Presented by Mohawk Bio: Thunder Follows The Light, Jordan
Lee’s ninth release as Mutual Benefit—one that finds balance
between chaos and grace, beauty and devastation—began at night in
rural New England. “There was a huge storm, so we decided to sit on
the patio and listen,” remembers Lee. This patient and prismatic
music, similarly, is so much about listening: to history, to the
earth, to the person beside you, to yourself in a world that would
prefer you didn’t. “I became transfixed by the time in between the
lightning and thunder. The silence thick with inevitability,” he
continues. “While I was writing the record, everywhere I looked, I
saw massive societal strain… from human-influenced ecological
disasters to an openly white supremacist U.S. president to corporate
greed exploiting people’s physical and emotional lives in new
ways.” He wondered if the tumult we see today might even be just the
initial strike of lightning, the warning sign before an imminent time
more thunderous, more catastrophic. Thunder Follows The
Light contemplates the ongoing destruction of the outer world and how
it shapes the storms of our inner ones. There are meditations on
collective struggle, death, rebirth, reasons to believe it’s worth
the fight. Following a pair of celebrated full-lengths, 2016’s Skip
A Sinking Stone and 2013’s Love’s Crushing Diamond, Thunder was
largely recorded by the band between Brooklyn and Boston and again
mixed by Brian Deck. It’s pretty easy these days to imagine the end
times; it’s harder to imagine something different. For spiritual
guidance, the songwriter turned to those who have done that work, like
journalist Naomi Klein and sci-fi author Octavia Butler—thinkers
with the apocalyptic imagination to see where things could go horribly
wrong, but the compassion and diligence to outline routes towards
justice. “If love is an armor, can we love stronger?” Lee sings,
voice swelling, before painting an image of winds rising, clouds
gathering, ions colliding—chaos on a molecular level. For nearly a
decade, Lee—who grew up in Ohio and is currently based in New
York—has crafted pop experiments blending orchestral instrumentation
and ambient electronic sounds, taking the role of songwriter,
arranger, producer and multi-instrumentalist. Thunder is a testament
to the power of music as a space for collective processing and
emotional response. Like his past releases, it is highly
collaborative, featuring many returning players—violinist Jake
Falby, guitarist Mike Clifford, percussionist Dillon Zahner—as
well as first-time contributors—vocalist Johanne Swanson (of
Yohuna), drummer Felix Walworth (of Told Slant),
saxophonist Gabriel Birnbaum (of Wilder Maker). Early single “New
History” is a rejection of unjust historical revisionism. “People
in power benefit greatly from a general lack of historic memory in the
US,” Lee says. The album’s truest folk song, with twangy harmonica
and slide guitar, it came to him while spending time in Appalachian
Ohio, where his parents grew up (“where rust and ivy intertwine /
where past and present remain bound”)—a region previously
devastated by coal mining, and decades later is now fighting similar
battles over fracking. Later, “Come To Pass” similarly looks to
the past for clarity on the present: “I think it’s better not to
grieve for a fiction of how things used to be,” he sings, swiftly
knocking down the idea that America was ever great, ever not a site of
immense daily struggle. “Thunder Follows,” informed by a book
called The Hidden Lives of Trees, is a grand wondering about
collective action based on wisdom gleaned from the ways different
species of trees and mushrooms share resources to help each other
survive. It pays mind to the tiny things happening underground upon
which all else is built. “Even when the saplings bend / their roots
will still expand,” he sings, building into a climax of sorts for
this album: “Oh thunder, a warning shot, a bomb dropped elsewhere,
how can we keep waking up the same?” “Storm Cellar Heart,” an
ode to taking shelter, the fraught impulse to hide from the loudness
of the outside world, is more of a long question than an answer: “Is
it storms that help make the heart grow?” Elsewhere, there are odes
to the poetry and cycles of the natural world: in rotting logs, fallen
trees, and the subtle musical poignancy of cicadas awaking,
regenerating and leaving their shells behind (“Shedding Skin”);
and in how the mountains play tricks with the light along North
Carolina’s Blue Ridge Parkway (“Mountain’s Shadow”). There is
existential sadness in these moments of the Earth’s beauty
juxtaposed with lines about human reluctance to hear the melting
planet’s pleas for help: “That moon can pull and those waves can
break, but we rarely listen,” Lee and Swanson sing together,
solemnly, amid lines about rising tides, lands flooding, mountains
toppling on “Waves, Breaking.” It’s the most musically chaotic,
preceding the stark “No Dominion,” a somber piano ballad about the
equally epic but often invisible storms that rage inside a person,
written directly to one person coping with mental illness.
“Nightingale Sing” roughly recalls an Aesop’s fable, “The
Nightingale,” where a king tries to capture a beautiful singing
nightingale, eventually losing interest, so it escapes. “There’s
more to it,” Lee says. “But I guess the moral is don’t make art
for kings, make it for yourself.” Luckily, Lee’s aggressive
pursuit of art-making for himself is also empathetic and
outward-facing, looking both to the past and the future with warmth
and hopefulness. “Peace is more than just a season coming ‘round
again,” he sings on two different songs—and the emphasis seems
intentional: suggesting that harmony of the mind and the heart do not
just transpire but must be worked for, growing from deep-rooted
foundations. In the world that birthed Thunder Follows the Light, it
feels like medicine. Presented by Mohawk Bio: Thunder Follows The
Light, Jordan Lee’s ninth release as Mutual Benefit—one that
finds balance between chaos and grace, beauty and devastation—began
at night in rural New England. “There was a huge storm, so we
decided to sit on the patio and listen,” remembers Lee. This patient
and prismatic music, similarly, is so much about listening: to
history, to the earth, to the person beside you, to yourself in a
world that would prefer you didn’t. “I became transfixed by the
time in between the lightning and thunder. The silence thick with
inevitability,” he continues. “While I was writing the record,
everywhere I looked, I saw massive societal strain… from
human-influenced ecological disasters to an openly white supremacist
U.S. president to corporate greed exploiting people’s physical and
emotional lives in new ways.” He wondered if the tumult we see today
might even be just the initial strike of lightning, the warning sign
before an imminent time more thunderous, more catastrophic. Thunder
Follows The Light contemplates the ongoing destruction of the outer
world and how it shapes the storms of our inner ones. There are
meditations on collective struggle, death, rebirth, reasons to believe
it’s worth the fight. Following a pair of celebrated full-lengths,
2016’s Skip A Sinking Stone and 2013’s Love’s Crushing
Diamond, Thunder was largely recorded by the band between Brooklyn
and Boston and again mixed by Brian Deck. It’s pretty easy these
days to imagine the end times; it’s harder to imagine something
different. For spiritual guidance, the songwriter turned to those who
have done that work, like journalist Naomi Klein and sci-fi author
Octavia Butler—thinkers with the apocalyptic imagination to see
where things could go horribly wrong, but the compassion and diligence
to outline routes towards justice. “If love is an armor, can we love
stronger?” Lee sings, voice swelling, before painting an image of
winds rising, clouds gathering, ions colliding—chaos on a molecular
level. For nearly a decade, Lee—who grew up in Ohio and is currently
based in New York—has crafted pop experiments blending orchestral
instrumentation and ambient electronic sounds, taking the role of
songwriter, arranger, producer and multi-instrumentalist. Thunder is
a testament to the power of music as a space for collective processing
and emotional response. Like his past releases, it is highly
collaborative, featuring many returning players—violinist Jake
Falby, guitarist Mike Clifford, percussionist Dillon Zahner—as
well as first-time contributors—vocalist Johanne Swanson (of
Yohuna), drummer Felix Walworth (of Told Slant),
saxophonist Gabriel Birnbaum (of Wilder Maker). Early single “New
History” is a rejection of unjust historical revisionism. “People
in power benefit greatly from a general lack of historic memory in the
US,” Lee says. The album’s truest folk song, with twangy harmonica
and slide guitar, it came to him while spending time in Appalachian
Ohio, where his parents grew up (“where rust and ivy intertwine /
where past and present remain bound”)—a region previously
devastated by coal mining, and decades later is now fighting similar
battles over fracking. Later, “Come To Pass” similarly looks to
the past for clarity on the present: “I think it’s better not to
grieve for a fiction of how things used to be,” he sings, swiftly
knocking down the idea that America was ever great, ever not a site of
immense daily struggle. “Thunder Follows,” informed by a book
called The Hidden Lives of Trees, is a grand wondering about
collective action based on wisdom gleaned from the ways different
species of trees and mushrooms share resources to help each other
survive. It pays mind to the tiny things happening underground upon
which all else is built. “Even when the saplings bend / their roots
will still expand,” he sings, building into a climax of sorts for
this album: “Oh thunder, a warning shot, a bomb dropped elsewhere,
how can we keep waking up the same?” “Storm Cellar Heart,” an
ode to taking shelter, the fraught impulse to hide from the loudness
of the outside world, is more of a long question than an answer: “Is
it storms that help make the heart grow?” Elsewhere, there are odes
to the poetry and cycles of the natural world: in rotting logs, fallen
trees, and the subtle musical poignancy of cicadas awaking,
regenerating and leaving their shells behind (“Shedding Skin”);
and in how the mountains play tricks with the light along North
Carolina’s Blue Ridge Parkway (“Mountain’s Shadow”). There is
existential sadness in these moments of the Earth’s beauty
juxtaposed with lines about human reluctance to hear the melting
planet’s pleas for help: “That moon can pull and those waves can
break, but we rarely listen,” Lee and Swanson sing together,
solemnly, amid lines about rising tides, lands flooding, mountains
toppling on “Waves, Breaking.” It’s the most musically chaotic,
preceding the stark “No Dominion,” a somber piano ballad about the
equally epic but often invisible storms that rage inside a person,
written directly to one person coping with mental illness.
“Nightingale Sing” roughly recalls an Aesop’s fable, “The
Nightingale,” where a king tries to capture a beautiful singing
nightingale, eventually losing interest, so it escapes. “There’s
more to it,” Lee says. “But I guess the moral is don’t make art
for kings, make it for yourself.” Luckily, Lee’s aggressive
pursuit of art-making for himself is also empathetic and
outward-facing, looking both to the past and the future with warmth
and hopefulness. “Peace is more than just a season coming ‘round
again,” he sings on two different songs—and the emphasis seems
intentional: suggesting that harmony of the mind and the heart do not
just transpire but must be worked for, growing from deep-rooted
foundations. In the world that birthed Thunder Follows the Light, it
feels like medicine.
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24/08/2019 Last update