THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Rooted in the belief that what we focus on is what we manifest, Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Valerie June dreams a songpath forward with Owls, Omens, And Oracles — and leaves no one behind. Halfway through a decade of immense and rapid global change, June asserts a multidimensional Blackness steeped in laughter, truth, magic, delight and interdependence. This album is a radical statement to break skepticism, surveillance and doomscrolling, and to let yourself celebrate your aliveness. Connect, weep, change, open.
June has been softening and clarifying her sound since the 2013 release of Pushin’ Against A Stone, through The Order of Time, The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers, and Under Cover. This newest work shows her own spiritual growth and the opening of ancestral channels into both her dynamic and distinct voice and her tender lyrics. June is not alone in crafting this sacred field for the contemplation of love and being human. Produced by M. Ward (Mavis Staples, She & Him) and engineered by Pierre de Reeder (Rilo Kiley, Jenny Lewis), Owls, Omens, And Oracles also features a cast of contributors, including The Blind Boys of Alabama and Norah Jones.
An instant foot-stompin’ hip-shaker, lead single Joy, Joy! opens the album with an undeniable exuberance. June, playing acoustic guitar, sings: “And when you feel you’re not enough / Has this old been hard and rough / A golden seed beneath dark soil / To seek the sun is often rough” while backed by Kaveh Rastegar on bass (John Legend, Beck), Steven Hodges on drums (Tom Waits, David Lynch), and keys and horn arrangements by Nate Walcott (Bright Eyes, Conor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band).
Reflecting on Joy, Joy!, June says: “Everyone has felt moments of darkness, depression, anxiety, stress, ailments, or pain. Some say it takes mud to have a lotus flower. This song reflects on the hard times we might face: to fail, to fall, to lose, to be held down, to be silenced, to be shut out yet still hold onto a purely innocent and childlike joy. I come from a heritage of ancestors who lived this truth by inventing blues music. Generations after they’ve gone, the inner joy they instilled in us radiates and lifts cultures throughout the world. From the world to home, what would a city council focused on inspiring inner joy for all of a town’s citizens look like? As the times are changing across the planet, what would it look like to collectively activate our superpowers of joy?”
Owls, Omens, And Oracles is expansive, growing from June’s psychedelic folk, indie rock, Appalachian, bluegrass, country soul, orchestral pop, and blues root system into an intergalactic web of wisdom. The visceral twists and fierce raw emotion of her voice threads textures and tones through the needle of a multi-genre American quilt. Gracefulness and gentleness harmonize with edginess and precarity, evoking a tenderness within even the hardest heart as June holds the complexity of “My life is a country song,” and “I am multidimensional, beyond category.”
As she says: “If you were in the middle of a forest, surrounded by a thicket of unkempt plants, trees, and wild wonder at every turn, would you marvel at all of the paths and directions you could go? If it were pitch black, dark, would you trust each step taken into the unknown? If it were the brightest day, would you bask in the sunshine and fall in love? Owls, Omens, And Oracles is a collection of songs that summon us to observe the roads we are traveling and how they might lead us through dark times, but we are never alone. There’s always an inner light to guide the way.”
