Ahead of the release of his forthcoming fifth studio record Mystic Familiar later this month, Dan Deacon has shared the album's second single and accompanying music video.
"Become a Mountain" — a song described as a "startlingly vulnerable shift in a songbook abundant with characters, metaphors, and distorted vocals" — arrives today alongside a colourful Rapapawn-directed lyric video. The track follows the record's lead single "Sat by a Tree."
Leading up to the release of the record, Deacon has shared the following statement about Mystic Familiar's concept:
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.
Mystic Familiar arrives January 31 via Domino.
Watch the video for "Become a Mountain" below.
"Become a Mountain" — a song described as a "startlingly vulnerable shift in a songbook abundant with characters, metaphors, and distorted vocals" — arrives today alongside a colourful Rapapawn-directed lyric video. The track follows the record's lead single "Sat by a Tree."
Leading up to the release of the record, Deacon has shared the following statement about Mystic Familiar's concept:
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.
Mystic Familiar arrives January 31 via Domino.
Watch the video for "Become a Mountain" below.
