The National Lights are excited to share their new single “Swift Ships” from their new EP Whom the Sea Will Keep out on February 22 via BloodShake Records (pre-order). About the song The National Lights’ Jacob Thomas Berns told The 405, “The draw of the ocean and pull of the land are currents throughout the EP. Even as this song’s narrator romanticizes the ocean life, he bemoans what he gave up for it, asking his listener not to make the same mistake.” He continues, “You can’t have it both ways, but that doesn’t make the choice any less disheartening. Little doubt, had this song’s narrator remained on land, he would have longed for what he’d given up to stay. He may have become the audience in another narrator’s song. Regret is just part of the deal.”
Last month the band shared the first single “The Whaleship Essex” from the EP with PopMatters and the song can be shared at Spotify or Soundcloud. About the single the band says “The song is from the perspective of the ill-fated ship’s captain. The first verse describes the voyage ahead, the second the tragedy of what entailed: the ship sunk by a whale, the few survivors stranded hundreds of miles from shore and forced to draw lots. While the chorus doesn’t change, it takes on a different meaning depending on which verse it follows. Often cited as the inspiration for Moby-Dick, the story of the Essex proves that life is far more harrowing than any fiction.This was one of the first songs written for what had originally been a full-length, and the last song to make the cut on the EP. It took a couple tacks to find the right way to give this song flesh, but we can’t imagine the album without ‘The Whaleship Essex’ at its center.”
The National Lights formed in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in 2004 as a vehicle for singer/songwriter Jacob Thomas Berns. Joined by singer/songwriters Chris Kiehne and Sonya Cotton, The National Lights draw inspiration from such far-ranging subjects as Southern Gothic literature and maritime lore but never stray far from traditional folk instrumentation and melodies.
The band’s debut, The Dead Will Walk, Dear, features small American towns, rivers and fields, and falling in love. But the towns hide secrets, the landscape hides graves. A song cycle about a Midwestern murder, The Dead Will Walk, Dear’s unvarnished look at passion and regret is complemented by sparse arrangements and subtle harmonies. Pitchfork noted the album’s “moments of striking beauty” and sense of horror that builds with repeated listens: “The record disarms you so thoroughly … you almost become like one of the victims from Berns’ songs.” Treble called the album “an incredible piece of Gothic art,” comparing it to Sufjan Stevens’ “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” in its ability to find “humanity and pathos in [its] subject.”
On Whom the Sea Will Keep, The National Lights turn to the sea ballad, expanding their sound to include percussion, accordion, and vocal rounds. While The Dead Will Walk, Dear was written and recorded in the band’s final years of college, Whom the Sea Will Keep took shape between the summers of 2008 and 2018 in the ebbs of work, graduate school, and cross-country moves (Berns, Kiehne, and Cotton have dispersed to Eugene, Ore.; Baltimore; and Salt Lake City, respectively). This intermittent process meant the album, like its ocean setting, was constantly in flux, even as it remained the same at heart. These are songs about ghosts, drownings, drastic measures, and white whales that explore the lines between history and myth, fool and legend.