Dustin Kensrue of Thrice sat down to talk about the bands latest release Horizons/West. An album that takes on some deep topics of life and death and how and where we go when it’s all done. Dustin says going deep is “Kind of my M.O.” when writing lyrics. He also talked about a book that inspired his deeper thinking for this album, that book being called Always Coming Home by Ursala K. Le Guin. A book that the describes a eutopia in California after a major apocalypse type event.
We talked about the song ‘Albatross’ and how he took the imagery and connotations with albatrosses from the Ryhme Of The Ancient Mariner that focused on bad luck and misfortune. His take on it in the song is this.
‘There’s this idea in there that I play with that we sometimes make our own bad luck and there’s a way to keep something good and actually make it a blessing and not a curse. The lyrics are playing with these ideas of dark images and light images going back and forth both phonetically and then leaning into this idea that there is a way to invest in the good things in your life and not make your own bad luck worse.’
We talk a bit about the sound of the album as well and how the maturation of the band has influenced the path they follow when being creative. He feels the darkness provides paths through to what might be hopeful saying the main theme of the album is this.
‘I feel like the core of all the imagery on this album is the song ‘The Dark Glow’ and it’s right in the middle of the record and right in the middle of the song I think you have the key that’s turning out of this. And it turns the song it shifts the meaning as you get to the last chorus, you get new chords and slightly different words. That little crux in there is “What if all we thought was darkness was instead the truest light? What if all we feared was empty was the fullness of our life?” And I think sometimes there are a lot of things that we’re afraid of diving into that if we go through them, if we let go of some control, if we embrace some uncertainty there’s something beyond those things that is beautiful and more fulfilling and better than the place from where we started.’
He talks about the reason for rerecording The Artist In The Ambulance and how being better musicians and having been playing the songs for 20 years have allowed them to evolve and he said it was a ton of fun to rerecord them.
[YouTube: Razor Wisconsin] [YouTube: Thrice] [Ursala K. Le Guin]
