Rites of Passage (on becoming American in a time of crisis)
On March 28th 2025 I released my sophomore album Rites of Passage. These songs were written during my last year and a half in England, a time when I lived in stasis, living only for the dream of college and the chance to begin again and make myself anew. It was a profoundly hopeful but also deeply difficult time, and one that I struggled to look back on when trying to complete this album. The album’s lyrics pose one overarching, uncertain question about the future, an uncertainty that was quelled long before the final production/arrangement process. I struggled with that disconnect, to find any of myself now in those songs, but eventually found a solution in the album’s production. Through the lush climaxes of Actors, A Scene and Disenchantment and the codas of Paradise Lost and Agatha, I tried to answer that uncertainty with musical snatches of the life I had dreamed of and would come to live fully.
When I began the process of writing this album, Sounds of the Scrubland had only been out for 2 or 3 months. I had recently joined Friends House Records and found an online community of fellow diy musicians, whose incredible songwriting convinced me to abandon short-lived plans of making an atmospheric post-rock record. I decided to focus almost entirely on songwriting & songcraft, to create songs that could be stripped of their production and arrangements and still work for live performance. This is not a new or radical concept, but it did make for a stark departure from the process of Sounds of the Scrubland, which was written on my computer instead of on my guitar/piano. This, in combination with a much more direct and dry style of production, is part of why Rites of Passage sounds and feels so different from what came before it.
As I mentioned before, this album is a lyrical exploration of my dream of America. It feels strange to express any kind of transatlantic yearning in the context of the US’ present political situation (US complicity in Israeli genocide in Gaza, deportation of student activists, threats to higher education and the already limited social welfare state, anti-black/trans/queer legislation in the wake of Trump’s election) I have often been asked about whether or not I plan on moving back to the UK (not right now). That question has led me to recognize that I came to this country with some understanding that this might happen, some conception that America’s political future might be this grim. Yet I came.
I often say to my friends, in response to that aforementioned question, that any greatness this country holds has always been owed to its people and not its government. Unfortunately, this American present is built on American precedent: the settler-colonial genocides of Turtle Island, the Mc-Carthy era persecution of ‘communists’ and political dissidents, the repression of student protestors by disciplinary & military means during the Vietnam war. All this points back towards a country not twisted by the double sin of slavery & genocide but defined by it from the very beginning. I struggle to reconcile this national truth with the personal fact that I have never been as happy as I am now, have never found such kindred spirits, such personal and academic fulfillment. I have found myself here, strangely enough.
When I was writing these songs, America was still a dream, the place I spent my privilged, youthful Augusts. Releasing these songs into the world feels like the final part of moving from that dream to the reality I live in now. It has been a privilege to come to know this place more deeply, to watch Ndakinna’s (New England) seasons pass, to work in the hills of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, to study in a leafy idyll outside of a city I had dreamed of since I was a child. The natural beauty of this country is staggering, ravaged as it is by interstates and strip malls, and a stark visual reminder that this country is one defined by contradictions, contradictions between founding myths of freedom and liberty and the nation that exists in reality. Still, I have fallen in love with the stories Americans tell each other—the songs, poetry, quilts, theatre, films—and their sincere belief in the dreams that this country has represented for so many.
My next album (which I began writing over a year ago now, but is still a long way away) will be an exploration of that American folk tradition. I hope to tell a more intentional narrative portrait of my experience of this place, an experience which I hope to articulate more poetically than I might have in this article. For now, I hope you enjoy this body of work, find some joy, catharsis or happiness in these songs. They are dedicated to the memory of Ruby Jules, who shaped me into the musician I am today, and Grandpa Ted, who alongside my Grandma Joanna, Papa and Nana, made the American summers of my youth, and without whom I would not have been able to afford college or come to New York, and found the life that I dreamed of on this album. Thank you for listening <3