Featured in the movie Meet Bill starring Aaron Eckhart and Jessica Alba, Brightest Light charts considerably more upbeat territory for me. The song was originally written for the film Evan Almighty, but it was dropped and luckily found a home in Meet Bill. Unapologetically optimistic, Brightest Light is a song about maintaining hope in the face of an indifferent world. The bonus track, In My Mind, is a bittersweet serenade to a soulmate we’re waiting for, but have never met.

Tracks

Brightest Light

In My Mind

City of glass and sand. A melodic dreamscape at twilight, Los Angeles follows the heart’s loneliness in the midst of a vast metropolis… The freeway shimmering like a blade in the fading light.

As you can imagine from listening to the lyrics, I was going through an especially difficult time. I think in many ways I was hypnotized by a dark area of my psyche that was struggling to stay in control. That dark specter was seductive, its lonely desolation beautiful. There is a certain comfort in self-destruction. We’ve all felt it at one time or another, and at that time I felt its pull getting stronger. The only way to break the spell was to go inside, to follow the path wherever it led… And this album is a record of that journey.

Looking back, I think the pain was familiar, and in a strange way, comforting. I allowed myself to wander through a painful inner landscape and examine it in great detail. A huge fan of Carl Jung, I’m fascinated by the place where the conscious and unconscious minds meet. It can almost be an out-of-body experience when metaphors emerge from the unknown, primal areas of the psyche without any conscious effort. In fact, for me personally, I think the unconscious is a more direct route to genuine thought. I’ve never trusted words. Which I guess is completely crazy for a writer to say.

Tracks

Ticker

Sweet

Threads

Three Things

Always Something

We Can’t Run

Shape of Night

Loneliest

Reaction

Coming Home