Life is deciduous
'Through the Deep, Dark Valley' by The Oh Hellos turns 10, some good fall reads from the archives, and a poem about the deciduous nature of life.
On October 30, 2012, the Texas-based, sibling-run, folk-ish indie outfit The Oh Hellos released their first full-length album, Through the Deep, Dark Valley. When I first realized that this album turned 10 this year, several things ran through my mind.
“I love this album so much, I should write one of those super-interesting, pop-culture-retrospective essays on the album and get all the clicks.”
“Sweet, fancy Moses, 2012 was 10 years ago. That doesn’t feel possible.”
“Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers both released albums in 2012.”
“That was a good year for banjos and bow ties.”
“I should talk about Marble, Colorado. Which means I need to include the poem from Dana Gioia.”
“I’m going to have to explain my bizarre-o music-listening habits.”
Hard to know where to begin because so many of these things intertwine, overlap, and frolic on stage together, like The Oh Hellos themselves.
Let’s start with the band, actually, and work out from there. Siblings Tyler and Maggie Heath formed The Oh Hellos in their San Marcos, Texas, home, and self-released a self-titled EP in 2011. That EP included “Hello My Old Heart,” which became a sleeper hit on modern rock radio stations that year, because people still sort of listened to radio circa 2010. I discovered The Oh Hellos by way of “Hello My Old Heart” on Channel 93.3. out of Denver. I was like, “This is pretty dope. It’s acoustic-y, somber then uplifting, the ‘ba-dum-dums’ on the bridge are great, and lyrically there’s vaguely spiritual or Christian-related themes at work.”
Then they released Through the Deep, Dark Valley on October 30, 2012. I bought the album via their Bandcamp page. I still remember reading the description of the album as “a self-contained concept album” and their recommendation to listen to it in its entirety in one sitting, chronologically.
So I did that. The simple arrangements of “Hello My Old Heart” exploded into a folk-estra (folk + orchestra = you’re welcome) of sound, textures, and dynamics. On Valley, the Heath siblings and their troupe of musicians sound like fauns dancing and merry-making upon the main stage at Coachella. Through the Deep, Dark Valley is a frolicking, somber, and powerful meditation on lament and repentance. The vaguely spiritual themes in their EP now amplified a tale of creation, fall, redemption—complete with references to Genesis 2-3 (“Like the Dawn”) and C.S. Lewis (“The Lament of Eustace Scrub”). The album’s coda is a handful of bars from the old hymn “Come Thou Fount.”
Through the Deep, Dark Valley found itself as part of the rising (and soon to be cresting) tide of indie-folk that was crashing upon the music industry. In 2012, Mumford & Sons released their second album, Babel, and were arguably the biggest band in the entire world, and definitely the biggest UK export since Coldplay. And even though they would eventually plug in and give the middle finger to the banjo, Babel was everywhere in 2012. (The best song on Babel is “Below My Feet.”)
There were other bow-tie startups hitting it big in 2012—like the Lumineers, whose self-titled debut album included the single “Ho Hey!” This song was everywhere, including all of your friends’ weddings, over the next two years or so. (The best song on that album is “Slow It Down.”) Then there was Iceland’s Of Monsters and Men, who released My Head Is An Animal in 2012. And while not folk, Of Monsters and Men were and are very much folk-adjacent, heavy on whimsy and drums and anthems full of “Heys!” and “Ohs!” and “La-la-las!” Their big hit was “Little Talks,” and its music video also seemed to be everywhere. (The best song on My Head Is An Animal is “Yellow Lights.”)
This wave of folk-forward artists supported by suspenders had been growing for some time, starting with the rise of the Avett Brothers, Gregory Alan Isakov and Radical Face in the mid-to-late Aughts. Then, of course, there was The Head And The Heart, who are still going strong, but in 2010, they were the standard bearers of hipster, indie-Americana. They were everyone’s favorite band that you had never heard of. Their self-titled album hit in 2010, and their second, Let’s Be Still, dropped in 2013. (The best songs on these albums are “Down in the Valley” and “10,000 Weight in Gold,” respectively.)
Taken together—from Gregory Alan Isakov, to Mumford & Sons, to the Head And The Heart, to The Oh Hellos—this wave had an ethos and a vibe all its own. If you dug this music, you were also likey to find oneself buying Pentax film cameras circa 1982, chopping wood with an axe bought from a guild in Kentucky, investing in far too many bow ties, and generally acting and looking like the dudes in the music video for Mumford & Sons’s “Hopeless Wanderer”:
Even as Mumford & Sons are skewering themselves, it’s easy to understand why their music, and this style of music generally—however overly earnest and corny it can be at times—appealed to so many.
In some ways, The Oh Hellos benefited from this collective sea-level rise of “real music” and old-timey cameras and upright bass and large-hats-at-dusk vibes. In other ways, I feel like they almost got—I dunno—a bit lost in the conversation? Though if getting slightly overlooked due to the presence of the Mumfords and Heads And Hearts of the world includes two NPR Tiny Desk concerts (one in 2015 and another in 2016 for their GOAT Christmas album), then you must be doing something right. Since 2012, the crew released their second album, the excellent and lush Dear Wormwood, in 2015, and four thematically related and varyingly satisfying EPs between 2017 and 2020.
If The Oh Hellos did miss out on the level of notoriety and fame of their contemporaries, Through the Deep, Dark Valley has surpassed all the others in terms of return-ability. Sure, there are plenty of banjos and standard folk and folk-adjacent things going on in this album. But from a thematic and lyrical perspective, this is a transcendent work of music.
Good reads: tales of the falls
It’s been a beautiful fall in Fort Collins this year. An endless fall, with mild weather that’s extra hospitable to slow, long-lasting, and vibrant foliage change. Even now, in early November, even though it’s snowing as I type this, the leaves have lingered long on the bows. The land has been bright. I have soaked up the colors like a lizard does the sun on a cinderblock wall.
I’ve noticed that I tend to write a lot about and/or during autumn. And it seems that some pretty major life events continue to happen during this season. The selection of essays I share below reflect that autumnity, those seasons of major developments in our family’s story.
The first link is to something I wrote less than two months after the girls were placed with us—during a fall in which we had a very hard, very early frost. And all seemed lost.
The last two links are from last year, when we were helping James process through the impending death of his biological dad. It was a season of deep reflection on fatherhood and family history.
Poet’s Corner: “October”
OK, I know it’s November, and that if I were good at this content game, I would have shared this in the middle of October and not now, in the early November. But ya know what, I’m going to share it anyway. Because I think it works; I think it’s still very much “in season,” as it were.
I wrote this little thing back in 2017. And I humbly offer it now as a final farewell to fall, in the hope that it blesses you on your journey toward your eternal spring.
Life is deciduous.
We smell of leaves,
brown and fallen,thrown into the barrow
of the compost pilewaiting to be sown
in spring.
As always, thanks for reading. If anything from this email has blessed you, I’d love to hear from you, and kindly ask that you share it with others whom you think could be blessed by it as well.