terrified of hell, demons, and having “impure” thoughts.

Instead, I Was a Teenage Blood Sacrifice Cult Member uses whimsy, charm, and vulnerability to process a traumatic upbringing. It’s a thought-provoking celebration of freedom, filled with triumphant horns, stately strings, scruffy guitars, balmy harmony vocals, and whisper-sung melodies.

“It’s the most personal record I’ve made,” says the Claremont, California-based artist. “I feel like, by leaving religion, I have come out of an abusive relationship that controlled me through fear, and fear is never a good basis for a relationship. For me, the title represents a provocation for hopeful conversations around my life as a former Christian.” 

Guiles is a singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist who writes smart, hook-laden indie pop inspired by ’90s slacker rock, 2000s indie orchestral music, and ’60s folk. He came up through the Contemporary Christian Music scene, most notably as a member of Pushstart Wagon, which received Christian college radio airplay in the ’90s and scored a Top 10 Christian Alternative rock single with “Open.” 

Since then, Guiles has found success in a variety of guises. He sang background vocals on Damien Jurado’s critically acclaimed album The Horizon Just Laughed. As a co-writer and producer under the name G.T. Sparks, he had a song placed on Amazon’s action-crime drama Reacher that also cracked the Top 10 on Apple’s R&B chart. His music has appeared on CBS’s Blue Bloods, FOX’s The Mindy Project, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. His Fallout-themed song “Nuka Cola Love Song” has been featured in multiple videos by content creator Mrs. Fallout, amassing more than 3.5 million plays. His band Friction Bailey’s album The Silent Night has surpassed 1 million Spotify streams, landing on playlists alongside holiday music by Sufjan Stevens.

Guiles grew up in a strictly censored Christian household where little to no secular music was permitted. Simon & Garfunkel, however, flew under the radar and became a favorite, no doubt informing his love of harmony, folksy guitars, and tasteful arrangements. His passion for the ’90s alternative and indie-rock scene came somewhat ironically through touring with a religious choral ensemble. At the suggestion of one of his bandmates, Guiles purchased a cassette by The Replacements at a gas station, opening the door to a musical world that would indelibly shape his artistry.

Music from the late ’80s and ’90s would go on to have a profound effect on the burgeoning singer-songwriter: Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus and his shambolic guitar playing and witty, mosaic-like wordplay; The Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine’s bold textures and dynamics; and the adventurous, expansive indie rock of Wilco and Sufjan Stevens. 

The expansive palettes of these artists can be heard throughout I Was a Teenage Blood Sacrifice Cult Member, with its lush, organic orchestration. Guiles self-produced the album, sang almost every vocal and background vocal, and played many of the instruments himself. Joining him on the recordings are Joel Clifft on keys and piano, and accomplished South Korea-based producer Andi Roselund handling string and horn arrangements. Befitting its vibrant, late-’90s-esque musicality, the album was mixed by Larry Crane, who has produced and recorded artists including Elliott Smith, Sleater-Kinney, The Decemberists, and Pavement. 

The album was written as he struggled with post-Trump disillusionment while questioning his rigid Christian upbringing and worldview. He had reached a profound crossroads after years of being so afraid of hell that as a child he believed he actually saw demons with red eyes.

The song “Demons” shines a light into that darkness by reimagining these fiendish creatures as lonely and misunderstood. It’s an upbeat, almost twee folk song that exudes a sweet sense of awe through its double-tracked lead vocals. Guiles’ lyrics here are a mix of wry indie-rock humor and personal revelation. One standout passage is: Sometimes when I’m lonely/I imagine they’re all around/It’s Jesus and the demons/And Satan and Modest Mouse. The ambient indie-folk track “Summon You” is a lament for Guiles’ late father, the most important person in his life. Both a eulogy and a song of longing, it finds Guiles singing: You were a story/You were chapter and a verse/You were King David/but you didn’t kill nobody. 

Almost a corollary to that song is “The One You Can Count On,” a promise to Guiles’ children. It’s a soulful, deeply emotive indie-rock song with an understated sense of atmospheric grandeur. The album concludes with the uplifting, harmony-lavished folk song “We’re Gonna Get Through It,” perhaps a message from Guiles to himself as he deprograms from years of hammered-in religious dogma. He sings: It might take us a little time/It might take a minute

/It might take us a little time/But I think we’re gonna get through it.