Howlin’ Rain’s creative force explores the collision of science, chance and magic that allowed for his wide-eyed, ragged latest rock LP to exist.

“Notes From a Turbulent Plane, Going Higher and Higher”

The captain’s voice
a little too low in volume over the PA and clicking with static
said, “Folks, we just can’t find any smooth air tonight,
we’re not going to have food and beverage service,
the attendants are asked to just stay in their seats
for their own safety and yours.”

[goddammit
pushing midnight
flying to the wrong goddamn airport too]

the captain pointed the plane upward and
began to climb the rough dark air
climbing bouncing and wooshing
to try and find calm air
but the captain was right, we couldn’t find any
just higher and higher violent air

there weren’t many of us on the plane
the cabin was dim and quiet but for the
fat carry-on luggage banging above us in the overhead bins
the bins themselves shook and made quick rumbling sounds
like the low fast roar or old house walls in the jolt of earthquake
the metal and plastics of the seats and rows creaking in unison
throughout the cabin

I smelled something terrible
there was no one sitting around me for three rows in any direction
Four rows up a woman sat with too babies
one or both of the babies was shitting itself madly
I assume inside its diapers
but the stench was sharp and filled the back of the cabin
as we went full throttle against turbulent air

How do you talk about a record? It happened quite a while ago.

In this case, we made it on the night before, the night of and the night after the 2016 presidential election. So much time has passed since then—shocking world events, tidal wave after tidal wave, earthquake after earthquake of shocks, surprises, unexpected news, joys, sorrow—nothing is the same as Nov. 8, 2016. Yet, here it is, this extraordinary snapshot. Something I love. As time goes on, will I eternally relate to the emotions captured in that moment or will they become exotic and strange to me, the work of a stranger?

The reviews begin to come in. With the really good ones, I imagine the writers to be quite perceptive and smart. The really bad ones I chalk up to lack of taste and low intelligence on the part of the writer. Once in a great while, I see a piece of criticism that actually reflects a strength or flaw in Howlin’ Rain’s expression and I stop to reflect and absorb this observation. Is it a mistake to read these things? Is it a mistake to engage with them? If a really astute critic enlightens you about your own creative work are you smart to absorb that or…?

The cap to the pen I’m using to write this—while drinking a beer, late at night on an airplane flying down the California coast—was full of ink when I opened it and it’s going everywhere. I guess this happens due to cabin pressure. It’s all over my jeans and hands and moleskin book. The last time this happened to me late at night in an airplane, I was coming back from listening to Howlin’ Rain demos with Rick Rubin and, after I cleaned as much black ink from off myself as possible, I drew this picture:

Or is letting published criticism alter your course—no matter how astute—the equivalent of time traveling in your life span and effecting events in your life, shifting them from their true course, right or wrong, and creating an imbalance in raw pure artistic trajectory? And furthermore, how do we see our reflection in sound?

Our memories and emotions flow freely, often overflow, unleashed by the aural intake of captured sound and the loose stringing together of abstract words by strangers that we feel almost immediate obsession toward. So many elements of science, chance and something like magic combine for a record to exist that it really is a miracle there are any of them—and baffling that there are so many of them and hundreds more made every day.

we were so high now
it looked so dark and clear outside
the earth was a distant thing below
lights and the details of civilization all in extreme miniature
the new bits, the freshly built, the bits in ruin, baseball diamonds,
circular fields of agriculture
freeways, hills, shopping malls, cul-de-sacs, big four-lane bridges
over creeks and rivers that looked no bigger than a salamander’s vein
from up here at the top of the clear black violent sky

it felt like we were burrowing through invisible rocky soil
faster he went
that’s not going to smooth us out dammit
neither is going higher and higher
for christ’s sake
we were so high it felt like one of the battering blasts might knock us
right up and out of the atmosphere and we’d fall forever upward
toward neptune
or just into the empty, still dark space

Howlin’ Rain released their fifth studio album, The Alligator Bride, on June 8 via Ethan Miller’s artist-run Silver Current Records. The group tracked the record over three days with engineer Eric “King Riff ” Bauer at San Francisco’s the Mansion, playing live to tape and cutting the material in first and second takes.

This article originally appears in the September issue of Relix. For more features, interviews, album reviews and more, subscribe here.