[Cover photo of Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk with sled, credit to Dana Sparling]
The Portland, Oregon-based band Wonderly have released new holiday-themed song and video, “A World So Kind.” It hails from their recently released album, Wolves.
The band’s Jim Brunberg says:
Winter can be a tough time for people, Holiday ‘orphans’ are suddenly without their wolf pack, non-Christians are left out of much of the revelry, and some Christians dread the commodification and want to retreat high onto a mountain away from Whoville, retail battlegrounds, family pressure-cookers… However, people do go out of their way to show generosity during the holidays, and there are many compassionate elements and an overarching expectation of kindness, which is beautiful.
We’re coming out of the most divisive period in history. Family gatherings and reunions are often strained. The more we look inward to see our own duality of spirit, and really examine that honestly, the more we may be able to develop empathy for other points of view, ways of life, etc. The Wolves theme, writ large, is recognition that we all contain a spectrum of compassion, anger, love, frustration, patience, rashness, hunger, generosity, horniness, loneliness and understanding.
Wonderly’s new album is named for the mythic two-wolf theory of human duality and dichotomy, and that flavors the album, but it’s also indicative of The Pacific Northwest during this season.
Ben Landsverk comments:
We’ve always been drawn to the darker, minor-key winter carols like baroque French noëls, Peter Warlock’s ‘Bethlehem Down,’ Benjamin Britten’s ‘A Hymn to the Virgin,’ etc. These are works that have a sense of an inner light that is shrouded in the darkness of the season. We were playing around with a descending chord progression one day, and it started to feel like one of these carols. So, we wrote about the Pacific Northwest holiday experience.
The new track also has an outro from Portland’s Low Bar Chorale, the large-scale community singing experience and live band produced by Ben Landsverke, who serves as creator and director.
A popular event/experience in Portland, the Low Bar Chorale hosts regular twice-monthly shows whose attendance ranges from 100 to 2,000. With production led by Jennie Baker, it serves as a rotating collective of all-star players, including Wonderly bandmate Jim Brunberg, Allen Hunter (EELS, Ural Thomas), Chet Lyster (EELS), Ned Failing (The Strangers), Kyleen King (Brandi Carlile), Dan Hunt (Ages and Ages, Neko Case), Ruby Friedman (Ruby Friedman Orchestra), Christopher Brown, Dave Jorgensen (Blind Pilot), Jeff Langston (Antony and the Johnsons), AG Donnaloia (Liv Warfield, Lifesavas), Jack Mortensen (Wonderly) and many others.
