Chapters, the forthcoming debut album from Cooper Wolken on Earth Libraries, stems from a childhood spent submersed in the natural world. The multi-instrumentalist grew up wandering in the woods near his Massachusetts home and came to appreciate the duality inherent in life. “All that time out in the woods, I was really close to the processes of the forest, seeing the way life interacts with itself, as well as with death and decay,” he says. “It was an intimate way of understanding the world, and finding the beauty even in all of the darkness.”
The album sees Cooper Wolken apply such observations to his personal life, mining the fine details to illuminate the fundamental truths at the core of his experiences, no matter how vulnerable this might make him. “It’s important to try to communicate whatever beauty you can find,” he says. “And the more personal and specific I got in expressing those discoveries in my life, the more universal the messages became in a weird way.” As though by delving into the aspects of life individual to him, Wolken discovered a way to speak to something larger than himself. To communicate his own life truthfully, and to place it within a wider, natural context too. “These moments were important to me,” he says of the vignettes which makes up the record, “and so is building an understanding through music. I’m still trying to point to what I learned in the woods, the beauty and the chaos, and hope that it resonates. That’s what connects me to people.”
Today we have the pleasure of sharing the single, ‘So Down’. A song which leans into the wisdom learned in the woods to reimagine the ways in which we deal with the darker aspects of life. Namely, in this case, Cooper Wolken’s chronic depression, repositioned from a lifelong curse to longstanding friend, even if it is a relationship that proves less than straightforward to negotiate. What results is a track that embraces duality, be it in the way the gentle delivery and drifting shimmer is edged by crunchy guitar, or how Wolken’s lyrics are wholly sincere yet nonetheless in possession of a wry smile too.
Watch the video directed, shot and edited by Justin Kholberg below:
Chapters is out on the 9th June via Earth Libraries.