Originating in Oakland’s underground scene of the early 2000s, The Heavenly States has since become a cult fixture. The group’s members now reside between Austin and Atlanta, and they’ve just unleashed ‘My Sloop,’ a haunting, mournful ballad.

A six-minute, near-classical epic, it marks a significant change from their last single, ‘Fifth of July,’ trading New Wave vibe for something more expansive and theatrical. Echoes of lounge, Russian classical music, and even Bernstein-style musical theater intermingle, exploring themes of reckoning and supernatural detachment.

On the idea behind the track the band shares, “Let us insist on the responsibility of each human to hold it down for all the living. The easier task would be to walk off the set of the parodic “Anthropocene”— such a fashionable thing to do – to think that to go on strike as a human is an honorable choice. Isn’t it rather a pretense to invulnerability though? Imagine supernatural beings, surrogates for nature, sitting in judgment, in the collateral damage of what humans have wrought. Humans (even the ones pretending to be post-human) shall not be permitted to walk off the job and settle down to a feast of caviar and video games. The human is deeply indebted. And worse, we are fully capable of paying our debt, yet choose not to. Only the worst parts of the human are bearing fruit – the best in us waits, fading in sun-shocked fields. The faeries have had enough. This is a song from outside us, about us, trying to get free of us.”

The core songwriters, Genevieve Gagon and Ted Nesseth, lead a powerful Austin-based lineup. Their creative process during the pandemic was a study in ingenuity, as they pieced together new material in a DIY home studio….even building their own gear. The resulting sound is a document of transition, capturing the madness and hardship of American life without a hint of nostalgia. The band’s use of multiple voices, perhaps due to its two songwriters, suggests the inadequacy of a singular “I” to capture their autobiographical journey

Headline photo: Larry Ratner

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