The foundations of Old Man of the Woods‘ new album Cape Perpetua were established with 2025 LP Tendrils, a record we described as offering “its own form of transubstantiation, taking a desire which might otherwise appear absurd and changing it into something charged and devotional.” Cape Perpetua sees Seattle-based Miranda Elliott delve further into this style, pairing what she describes as ‘ambient incantations’ with equally otherworldly visual accompaniments. “[The record] sees her embrace aesthetics both religious and ecological to push their ambient avant-pop into an increasingly sacred terrain,” we wrote in a preview, with opener and single ‘Edges of Pleasure’ introducing the meditative depth of such a concept. “A song of swirling layers which draws on the choral accumulation of Gregorian chants,” as we continued, “to conjure something that’s at once otherworldly and fundamentally present.”
“Each begins with a poem, written last spring during a tumultuous period that left me spinning with no center,” Elliott explains. “Through the practice of sonically circling and weaving in each new line, I reached this trance state, constructing a new axis within myself. My aim is to extend that sonic embrace outward now, inviting audiences into a shared space of resonance and presence.” The songs employ a certain minimalism, especially in their beginnings, though as a means rather than an end. As though by stripping down the present into an ascetic simplicity, Old Man of the Woods is able to push through into another world entirely. ‘Don’t Touch, I’m Shedding’ is a good example, its hushed, swirling sound first playing as a kind of clearing, but at some point switches towards the opposite, repopulating the new space so that it might become an ecosystem of its own.
Whether this process is spiritual, ecological or personal is left unclear, or more specifically, Elliott blurs any boundaries between such categories into insignificance. Indeed, this could be said to be the core mission of Cape Perpetua, and even the Old Man of the Woods project as a whole. An attempt to recharge the natural with its ethereal potential, and to reconsider the human interior as its own fertile space. The accompanying videos further ground these ideas, the often surreal footage quite literally superimposing ecological environments with imagery of religious belief. The result, much like the symbols of cathedrals, stained glass and solemn chants which Elliott draws upon, feels like its own contribution to an age old project. The ongoing ritual desire to recreate the sense of wonder which we sense around us, be it pertaining to God or His green world.
Cape Perpetua is out now and available from the Old Man of the Woods Bandcamp page.