Description

Gray Lodge Wisdom is a deeply assured and ambitious collection of prismatic folk tunes. The best album of his career

Name: Will Stratton - Gray Lodge Wisdom (CD)
SKU: WEEC670803
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.9 (277 reviews)

Striking the right tone is important for Will Stratton. Over the course of five full-length albums, several online-only releases and national attention from outlets like NPR, Stratton has strived to impart a balance between the eloquent lyrical perspectives festooning his music, and his ever-evolving approach to multi-tiered folk. So when his new LP, Gray Lodge Wisdom, was written and recorded while Stratton underwent a year of chemotherapy, several extensive surgeries, and other treatment stemming from a diagnosis of late-stage testicular cancer in 2012, Stratton is understandably conflicted about the way his new record might come across.
”I hope that this doesn”t come across as a Record About Cancer, because it”s not,” explains Stratton. ”I think that it informed the process and the sound of the record more than it affected the content of some of the songs.”
Through repeated listens to Gray Lodge Wisdom that sentiment becomes crystal clear via plaintive, sprawling folk odes confronting the light, the dark, and the void between those two spectrums. Stratton moved cross-country from Brooklyn to Washington state for his convalescence, fashioning an ad-hoc recording studio in his parent”s basement in between chemotherapy infusions to lay to tape the songs that would make up Gray Lodge Wisdom. Stratton made his way back east to Brooklyn in late 2013, booking time at Queens recording studio The Buddy Project to put the final touches on an album he stresses was really a collection of memories and aspirations rather than a manicured, cohesive statement.