deakin – golden chords

there’s a lot of beauty to this new song from animal collective’s deakin, a.k.a. joshua dibb, which is also the opening track from his solo album sleep cycle. starting with a what seems a field recording that’s capturing a cross-country journey and murmuring voices, beautifully plucked guitars and a soulful, yet sombre vocal, dibb’s own, pierces the silence. it’s a folk-laced ballad, and one that lyrically delves into spiritual ground; “please stop repeating your terror you choose what you see / it’s always “what if?” and “why not?” / man you gotta just be”

what’s even more intriguing though, is how the song forms part of a record that fulfilled a long gestating promise on dibb’s part, in the form of successful crowd-funding campaign that has only now bore these fruits, almost 7 years after the fact. life, as is often the case, gets in the way of the creative process – flooded studios, broken equipment, insurance claims, family problems and a band that you’re a part of can do that. yet, as he said to pitchfork: “my desire to get my own music out in the world—that hadn’t been fulfilled. That’s what made it feel like it didn’t make sense for me to work on the next [Animal Collective] record.”

so a sidestep allowed him to focus on and finish an album that had been an unfulfilled promise looming over everything, deakin’s own personal albatross. more often than not, crowd-funding campaigns draw a lot of attention and their fair share of ire when they don’t come through with the goods. but is it right that we should hold a musician or an artists of any kind to a rigid timeline? louis c.k., on the bill simmons podcast, recently elaborated a piece of advice he received from the the late garry shandling, that “wasting time is part of being creative”, and if the delayed results of a creative process can be as rewarding, arresting and beautiful as this record, well, then what’s the rush?