Sophia Michaels
Dan Deacon reflects on mortality and productivity with his pensive new song “Become a Mountain.”
“I rose up, tired in my flesh; getting old now/I’m so lucky, yet I forget/I’m still hungry for the future,” he gently sings over choppy piano chords. “On this day before me, will I seize it or scroll? All of time is right here, is right now.” The track builds with layered keys, crescendoing as synthesizers rise into a symphonic swirl.
“Become a Mountain” appears on Deacon’s fifth official LP, Mystic Familiar, out January 31st. The album, which also includes lead single “Sat By a Tree,” follows 2015’s Gliss Riffer.
In a statement, the experimental artist notes that “Become a Mountain” outlines the LP’s conceptual framework of a “Narrator and their Mystic Familiar.”
“Our Narrator, in the opening verse and choruses, is trying to learn how to be self-compassionate, to live a life in the present while being able to deal with self-doubt and anxiety in a lifetime of great flux and foundational transformations,” he writes. “Meanwhile, our Mystic Familiar, in verse two and the pre-choruses, tries to help guide the transformations of our narrator through mantras coaxing me to be present in the now, even while also being an element of chaos itself.”
Deacon will promote the record on a North American tour that launches February 26th in Charlottesville, Virginia and runs through early May. Prior to that trek, he’ll play a brief run of international dates, starting with a January 30th album release show at London’s Rough Trade East.
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