Will Stratton – Points of Origin

WOW I’m writing this in early December, the record is out in February, I just finished my first listen-through and I’m floored. First of all, this album has everything I love – a concept, fictional characters in a real universe, California, mentions of AQI (wildfire is a main theme and ok I don’t love the air quality index but it’s relevant to my daily life), an exploration from Bakersfield to Niland, beautiful instrumentation throughout, a lovely voice, standout lyricism. One of those beautiful classic folk records that are rare to come by in this day and age.

From Ben Seretan’s liner notes,
The puny, beautiful, sun-bleached lives of truckers, surfers, runaways, drunks, thieves, CIA operatives, foresters, arsonists, lawyers, and painters intertwine, fall apart, and are ultimately reduced to dust in the 10,000 year-long span of Points of Origin, a heartbreaking and expansive album of songs by Will Stratton set in the freeway wilds of California. Novelistic, as dense as a Pynchon picaresque, and just absolutely lovely to listen to, these ten songs contain some of the most poignant considerations of the horrifying realities of anthropocentric climate change ever set to melody. These wildfires, these mudslides, these intensifying storms – we caused them and every single one of us has a story, interconnected and touching others as our world burns. May the flames that lick menacingly at the border of the frame cleanse us of our wrongdoings.