On March 29, M. Lockwood Porter will release a new album, Communion In The Ashes, via Black Mesa Records. In advance of the album’s release, Porter has shared Communion In The Ashes‘ title track, premiering below.
The Oklahoma-born singer-songwriter describes the LP as meant to “communicate the scary dystopian feeling of our present world and also suggest that we can do something to change that.”
The title track delivers on Porter’s intended mission. A dire warning against climate change, the track crackles with urgency thanks both to Porter’s image-rich lyrics and an electric guitar-driven arrangement. Porter wrote the song while considering a move away from his adopted home in San Francisco and after wildfires ravaged the area in 2017.
“That fire is what finally made climate change feel real and immediate to me, after years of reading about climate science and understanding the threat on an intellectual level but not truly grasping the real-life implications on a gut level,” Porter says. “I was also thinking about ways to get involved in political activism, and especially about the need to meet and organize with people in my own community in real life rather than on the the internet. All of those ideas kind of got mixed together in this song and it just clicked and made sense to me.”