Today Thor & Friends announced their upcoming album, Heathen Spirituals, set for release on May 16, 2025, via Joyful Noise Recordings. Led by the legendary Austin-based percussionist Thor Harris (best known for his work with Swans and Shearwater), the project also shared a preview from the album — an excerpt titled “Anne Sexton’s Monocle” — accompanied by a new video.
Thor Harris is a prolific collaborator, having worked with an array of influential artists, including Bill Callahan, Devendra Banhart, and Shahzad Ismaily. Most recently, he toured with the experimental-rock supergroup Water Damage and performed at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville—both as a solo artist and as part of various group projects. Thor & Friends embodies this intense spirit of collaboration; since we last heard them the adventurous instrumental project has grown from an intimate trio of mallet players to a minimalist orchestra.
The curious marimba rhythm that sets up “Anne Sexton’s Monocle” invites you in like a call to prayer, then puts you in a trance. As a variety of instruments weave in and out of the sonic spotlight, the constant melodic pulse propels into a cognitive crescendo of french horn, cello, violin clarinet, pedal steel, and more. Has everything changed or nothing at all? The enchanting instrumental, tracked live in an empty orchestra hall, seems a fitting tribute to Sexton, poet known for brave confessional verse.
About the excerpt and its full track “Anne Sexton’s Glasses,” Harris says:
Anne Sexton’s actual glasses are housed in a museum on the UT campus next to the auditorium where we recorded this album. This monstrous piece is a 10-note percussion exercise over a pentatonic scale. I play in odd meters because I am a child of prog rock. I apologize.
Like a scene from a dream, Thor Harris stood upon a crowded stage, 13 players deep: tapping, plucking, bowing, blowing lyric-less love songs to a grand auditorium of 325 shining red seats – without a soul sitting in any of them. This was the creation of Heathen Spirituals, the fifth recorded work by Harris’ adventurous instrumental ensemble Thor & Friends and the first that accurately resembles the skyward repetition of the Austin-based group’s live performances.
It’s a century-old concept: cutting a record in an empty music hall. Masterminded by intrepid producer and lifelong Harris collaborator Craig Ross (Patty Griffin, Spoon), Thor & Friends’ roster of musically accomplished misfits spent two days wired up, playing free-flowing meditational pieces on unamplified orchestral instruments inside Jessen Auditorium, a stunning Art Deco relic from the early days of the University of Texas’ Butler School of Music – the esteemed institution that Harris dropped out from decades ago.
A craftsman, artistically and otherwise, Thor Harris is master plumber, carpenter, and woodworker. In musical contexts, his name is often followed by the five words: “known for his work with,” having been a member of avant rock godheads Swans and high-minded indie favorites Shearwater, while also factoring into important recordings by Bill Callahan, Devendra Banhart, and Shahzad Ismaily. In many circles, Harris is equally well-known for being an openhearted mental health advocate with a devilish sense of humor and a penchant for entertaining social commentary (Harris’ “How to Punch a Nazi” instructional video got him famously banned from Twitter in 2017).
Heathen Spirituals, arriving May 16th, 2025, on Joyful Noise Recordings, contains three original pieces with a 35-minute runtime. The rhythmic repetition of opening seance “Anne Sexton’s Glasses” evokes a cognitive crescendo, while the spellbinding “Christmas Eve at the Wizard’s House” evokes a sense of weightlessness, sucking the listener up into the firmament then floating them back down. The crashing, choir-backed “Heathen Spiritual,” meanwhile, stirs a gorgeous requiem for a dying planet. In glorious fidelity, the sessions capture the instinctual purity of Thor & Friends’ live performances, which thrive on skyward repetition.
Keep your mind open.
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[Thanks to Helly at Joyful Noise Recordings.]