As the temperatures cool and we descend into the winter cycle, a new track emerges from the lush imagination of Vain Warr + The Harrow. The new track, Shadow of The Thresher, is pure autumnal chill set to music. Perhaps not one to relax to by a hearth fire, but certainly a track that’s food for thought.
Josh Strawn of Vain Warr originally intended the track for his outfit, Blacklist, but stylistically Shadow of the Thresher never seemed to gel with the nature of that project. “In some odd way it never felt like a true Blacklist song…it has a more hushed sensibility.” Strawn periodically returned to tinker with the track, determined to see it to completion. “For me, Blacklist lyrics are maybe not always hopeful but convey a certain kind of action and fury. This is clearly more bleak. Not a manifesto so much as an emotional reflection on the unraveling that we’re all living through.”
We hide from the heat of the the fire we kindled
The skin on our back turns to black as we whisper
Secrets of saviors who won’t ever save us
the kings may return and the death by a thousand cuts
Strawn had collaborated with Bell Hollow on the track Eyes Like Planets and was old friends with members of The Harrow, most since the earliest days of Wierd (a coldwave synth party in NYC). He muses, “I had a feeling that if I just passed them the demo, their rendering would fall into the exact space I wanted it to live in. And I was right.”
Frank Deserto of The Harrow reflects on the collaboration: “This is a fitting bookend to The Harrow story, a band that was always collaborative-minded from day one. After all our years playing together, sharing stages and moments in the fog, I personally was excited to record something with Josh, especially something so equally romantic, bleak, and prescient.”
Check out the track here:
