Ahead of the release of his upcoming LP Mystic Familiar, electronic artist Dan Deacon has shared the new single “Become a Mountain”. The track comes equipped with an animated lyric video, which you can watch below.
Following October’s “Sat by a Tree”, the album’s latest single is a braid of sonic layers spiraling upward toward a hopeful reach. It marks the first recording ever in which Deacon sings with an unaffected voice, letting his natural tone ring through. In a series of lyrical bitesized lines, he poses modernly existential questions like “I’m still hungry/ For the future/ On this day before me/ Will I seize it/ Or scroll?”
In a press statement, Deacon spoke about the single and how it encapsulates the essence of the full album:
“The lyrics in ‘Become a Mountain’ lay out the framework for the album’s overall concept: 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. 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.”
Check Dan Deacon’s “Become a Mountain” below, followed by his full statement. The experimental artist has a healthy stretch of upcoming tour dates, including an on-stage masterclass at London’s Rough Trade East. Grab tickets to all his dates here.
During the 4 years over which I composed the songs that became Mystic Familiar, I began going to therapy and started a meditation practice. I felt raw and vulnerable while making this album, and I wanted the music to reflect that.
Like many people who’ve been in a dark mindset for a long time, self-compassion and non-judgmental thinking were a real challenge for me, entirely new habits that needed to be learned basically from scratch. When I would try to embrace having positive thoughts, they didn’t feel like my own, but rather another entity’s thoughts trying to speak to me. While writing, I began thinking of these thoughts as a Mystic Familiar (my own personal supernatural companion) trying to communicate with me. Externalizing the thoughts made them easier to fully realize and reflect upon.
The lyrics in ‘Become A Mountain’ lay out the framework for the album’s overall concept: 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. 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.
