Blind Pilot and Phosphorescent @ Denver Botanic Gardens

About Blind Pilot

The first Blind Pilot album in eight years, In the Shadow of the Holy Mountain emerged from a period of artistic crisis and the radical transformation of their creative ecosystem. “I went through a few years where I wasn’t able to write—I tried therapy, I read books on writer’s block, I went on writing trips, but nothing was helping,” says Israel Nebeker, frontman for the Oregon-bred band. After stepping back and reimagining his songwriting approach, Nebeker challenged himself to write an entire album in a month, then brought those songs to his bandmates with a newfound sense of receptivity. “I wanted to let the songs live and breathe with the band as an entity. By the time we finished, it was the most joy we’d ever had in making an album together.” says Nebeker.

About Phosphorescent

“I got tired of sadness/ I got tired of all the madness/ I got tired of bein’ a badass all the time,” Matthew Houck sings on “Revelator,” the opener and title track of his latest Phosphorescent album. Houck was actively looking for something new, an epiphany, when the old ways stopped working. And just as the album Revelator only revealed itself to its author along the way, so too did real life revelations take their time answering the plaintive mission statement with which Houck reintroduces Phosphorescent. “This record is a lot more open-ended and ephemeral,” Houck explains. The underlying melancholy of Phosphorescent’s music remains, reframed by the weird headspace of long-term fallouts from the last few years. Revelator might promise a fresh outlook, another horizon, but first the album wrestles with an ongoing, ambient sense of dread.