A Story Cracking Open

Its pre-released tune, Hunger of the Pine, promised the new alt-J record would work some dark magic. That track has been seducing my Peloton riders into gutsy, explosive climbs. I took the new record with me on a family getaway to the tip of Cape Cod that turned stormy: windswept runs at low tide, densely dark skies, coming to terms with the ways a terminally ill parent can upend a life’s plot. The record’s hope in narrative – whispered in looped lyric and sonic phrases, song titles, the arc of its mood – was a refuge not from, but of, strangeness. Violence, interruptions, cacophonies extended long enough to be pulled taut into playful resolution.

If you need to be ruthlessly romanced on the edge of a wild Atlantic, if nothing seems a given, then, This is All Yours.