We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Zum Donnerwetter

by Thom Alan and the Harrows

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.
    Purchasable with gift card

      name your price

     

1.
An Old Struggle. A long and lasting ache Sun slants in the window There’s waking in your eyes A few moments without sorrow No remembrance. No reliving Then Like a wave on a sharp rock breaking This long and lasting aching settles in It is an old struggle. It has always been with us. It is with us now again. Ankle deep in the drifts of a bitter long winter. Seems foolish to think on the spring Like Mother Mary beset by Good Friday alone at the end of the day. its an old struggle This long and lasting ache The doors are closing one by one The toll its taking can’t be undone as familiar as heartbreaking The long and lasting aching comes again It’s an old struggle. It’s always been with us. It’s with us now again. Neck deep in the mess of the big muddy muddy It don’t matter if you can swim It’s a high wire act It’s a complex bouquet It’s a bitter herb that you learn to embrace. its an old struggle This long and lasting ache This must end, and this too shall end, and all things are passing away I hope there’s one grain of sand that Is one that Was One grain of sand that is yet to come. one match to strike, one candle to light silhouettes in this drafty old cave its and old struggle this long and lasting ache
2.
Charybdis & Scylla: Labor Unloved Haven’t got the Means to Pay Dogs Caught the Scent of Weakened Prey. A Debtor born, a Pauper's Grave On Pain of Death we Walk the Plank of Acadeem or unskilled labor Artistry Fell out of Favor Sacrifice to Industry They’ll Break your Back or Bend your Knee How Do you feel? Buddy, How Does it feel? Just a Spoke in the Wheel. For Shame. Oh None of this is Real. Just a Shuffling of Evil Charybis and Scylla Same Same In Such a Maze we Find Ourselves House Ablaze. The Kindness Shelved. a Poisoned Well. An Ax. A Tree. an Open Wound, the Old Dis-ease. Neighbor turned against his Neighbor Friendly Fire Denominator Half a Mind to Weep and Crumble Half a Mind to Tear Asunder. Chorus We Don’t Need Nobody, We Don’t Need NoBody We Don’t Need No One To Lead us Astray. Seek Ye Freedom from Fear? Seek Ye Freedom from Tyranny? Find a Good Mother to Show us the Way. Blessed are the Meekly Feral The Fisher King, those Sieged by Peril Blessed Thee the Remnant Scattered. They the Mice who Slipped the Trap for They’re the Mice who Tricked the Trapper.
3.
TIMSHEL: Flowers Pressed Swift the shadows on your face Demure the whispers in words place Billows the Soft wind through hair unlaced Ever I am there Traipse the woodlands unending Gold Fern with Sharp light ascending Soft needled pines make fine bedding though sleep be far from mind At the end this could mean everything All these memories gathered closely, pressed like flowers in newspaper Oh! what alchemy from straw to gilded gold The spinning wheel doth weave our thread. This tapestry of moments spent. Our colors twined Purple and scarlet red Seven years or a lifetime Too few by far. Far too few These albums captured the still frame of crystal Ambered love Thou Mayest. Truly Thou Mayest The skin the fruit and the kiss Thou mayest Ask of me any thing And know my answer’s yes At the end this could mean everything All these memories gathered closely, pressed like flowers in newspaper Oh! what alchemy from straw to gilded gold The spinning wheel doth weave our thread. This tapestry of moments spent. Our colors twined Purple and scarlet red
4.
So You Say 04:51
So you say, this land will shelter our family So you say, here we’ll make our home A decade later we laden with ruin This tumble-down vision took a turn. and there’s so much yet left to learn So you say these trees will take root and ripen you surveyed, and saw it heavy with fruit Well water tables rise, and all lost their footing A fell wind blows, A felling takes. And it’s all so hard to save. So you say, my love will always be with you A legacy. of Salamanders and Bees A brushfire blaze, a lantern raised A written phrase too choked to say As you’re now so far away As you say, this handspun yarn of your telling Tethered straight to you through space and time This burden great. A dream worth dreaming. So you say So Say We All. So you Say So Say We All.
5.
6.
Orchard Song 04:15
Orchard Song: The Voice of Reason? Your list is never ending Ten dozen projects pending Not a one gets justice done Your head so full of feelings Old trucks that you might fuel with Vegetables and stubborn will. Well You dreamers aught to wake up every now and again Call the scrap yard and admit that that old Engine is dead. Dreamers aught to wake up now and again. You procrastinate when You’ve got papers due and You just sing and bide your time What will you amount to? Your orchard never bore fruit Wild. Neglected. Overgrown All you dreamers aught to wake up every now and again Quit interpreting the clouds. You’ve got a garden to tend (old fences to mend) Dreamers aught to wake up now and again. Keep this up and what will you Have to show when your check comes due Poetry don’t pay the bills. Don’t… Delude yourself with grandeur Your scruples’ll only last ‘til You’ve a few more winters lived. Dreamers aught to wake up every now and again This here worlds got enough clowns, trying not to fit in Dreamers aught to wake up now and again. All your wasted time. Your wasted mind. such sin.
7.
…Things out of your grasp (Mein Oma’s Fanne Kuchen soupe) To spend your thoughts on the unknown To ream against unchangeables To agonize over hearts that broke To meditate on living slow To fell some tree. Or let it grow. To list the things you’ll never know. To pine for flavors of your youth Mien Oma’s fanne kuchen soupe To make a path where there was none To spin a tale from damage done That lifts the eyes, that heals a wound That tapes a torn page worn with use. To finally be the “least of these” be clothed in light as the lilies To see in spectrums yet unknown To sing a tune once young and old To bind yourself to clay and sand And clover in your fathers land To hope for things out of your grasp To love as though this too shall last…
8.
9.
Grieve Well and Grieve Long Sit and I stare at the blank page Stale air Escaping from my lungs Try as I might My mind ever so slightly enfogged Cat’s got our tongue And the old ache that love Leaves when sure and swift Night comes And that place by our bed Where she’d stalk... the impressions left So if you go on before Wait for me. If you go on before Wait for me. I’ll be soon at the gates And I’ll crave company upon that journey long Your numbers still saved Like a hole in our day Like a ghost, a Missing frame Ten years of grief. Wound still too raw to speak of aloud Perch on my pillow Claw at my passing Bloom all my flowers Ever be Laughing I pray that you’re watching, I hope you’ll be haunting awhile. Chorus This is where it starts this breath the cosmic spark deep well from which we’re all drawn grieve well and grieve long. You can feel time dilate and shift tectonic plates the universe expands on Grieve well and grieve long. And if through some sacred physics That moment still exists Encased within amber Unending, unhampered Still breathing, still being Well, I would exist Everthere
10.
Fire was burning cross this wild land. All of the flesh layeth bare. The glorious depth of our failures and successes Tells of The image impressed… The divinely unearned yet possessed. on the cycle of birth and redeath There’s Samsara in every breath When did we last truly hunger? Suffer ideals apertif? Comfort arrives, then comfort abides, And like vermin relentlessly breeds. Like quackgrass, thistle, bindweed… And erodes all you swore you believed as we wander the world aimlessly with samsara dust on our feet Surely the state of our union rests Akin to the state of our hearts. Open surrender. Perennial death. And Revival carnally. Meets your incarnational needs. there’s samsara in your disease though it don’t come naturally as the wheel wills the wheel weaves Tenets to treat like a venomous snake Tenets to firmly embrace. Fully Sinner and Saint. Blessed virginal taint. Lay me on your alter. Lay. Lay me on your alter. Lay. me on your alter lay. there’s samsara in our veins. Liebhaber, wo bist du? verstehst du mich nicht? Liebhaber ziehen mir nahe. Som Donner Wetter nuct ein mal und das ist willkommen. Ya das ist willkommen.
11.
Strum that golden desperation Warmest sadness spun like yarn Oh remind us. Oh return us To our homesick memories worn. Sorrowfolk, that sound so honest Birth-pains of a labor love Final groan before beginnings Like a knife to cut the cord Oh my brother let it crack you Oh let it touch your eyes Oh once I swear I saw it Waits the world for you to smile. With these seared stones all around us Memory warmth of signal pyre. Daylight masketh. night revealeth. Revelations of sweetbrier Always heart-full, always thought-felt Dared to tread the dark held truths Mending harsh the throes that bind it Like a suture for the wound Oh my brother let it crack you Oh let it touch your eyes Oh once I swear I saw it Waits the world for you to smile. So sing that loaded gospel Ghosts and angels share your choir That haunting lamentation Lifts the Rent and Riven higher
12.
Well I have my eyes I have my eyes on you On my prize And I tell you I take it day to day. And I try to try To stay in the light of you My shining night And some days I win Some days I lose. Come down and meet your brother Although the weight of the world is hovering On his shoulders, on your shoulders Heavy lies the breaking of the world… And we know that, yeah we know that Our hands have wrought our just rewards… But I keep wandering home, keep wandering I keep stumbling low, I roll with the blow. And I’ll be back again for more…for sure It don’t feel the same, don’t move me I keep whispering, seldom listening, But I keep wondering what you have to say… Can you make me what you wanted? What you wanted me to be? I would be what you wanted, what you saw in me. Fear in the eyes. Holding tight to the World on top of Atlas’ shoulders Endlessly fighting men I dreamt of you all. And the world grew tired of all we’ve done The Mother cried to see her sons And a violent rain Fell down to cleanse the soil. And where the tears rest the garden grows, Where once bare feet tread now rivers flow And the dust becomes the mud becomes the loam And I see and sense that it’s so complex And I want so badly to find my place. But left to my own, I’m only going down. ‘Cause I been slumbering long Been stubborn, been wrong I long to wake and take this All Away, all away… Would you take me? Far away. Far away… Would you form me in your hands like earthen clay? Can you teach me a new song? I’ll sing along I’ll tell you what our father was like Good gifts and voice a thundering Don’t be low, you. He’s below you too. Welcome inside. Can’t you hear the trumpet sounding? Ye dead Arise! Cant you hear the trumpet sounding? King Has arrived… Cant you hear the trumpet sounding? She’s shining bright… Cant you hear the trumpet sounding? Welcome inside Cant you hear the trumpet sounding? You make things right. Cant you hear the trumpet sounding? She’s shining bright. Cant you hear the trumpet sounding? Ye Dead Arise! Can’t you hear the Trumpet Sounding?

about

Zum Donnerwetter is a musically bright, lyrically dark, remarkable album—the bulk of which was recorded on the weekend of Thom’s 30th birthday. Part concept album, part campfire folk, and part religious poetry Zum Donnerwetter, which is a German phrase meaning “the thunder weather,” is dedicated to Thom’s grandmother. He tells me that she used the phrase a lot when he was growing up, and that it was used as “not a curse or expletive, but more of an exasperated ‘what the hell!’ like if your cat was clawing up the furniture or the kids unrolled all the toilet paper in the house for the second time that day.”
Listening to the album, I feel equally joyous and haunted, as if their harmonies were left at the foot of his bed by a ghost. And in the Harrow’s warm instrumentation, like a belly full of whiskey, I hear Thom leading his band through the darkened forest in a Michigan winter, snow crunching beneath boots stained from the fields.
“The skin, the fruit and the kiss, in the end this could mean everything,” he sings. Don’t deprive yourself of Thom’s homemade, sensual poetry, which is sure to make you happy and nostalgic in turn and lead you to the window to take a deep breath of fresh air. I guarantee that if Thom’s prosody doesn’t hook you then his wife’s voice will. The next best part of the album, after the lyrics themselves, is whenever the two of them sing together; they do it often, and they certainly share their choir with the album’s thematised angels and ghosts.
In one of my favorite songs, “Samsara: Reincarnational Needs,” Thom sings, “In the cycles of birth and re-death, there’s samsara in every breath.” His songs are frequented by the poetic knowledge of experiencing the macro in the microcosm. Goethe wrote that the form of the plant can be found in the surface of the leaf, and in a similar vein, Thom’s lyrics find the entire cosmos within the human body, or in the case of Zum Donnerwetter, the beauty and complexity of the entire album seems to breathe inward and outward from the pulsing chime of a bell.

David Kuhnlein,
Current Magazine

credits

released November 21, 2018

The Band…
Thom Alan McAlvey: Lead Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Banjo, Piano (on interludes), Bell
Joshua Barton: Acoustic Guitar, Vocals
Pete Jon: Piano, Bass Guitar, Vocals, Stomps, Classical Guitar, Harmonium
John Voss: Electric Guitar
Heather Rae McAlvey: Vocals
Jeff Tenza: Harmonium

All Songs Written by Thom Alan McAlvey
All songs recorded at the McAlvey Property (Thanks Mom!) except…
Piano interludes recorded at First Christian Church (Thanks Pastor Rick!)
All Artwork by Lori Weismantel except...
SunFlower art by Heather Rae McAlvey
Handwriting by Oma
Recorded, Produced and Mixed by audio wizard Pete Jon
Mastered by LANDR

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Thom Alan Lansing, Michigan

Michigan Based: Singer, Songwriter, Farmer, Carpenter, Landscaper, Gutter Cleaner, Adventurer, Generalist. Avid Podcast Listener, Comic Book Reader, and Celebrator of Good Meals. Rumored to sing Disney Songs while Mowing the Lawn ("I've Got No Strings"). Not yet too old for the Mosh Pit at a Slayer Convert. There's music in these bones, and I'm just getting started. ... more

contact / help

Contact Thom Alan

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

Thom Alan recommends:

If you like Zum Donnerwetter, you may also like: