ther – godzilla | Album Review

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Julia’s War

I’m glad that Godzilla hasn’t attacked yet. The day-to-day takes enough out of us that we don’t need a Kaiju-sized monkey wrench thrown into the fray to make us shiver with exhaustion, tremble with hope, gaze with fearful awe. If there are giant monsters hiding beneath the waves, waiting to fulfill their roles as harbingers of humanity’s comeuppance, we’ve managed to create enough pain on our own that their aid hasn’t been necessary. It must be disappointing to feel so useless. Fortunately, Godzilla has always made a better symbol than destroyer.

Philadelphia’s Heather Jones, who writes and records as ther, excavates multitudes on their third LP in as many years. Ambiguity proves to be a perennial obsession in Jones’s songwriting, recurring not from a pursuit of musical both-sideism, but from lived experience and constant introspection. Nearly everything is out of our control, and it’s terrifying. Facing reality’s reverie of expectant horror rarely feels any other way. Jones implores us not to succumb to our paralysis and let it fuel our action.

godzilla reunites and rearranges the band of Philly fixtures from 2023’s a horrid whisper echoes in a palace of endless joy, orienting the instrumental palette and mixing familiar colors into new blends. Guitars spark to the forefront and land with a tidal wave of distortion. They may be newly louder and sometimes slower, but no less deliberate. Saxophone and cello appear like streaks in the sky, passing behind clouds as they placate the sun and moon. A capital-R riff is rarely the focus, but Jones and company infuse strange geometry into songs like “matthew,” letting a jagged melody cut through, grounding their anxious Biblical reflections. 

Photo by Heather Jones

Holiness isn’t delivered through scripture and sermons; Jones instead places it within the ostensibly mundane. God isn’t a hand that refuses to save until we beg for redemption. It’s in the breeze gushing through the quiet light bathing our faces (“a wish”). You can hear it in a bloodstained dog’s howls, overcome by visceral, soulless dread as it takes a cat’s life; or in the moon’s patient voice, dictating an unexpected reply (“moon ruby”). On the folky mid-LP exhale of “advil,” the consequences of a fist thrown in childhood anger paint a bluntly honest truth.

No amount of saying sorry ever made things right,
Forgiveness is a thing you earn after work and over time
And a leap that’s divine

Caverns are built around little truths — the break of day is miraculous, we’re all a bit fucked, death isn’t the end but remains an ending. godzilla’s miracle is revealed in the way that newly-acquired noise coexists with the minutiae. Like the work of Mark Rothko, all-consuming color seen from a distance reveals a topography of crags and contours up close. The balance holding every searing melody or hushed lyric together isn’t lost as they spiderweb into each other. Songs unfold with emtpiness, springtime periwinkles playing coy, never betraying the cacophony that could erupt in their final moments.

Perhaps the best example of this is “a pale horse ha ha ha ha.” Reinvented from a 2019 single, the band crafts a dirge refusing to deny the absurdity, comedy, and contradiction inherent in life itself and responds to death’s anticipated arrival in the only appropriate manner — laughing out loud. A joke shared with a knowing companion as she guides us along the Jersey turnpike feels like a more honest outcome than blissful dissolution or cold darkness. The band synchronizes their wanderings through a maze of forgotten lost-and-found truths. Jones and keyboardist Veronica Manger laugh in raptured harmony, swept away by uncertain grace and fuzzy chords. Waiting at the end is a figure dressed perhaps a bit like this, offering familiarity, a ride out of town, and no answers.

godzilla knocks firmly on the door, asking to be let in regardless of what lies behind: life, nothing, or a 400-foot monster. Jones carefully unravels the cocoon, one thread at a time, to reveal a shimmering heart, more like a distorted mirror than a revelation. There isn’t going to be a grand proclamation, a volcanic exit, or a flaming chariot in the sky. The sun will set and rise and set again, and we’ll keep holding onto what we cherish. That time you stayed up way too late with a friend, drinking soda and playing video games even though their parents told you not to, is infinitely more precious than anything heaven could say. Gravity will pull you inward, but you’ve learned to resist.

Aly Muilenburg lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she writes, records, sends emails, and more for Ear Coffee, a DIY podcast and media “entity” that she co-founded. Her writing can be found online or underground, and she can be found at home or @purityolympics.