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Welcome to Conceptual Beach

by Young Jesus

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1.
Faith 07:04
How a faith becomes profound A lake lifts from the ground Find the demon and dove both share In the evening you dress with care Now the desert breaks you down And from the sweat and drought Comes the feeling you’re not quite there Kiss the god of salt and air ----- What it eats and what it shows What progresses and what can pose Just like a ghost in ghost-like clothes The eager monsters fear their souls Will come forth naked and all alone Will come forth crying and tell the whole Of their starvation Of love not shown Of ghosts created And turned to gold That’s how we live Between pain and hopelessness But if our monsters could hold our souls They might tell of love, of holes That we all carry That we are reflected in Imperfection never leaves And the pain you feel you’ll always feel a bit But in the moment Of knowing what we’ve known Of seeing every ghost And giving it a home We just might grow We just might grow We just might grow We just might grow We just might grow We just might grow We just might grow We just might grow
2.
Show me how you relax Or rather, tell me how’d you’d live If you could live like that I’ll show how I get mad Or rather, how I judge the world and how a pattern doubts When it’s patterned out It would be good to break, to take another way But I’m afraid I might not have made A quilt worth living in If we could make it like that You stitch a thing, I’ll resist And then I’ll stitch it back I could help you relax Or rather, live with you If you could live like that
3.
(un)knowing 04:09
Knowing’s led to what I know It comes and then it goes Unknowing’s what I’ve grown Arguments aside It’s just a life Dusk gives way to night Then holds the light Felt a pain and let it last Let it grow with goodness and Future present, Future passed By the fields of cloud and bone Calcified, laid out like a home Phantom limb Phantom cornerstone Watch the way it shakes This knowing mind Do you build with higher stakes? Or let it lie? Felt a pain and let it last Let it grow with goodness and Future, present, Future, past. ----- The slower motions of decay This human speed accelerates I dream of breathing, broken things I wake up on the verge of hearing Fields of clouds and angels ringing bells And stretching out their wings Oh, give me all your perfect things Your weightlessness and pure belief Oh God and Mary, Jesus Christ Won’t bless me for my every vice I’ll be redeemed in shame and grief In knowing I may not find peace I rub my eyes and hear my partner’s breath Forget these lonely depths Forget the perfect and performed Just listen to this love unknown
4.
Meditations 06:42
(improvised) ----- Quite the context and the cause Quite the openness to loss Quite the question to the law Violence, progress, and garage Science, God, and alcohol Hold the contradiction strong Listen mostly, talking some Silence, grief, and feeling won ----- I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it I wanna be around and live it
5.
Every record needs a thesis, needs a crisis, or campaign All my feelings need a reason, need a righteousness or blame What if living wasn't of the mind? The root and crown don't doubt the winter time Underground the dark and cooling earth embraces what can sink Into itself and fall for miles into a timeless darkening And from the depths will come the brightest fire The center, surface, and the sun aligned I am not a living crisis but I'm learning how to breath How to feel and how to tell my friends and family what I need I know the music of the winter time But to the spring I give my love and life
6.
Lark 11:43
Always raining. A great thing to be alive. A great thirst brought us to our knees; brought us the lark, the dog, and the night. ----- You were made dumb and so you listened I was made dumb and learned to speak Now I feel it This coming silence Greatness only in witness Greatness only in witness The voice is just that Moving from the lark to lower gut ----- I am conflicted. Learning if dreams are like news, what is inflicted isn’t the visible bruise. Love as a symbol; lark as a time in life.
7.
Magicians 10:09
I’m born at 29 occasioned by magicians I felt the only life’s the life you lead alone If every older guy’s a broker or casino I thought I’d roll the dice or play ethnographer And as a baby I was huge and quite judicious I’d tell you every lie that is or ever was But in divulging every secret or suspicion I came to crying and to hate my life alone In every phone I find a reason to get bitter But every critic’s got some things they’re not proud of I count myself among the chief of all these critters I count myself more often than I count the stars But there are magicians making love and doing dishes I make my way to magic or belief in love ----- You know it, the way it moves and You think about it every single day The sun and the greater bruise The bridge when every day begins to fade I know it, the way you move and The holiness of what we did today Our love is the aching news of It’s everlasting and it’s single day You know it, the way you move and The holiness of every single day Our love is the greater bruise The bridge to everlasting every day

about

Imagine a shoreline alone, carved from the continent, without land or water to border it, a rind of possibility, a moon-colored border between land and sea, knowing and unknowing. This is Conceptual Beach, a place John Rossiter, vocalist/guitarist of Los Angeles-based Young Jesus, describes as his long-time mental refuge, where he imagines himself living—like a medieval, stigmata-wrought hermit—all his needs for okay-ness finally met. Their new album, Welcome to Conceptual Beach, first took form as a physical zine in 2016, when the four members of the band were on their first tour together. At that time, it was still somewhere Rossiter inhabited alone, protective of his solitude. Now, he is allowing others to join him there. "The reason it's called Welcome to… [Conceptual Beach] is because I'm inviting other inner landscapes into it," Rossiter explains as he describes the transformation of the beach's terrain into a whole varied emotional world.

Indeed, Welcome to Conceptual Beach elucidates the balance between many contrasting forces: the individual and the collective, the rational and the emotive, the tame and wild. It transforms the complex musicality of much post- and math-rock into a radical, crystalline practice, vibrant and light-casting. The band's members––including Marcel Borbon (bass), Eric Shevrin (keys), and Kern Haug (drums) in addition to Rossiter himself––refract and reconnect throughout the record, experimenting with new kinds of sounds and composition. They artfully balance the wandering riffs of previous records with irresistible hooks, woven into their characteristic swathes of improvisation to create a shimmering, molten tapestry.

"Faith," the opening track, runs parallel to the album as a whole: dynamic and groovy and psychedelic and emotional. Each musician has a moment to shine and to speak. Opening with Kern's version of the Purdie Shuffle, to Marcel's polyrhythmic bass, to Eric's organ solo, and held together by John's whispered prayer that, "we just might grow," Young Jesus offer a music uniquely in service to emotion. "(un)knowing" is a "meditation celebration," a song about the confusion and pain of re-examining a life—of committing to a life of experience and curiosity. Mixing the spirit and experimentation of OK Computer with the sincerity of Bon Iver, "Root and Crown" is the first song that offers a way out of the traps and patterns of a life. A commitment to grieving, listening, and growing. A devotion to spring, sung from the depths of winter.

Whether it's a bank-vault-turned-concert-hall in San Francisco, a Brooklyn artists' collective, a house show in central Connecticut, or a recording studio, a Young Jesus performance is unique and unrepeatable. Recordings are only snapshots of their songs in a given moment. Over dozens of shows, a single song will metamorphosize each time it's played, taking on infinite new geometries. When they play live, their jamming—a self-selected, unaffected and doggedly genuine term for their complex improvisations—is a visceral, communal experience. They render sound an instinct, filling the space with urgency and joy. The intensity of feeling and connection between the band members and to their music is a thick, palpable force that sweeps audiences up, propelling them into uncharted territories.

On Welcome to Conceptual Beach, Young Jesus pries our sobs from parentheticals and wields them with a brutal but tender force. They take these elements and translate them into a spacious ground for growth, for ourselves, our communities, our world. They affirm that change starts with how we reckon with ourselves as individuals, that we are all magicians, as the closing track of Welcome to Conceptual Beach suggests, "making love and doing dishes," capable of conjuring new worlds for ourselves, and to live in others'.

credits

released August 14, 2020

2020 Saddle Creek

Composed, produced, and performed by Marcel Borbón, Kern Haug, John Rossiter, Eric Shevrin
Engineered by Greg Hartunian at Tropico Beauty
Mixed by Brian Rosemeyer
Mastered by Heba Kadry
Lyrics by John Rossiter

Saxophone and Flute performed by Brian Tuley
Alternate percussion by Peter Martin

Cover art by John Rossiter
Photos by Tanner Le Moine, Sabrina Sharifi and James Treehouse
Design by Jadon Ulrich

Young Jesus acknowledges our presence on the
traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Gabrielino-Tongva peoples.


Deep gratitude and further connectors

our families
epistomological anarchism
conjunctive experience
concatenated knowing
affinity relationships
parrhesiastes
and Sun Ra

The spirit of life itself
The City of Los Angeles
ABC rehearsal studios
Brit
Tommy
Katherine
Kevin
Martin
Zal
Stu
Everyone at Saddle Creek
All those who've put us up on tour
Public radio
KXLU
KCHUNG
KPFK
Public libraries
The Current Events Reading Group
This beautiful world

Nicolas Rothwell
Robin Wall Kimmerer
David Berman (The Gospel of Thomas)
The Lament of the Dead
Octavia Butler
Konstantin Levin
JH Prynne
adrienne maree brown
A Million Windows
Meister Eckhart
Mooji
The Blue Nile
Blue Monk
Joni Mitchell's Blue

dancing
crying
laughing
listening

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