Son of Cloud - Son of Cloud (2019)

A successful New York-based producer who’s worked with the likes of Fleet Foxes and Andrew Bird, Jonathan Seale was born in Texas and raised in the jungles of South America where he was dubbed Son of Cloud by the Yukpa, an indigenous Venezuelan tribe, providing a springboard for a debut solo album that delves into the notion of family tribes, both inherited and created.

Singing in a hushed voice, building from acoustic templates and robed in strings he makes dreamy, atmospheric music full of wide open spaces, as exemplified in the gentle opening strum of How To Love You Today.

Sam and The Trees is a poignant song of change embodied in the opening lines of how “they cut down the trees in the yard today/The new landlord came over to take them away/Now a few branches are all that remain” which extend to talk of a relationship that may have run its course as he sings of “The way you roll over and turn out the lights/Without saying goodnight to me” wondering if “When you close your eyes and think of forever/Do you picture the life that we’re building together?/Or does the thought of your freedom/Out there on your own seem better and better and better?”

Transitions and permanence percolate, on the contentedly reflective Who Could Ask For More? he sings “I don’t know where you’re going and I can’t say where I’ll be/But you’ll always be right here in my passenger seat.”

Trombone provides For Tom, the first of two brief instrumental interludes (the second being the tentative piano notes and discordant noise of New Seeds), giving way to the mournful funereal slouch of Requiem For Dana Lynn, Sam Gryzwa on cello, the end of a life lived in suffering and toil while the narrator remains behind, his work not yet done.

Things pick up musically with the breezy emotional defences down strum of I Am Not An Island (“I stand before you still, do with me what you will”), Brittany Buongiorno bringing wordless backing vocals to the bluesy shades of Parade with its syncopated drum rhythms, cello and lines about bringing life and renewal to the land (“to restore/The years that the locusts have stolen”) for the generations ahead, a theme picked up on the minimalistic accompaniment, strings and woodwind brushed Restoration Song (Hold On) with its almost biblical images of a past kingdom of light before the wells ran dry and the garden was lost, of finding safety and refuge in “the truth of our song” and of being part of a plan as the piano frills gather the song to its climax as the cycle is broken in a new Eden and a life without struggle when “the hungry will feed from the meat of our table/The thirsty will drink from the fruits of our labor.”

Returning to how it all began, it ends briefly and simply with the muted acoustic guitar, acoustic bass, violin and piano notes of the open-hearted I Love You More, a perfect close to an album that celebrates who we are, who we have been and who we might become.