ThrowBook Thursday: Music Edition: Dear Wormwood

I want to mix things up a little. Instead of a book that's stuck with me, this month's TBT is about a musical album that I can't shake: The Oh Hellos' Dear Wormwood.

I mentioned The Oh Hellos a while back when I discussed my favorite songs inspired by Narnia, but while I love their song "The Lament of Eustace Scrubb," I didn't truly fall in love with their music until Dear Wormwood.

Dear Wormwood takes its title from C.S. Lewis' satire The Screwtape Letters, which comprises a series of letters written from Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, an under-demon tasked with the temptation of an unnamed human. Despite the album's name, only one song explicitly deals with Screwtape, the eponymous track "Dear Wormwood". The album as a whole is concerned with similar themes, however, addressing temptation, lost love, death, and more with a musical tone that has evolved from The Oh Hellos' earlier acoustic style into something like a true folk/bluegrass style.

Many of the songs on the album have a haunting or mournful quality to them, with a lyrical emphasis on the ghosts and demons that haunt the singers, whether the metaphorical ghosts of lost love as in "Bitter Water" or the literal demons of "Dear Wormwood."

But despite the dark subject matter, Dear Wormwood carries hope throughout its songs. Sometimes the hope shines through in the uplifting (or at the least upbeat) musical accompaniments ("Bitter Water" is an example of this, with "This Will End" as the counterpoint). Other times, the lyrics (never losing their haunting quality) illuminate the song's subject with images of Christ as the victorious king (such as "Caesar" or more aptly "Where is Your Rider?"). "Thus Always to Tyrants," the final song (appropriately preluded by a fun cover of "Danse Macabre"), is nothing if not a celebration of Christ's victory over death.

Sprinkled throughout the album are some purely instrumental tracks (sometimes featuring vocal overlays, but never lyrics) to bridge some of the songs and to set the stage for what's to come. These interludes lend to the conceit that the album is a journey from the youthful disillusionment of the early songs, through death, and on to the resurrection of the final song. Dear Wormwood, though not a story album, presents itself like a novel rather than a short story collection; that is, it works best when taken as a whole rather than piecemeal.

As I'm writing this review, I'm listening to the two latest EP releases from The Oh Hellos: Notos and Eurus. I'm happy to say that the things I loved in Dear Wormwood (the musical style, the lyrical cleverness) are still here, while the overall style is allowed to move a little closer to pop. (There are likely to be two more EPs in this series, since these are named for the southern and eastern winds of Greek mythology, and the band has said they are part of an "ongoing series".)

If you haven't listened to Dear Wormwood yet, I encourage you to check it out below.