If you’ve been following my writing, you know that I’m not really what you might call “traditional” or a “believer”. But it is also true that, over the last decade or so, my relationship with what you might call the “sacred” or the “divine” has changed radically. Simply put, while I still don’t consider myself religious or believe in a monotheistic god, I believe the attitudes which we call “sacral”, that is a certain reverence for the world and reality we find ourselves in, is absolutely an important part of being alive. It’s really hard to explain these concepts so, naturally, I wrote a very long post about it. And at the center of that post lie Old Solar, a band which, through their amazing release SEE, helped me formulate many of these ideas in a clearer way than ever before.
You see (sorry), at the base of SEE and, indeed, at the base all of Old Solar’s take on American post-rock, lies faith. That faith manifests in a sort of wonder, a looking out at the world which finds, and worships, god in the mountains, the seasons, the wind, plants, the harvest, and more. A faith which uses music to channel its “sacral” qualities, its reverence, and what better genre than post-rock to that through? Their new single, “Thank You For This Day”, which we are proud to premiere below in full, is yet another example of how they accomplish that.
In the gentle keys which open the track, in the beautifully resonant background noise, in the gentle yet firm guitar buildup, in the scintillating, crystal clear tones that make up this track, you can feel Old Solar’s powerful faith and world perspective being channeled. Perhaps even more than ever before, Quiet Prayers (redux), the upcoming album from which this single comes to us, feels like an explicit prayer, a rejoicing in the divine which speaks so powerfully to, and through, Old Solar.
Alright. Let me leave you with this beautiful music for now. Try to open yourself up to this one. Try to feel the wind blowing through the trees and think on where that wind comes from and where it goes and how you might connect with it. Try to think on how alive and wonderful and painfully massive the world you live in is. Try to approach music with the reverence which it demands, as a miracle. Safe travels.
Quiet Prayers (redux), releases on February 18th through our good, good friends at A Thousand Arms and Dunk Records.