The Tarot could be described as \u2018God\u2019s picture book,\u2019 or it could be likened to a celestial game of chess, The Trumps being the pieces to be moved according to the laws of their own order over a checkered board of the four elements. Yearly, musician Jesse Crowe draws a tarot card from a deck to help shape an album’s stories and characters within. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whereas Jesse Crowe’s first Praises album\u2014In This Year: Ten of Swords<\/em>, found the singer solely responsible for writing and performing the songs and arrangements of the record (co-production credits going to their long-time Beliefs bandmate and collaborator, Josh Korody), the newest, In This Year: Hierophant <\/em>sees Crowe return to a full band. The writing process for Hierophant<\/em> is akin to a Bad Seeds record with key players contributing through feeling alone with little guidance and the sparse backing of a demo track. This distant songwriting process plays to Crowe\u2019s strengths as a songwriter, producing a record that\u2019s instinctively sombre, and gorgeously intimate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Much like the Major Arcana, Hierophant, Crowe\u2019s arrangements highlight the delicate, inspirational, and ever-persistent nature of their songwriting craft. In this Year: Hierophant<\/em> is a record that\u2019s both patient with the listener and commanding of reverence and evocation. Hierophant builds slowly through a quagmire of rich reverbs and the hypnotic cadences in Crowe\u2019s voice sound hopeful amidst the decaying synth backdrops, and sparse instrumentation. Praises is not so much a side project of Beliefs co-front but an extension of a darker more hypnotic palette of the artist\u2019s inner machinations. In This Year: Hierophant<\/em> is a record that weighs the sorrows and joy over one\u2019s lifetime acuminated; it\u2019s a vulnerable record peppered with allegory and sincerity and the culmination of Crowe\u2019s nocturnal ideation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n