Pre-order of Body of Light / I Am A Cloud. You get 2 tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.
Purchasable with gift card
releases August 9, 2024
$15USD or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Daylily vinyl edition, with both albums housed in a single wide-spine jacket, and embossed flower cover. Only available online and limited to 500 copies. This variant will not be re-pressed.
Images provided are mockups, and final product may vary slightly in appearance.
All items in your cart will ship on or around August 9, 2024. This date is subject to change due to reasons beyond our control, and you may receive this product after its official release date. If you would like to receive other items sooner, please place two separate orders.
Includes digital pre-order of Body of Light / I Am A Cloud.
You get 2 tracks now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
shipping out on or around August 9, 2024
edition of 500
Purchasable with gift card
$38USDor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Standard black vinyl edition, with both albums housed in a single wide-spine jacket, and embossed flower cover.
Images provided are mockups, and final product may vary slightly in appearance.
All items in your cart will ship on or around August 9, 2024. This date is subject to change due to reasons beyond our control, and you may receive this product after its official release date. If you would like to receive other items sooner, please place two separate orders.
Includes digital pre-order of Body of Light / I Am A Cloud.
You get 2 tracks now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
shipping out on or around August 9, 2024
Purchasable with gift card
$37USDor more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
CD edition, with both albums housed in a single CD wallet.
Images provided are mockups, and final product may vary slightly in appearance.
All items in your cart will ship on or around August 9, 2024. This date is subject to change due to reasons beyond our control, and you may receive this product after its official release date. If you would like to receive other items sooner, please place two separate orders.
Includes digital pre-order of Body of Light / I Am A Cloud.
You get 2 tracks now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
shipping out on or around August 9, 2024
Purchasable with gift card
$15USDor more
Cassette + Digital Album
Cassette edition, with both albums housed in a double Norelco case.
Images provided are mockups, and final product may vary slightly in appearance.
All items in your cart will ship on or around August 9, 2024. This date is subject to change due to reasons beyond our control, and you may receive this product after its official release date. If you would like to receive other items sooner, please place two separate orders.</p>
Includes digital pre-order of Body of Light / I Am A Cloud.
You get 2 tracks now
(streaming via the free Bandcamp app
and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the
complete album the moment it’s released.
baby there ain't no rules here
we can just slide
keep bending and drawing new lines
all shapes defined
maybe there ain't nowhere to go
and we could stay here
and watch the whole world disappear
through faded eyes
i'm just a body of light
i'm just a body of light
caught in a moment collide
and shine
baby you don't need to show up
the same way each time
bottom or top it's alright
i'm just your type
maybe you don't know what to call it
or it ain't got a name
i'm here for it all just the same
all colors and shades
i'm just a body of light
i'm just a body of light
i'm just a body of light
i'm just a body of light
go on get your red shoes on
let's get out of town
maybe there's a place for the two of us
somewhere in the clouds
fly me to the moon on a spaceship
take me to the liquor store
hear you saying you wanna go faster
well maybe just a little more
keep burning, burning that oil
keep turning that water to steam
keep winding, tearing through the limestone
further, further downstream
we were winding some blue country road in the south appalachia
you were smiling in the passenger seat rolling a cigarette on the dash
you said you’d be taking a new name and asked me what i thought about Will
“see ever since i can remember i've been waiting for god’s eyes to close
and there's something about being in motion that's like being nowhere
that's like get spread out and scattered like old seeds” you said
we kept thinking that clouds were mountains the mountains were clouds
then i went down on you out in the apple orchard and the rain came
heartbreakers are playing on the stereo
cat shadow is dancing on the moon
keep driving till the dawn for the hell of it
still it comes too soon
hear “the waiting is the hardest part”
but that ain't true for me
could be the lonesome
could be the darkness
or maybe it's the silence
oh yeah that's the hardest part
silence is the hardest part
it's the silence
it's the silence
so i sat quiet just staring at a white wall
tried not to think at all
had a vision that showed me a story
of how it ever got this far
i could hear the sound of your crying
i was chewing on the fruit from the vine
is this really how it all got started
a garden in another life?
i remembered how the city lights reflect off the east river
and how the train sank underground
and how it never made sense no matter how many times
i saw all those people running around
well, maybe this trip ends at the end of my curiosity
my eyes closed and your voice covered me
i dreamt of heat lightning, cold rain, minnows and saw dust
cloudy water on broken glass
i woke up with a snake at my feet looking for new skin
i went down to the church of the pentecost
to see if they could understand
and they told me about christ and the cross
and the blood of the lamb
i been out in the den with the lion
i been down in the belly of the whale
ever since i left that garden
i been fighting like hell
anoint me with the holy oil
put your hands on my head
hold me down underwater
till there's nothing but a river left
i thought i had It, the It that rains
thought i could make sense of it again
but everytime i keep turning up empty
slipping through the palm of my hands
then i felt a love strong enough
to let it go
i felt a love strong enough
to let it go
i'm a cloud now
drifting away
i'm a cloud now
with a million faces
i'm a cloud now
drifting on by
i'm a cloud now
fading into sky
12.
Formations
13.
A Bridge
14.
Where Love All Happened
15.
Letters of Returning
16.
Even Here, Even Now
about
Across the last 15 years, Ryan Gustafson of The Dead Tongues has emerged as one of modern folk’s most distinct voices. As idiosyncratic and spectral as the songs have sometimes been, Gustafson has always tied his visions and verses to the kinds of hooks you tuck away like talismans, pulled out in case of emergency. Dust, Unsung Passage, Desert: The Dead Tongues’ albums remain some of the more compelling and curious works in their field on this side of a century. The latest edition to The Dead Tongues’ catalog, the song-centric and magnetic Body of Light and the discursive and wonderfully elliptical I Am a Cloud, is 16 complete tunes split across interweaving and disparate albums.
Before heading to Betty’s, Gustafson spent a month at “the Shack,” a primitive and private structure in rural western North Carolina, working on new material and sorting through piles of poems, sticky notes scattered across the windows, and stacks of free writing streams of thought. Most of the songs were written during this time – the exquisite “Daylily,” a warm little gift for his partner, or “I’m a Cloud Now,” a fever dream of song and spoken-word about the toggle between identity and ephemerality.
The creative energy was free flowing, deep and explorative, songs somehow coming together in a manner both freakishly fast and patient. In this energy and specific space the groundwork for the album was rooted, springing forth from the thick of the elemental and natural beauty these songs reference. The daylily on the cover of the album was picked from the land the shack is built upon - there’s a connection between the physical natural setting and the creative work itself, intertwined and natural bloom.
Gustafson wanted to continue with that explorative energy once he got into the formal studio, allowing it to lead the group of players assembled – the albums feature performances by Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Bon Iver), Mat Davidson (Twain), Matt Douglas (The Mountain Goats), Joe Westerlund (Califone, Megafaun), Jeff Ratner (Bing and Ruth), and more. Gustafson wanted to dedicate the studio time to not just recording songs but also making something new, with new improvisations.
The results feel at once casual and tremendous, the camaraderie and conversation between the players resulting in pieces that are lived-in but new. “Baby there ain’t no rules here/We can just slide,” Gustafson sings at the start of Body of Light’s opening title track, establishing a collective credo inside this gorgeous anthem about finding sanctuary with someone else. Notice how it seems to nod to flamenco before lifting into electronic abstraction, or how Wasner’s harmonies summon the deepest Southern soul over electric phosphorescence.
And then there’s “Dirt for a Dying Sun,” where freight-train harmonica and spectral guitar frame a romantic dust-to-dust realism, where the best we can do is live wildly before we die. The characters on Body of Light are restless, damaged, and beautiful, whether clinging to an underground amid gentrification’s high rises during “Wolves” or holding on to the most intoxicating wisps of love during “Moon Shadow.” The band plays as if they’re just meeting these people for the first time, responding with an admixture of recognition and astonishment.
The collected crew takes that approach to the next plane on I Am a Cloud, an intersection of Gustafson’s tone poems and top-tier improvisation. “Formations” is an exquisite instrumental, a soul-jazz dream of horns and bells, bejeweled drones and broken rhythms. Remembering the birthday night he spent alone on an Irish cliff as the Summer solstice neared several years ago, Gustafson narrates “A Bridge” as if he’s peering into his own mind with wonder and surprise. The finale, “Even Here, Even Now,” is a spiral galaxy, with the songs of crickets, the hums of a Shruti box, and the touch of percussion lifting Gustafson’s mantric statement of purpose—to keep moving, to keep singing, no matter what may come. It is a wondrous piece of devotional music that seems to praise sound itself—the gift that can open us up, when we’re no longer sure that can even happen anymore.
“Sometimes it’s hard to be anyone anywhere it seems,” Gustafson, his voice as understanding as empathy, sings to start the second verse of “Hard Times, Sore Eyes,” the farewell for Body of Light. That may read like a bummer, a concise and crippling encapsulation of our struggles to make meaning that’s as right as rain. But, really, it’s a permission slip to elide expectation, to try something different. Maybe in the past, Gustafson was seen as the singer-songwriter in a folk-rock band called The Dead Tongues. But when he started to let that go, he found something fascinating, new, and absorbing. Body of Light and I Am A Cloud are brilliant chapters written after Gustafson wondered if he’d closed the book, and they are, in turn, hard to put down.
credits
releases August 9, 2024
Body Of Light credits
In order of appearance, performed by:
Ryan Gustafson: Vocal, Guitar, Harmonica, Piano, Synth
Matt Douglas: Clarinet
Jenn Wasner: Vocal, Piano, Synth
Joe Westerlund: Drums, Percussion, Balafon, Metallophone
Mat Davidson: Vocal, Pedal Steel, Guitar, Synth
Jeff Ratner: Electric Bass, Double Bass, Piano
Maddie Shuler: Wurlitzer
Ryan Oslance: Percussion, Drums, Conga
Michael Libramento: Guitar, Organ
All songs written by Ryan Gustafson
Recorded at Betty’s
Engineered by Alli Rogers
Produced by Ryan Gustafson
Additional production by Jenn Wasner on “Body of Light” and “Wolves”
All songs mixed by Ryan Gustafson except “Body of Light” and “Dirt For A Dying Sun” mixed by Andrew Sarlo
Mastered by Heba Kadry
Photography by Hunter Savoy
Layout / design by Miles Johnson
I Am A Cloud credits
In order of appearance, performed by:
Ryan Gustafson: Vocal, Guitar, Harmonica, Piano, Synth, Harmonium, Tape Loops, Shruti Box
Joe Westerlund: Drums, Percussion, Balafon, Metallophone
Mat Davidson: Pedal Steel
Jenn Wasner: Vocal, Synth
Jeff Ratner: Electric Bass, Double Bass, Piano
Ryan Oslance: Percussion, Drums
Matt Douglas: Sax, Clarinet
Michael Libramento: Synth, Guitar, Piano
Hunter Savoy: Vocal
Recorded at Betty’s
Engineered by Alli Rogers
Produced by Ryan Gustafson
All songs mixed by Ryan Gustafson except “I’m A Cloud Now” mixed by Andrew Sarlo
Mastered by Heba Kadry
Tracks 1, 2, 5 and 7 written by Ryan Gustafson
Tracks 3, 4 and 6, Lyrics by Ryan Gustafson, Music written by Ryan Gustafson, Jeff Ratner, Joe Westerlund, Ryan Oslance, Michael Libramento and Matt Douglas
Photography by Hunter Savoy
Layout / design by Miles Johnson
Soulful guitar interplay form the heart of this lovely Americana collaboration from Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 2, 2018