Thor & Friends "Heathen Spirituals" Release Show
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Join us in celebrating the release of Thor & Friends' fifth full-length album, Heathen Spirituals. Thor & Friends will perform the album in full with new local group, Deborah Sky Disk (feat. members of Font and Felt Out), kicking things off at 7pm. Recorded at UT's Jessen Auditorium, Heathen Spirituals features 13 Austin local performers with vocals from the Unwound Sound Singers overdubbed. The album will be out on May 16 via Joyful Noise Recordings.
Schedule
Doors - 6pm
Show - 7pm
End - 9pm
More About the Project
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.
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.
