SWALLOW THE SUN ARE UPON THE DAWN OF A NEW MOON
Autumn is upon us. The days are a little shorter and the shadows a little longer, the light a little dimmer and the breeze a bit cooler. It happens every year (and I write about it every year), but it gets no less easy for me to swallow each time… Winter is coming. Soon enough Daylight Saving Time will end and a month after that New York will be enveloped in darkness every night by 5pm. And it’ll be fucking cold.
Still, I think that those of you who live in climates where it’s roughly the same year-round are missing out on an quintessential human experience. There’s something intangible that comes along with the change of seasons — beyond it just meaning that Football season is starting — that is difficult to describe or put to words. It’s an ebb and flow to life, a coming and going, a give and take, a cyclical nature to the events of your life that I can’t imagine is experienced in the same way when it’s warm out all the time. As much as I fucking hate the winter — and I fucking hate it — I’m not sure I’d give it up for a uniform, level sameness year after year after year. Where’s the fun and the hope in that? Where’s the joy in that first day when the cold breaks, when you go outside, it’s a bit brighter, and you see the tiniest green bud on a tree? The pure elation and child-like excitement that so many fun things are around the corner? How can you fully appreciate the good without first experiencing the bad?
No band’s music (and their name) encapsulates that feeling for me better than Swallow the Sun. I’d imagine that growing up in Finland — where a severely dampened version of daylight lasts for just a few hours mid-Winter — had quite an effect on the band’s ability to translate the feelings of longing, aching, hope and despair that Winter and darkness bring into notes that so perfectly summon them. As someone who doesn’t really listen to lyrics, I’m talking purely about the music here — and this band gets it. They know what I go through, and they tell the story in their doomy, lush, dark arrangements.
Swallow the Sun’s new record New Moon comes out on November 10th (Nov 4 in Finland and Nov 9 in the UK), just in time for Winter’s arrival. They have a mini-site set up where you can stream clips of the full album and, of course, pre-order the record. If New Moon is as good as Swallow the Sun’s prior records (and all indications are that it will be) I will be spinning this one a lot to get me through the deep, dark Northeast winter.
-VN
