Sadurn

 

 

Sadurn began in 2017 as a solo project for G DeGroot, and from the start their approach to songwriting was informed more by emotional intuition than any kind of real ambitions to be heard. “I discovered songwriting as an outlet for processing my reality,” they explain. “A lot of times when something is hard to say, it flows more easily in songwriting. It’s a place where you can circle back to your own truth.” After moving to Philadelphia, DeGroot was joined by guitarist Jon Cox, drummer Amelia Swain, and bassist Tabitha Ahnert; the group recorded Sadurn’s debut album, Radiator. After a cold email unexpectedly caught the attention of Run For Cover Records, the album was released in 2022 and despite Sadurn’s modest beginnings Radiator immediately connected with listeners and was met with critical acclaim.

 

It was an exciting and often daunting position to be in: suddenly this personal outlet had an enthusiastic audience. “Right after we finished Radiator I already had new songs, but the idea that now there was some kind of expectation did change things in a negative way for me. So much of my sense of self had become tied up in the band, I got kind of swept up in the pressure of these internalized ideas about what’s going to be good for you or your life,” DeGroot says. “I think culturally everyone is trained to just follow the success machine, and even as musicians or artists we don’t always question that–you think you need to chase the momentum ‘cause it’s ‘your dream.’” 

 

When the album was finally complete DeGroot found themself in a very different place than when it was started. “The record was definitely born out of grief, yearning, inner conflict… I wouldn’t want people to think that’s where I am now. But when you write about things, that’s your way to move through them. And you can tell it took me a long time to move through them,” they explain. “But that’s maybe the most critical part of it–we circle back to the same lessons in a spiral, as if we never learned them, and we have to make sense and beauty out of that, too.”

 

Perhaps no song captures The Underworld’s musical and lyrical scope better than its closing track “only angels.” The eight minute-long song stretches out methodically, its first half sparse and gentle, just DeGroot’s voice and acoustic guitar, with every strum and syllable sounding deliberately placed and imbued with emotion. Then four minutes in, the bass and drums finally join, followed by fiddle, then vocal harmonies as the song builds in urgency, sprawling out and wrapping around the listener like a realization that can’t be avoided any longer: things have changed for good, and acceptance is the only way forward. “The underworld is the hard times, but it’s also about getting back,” says DeGroot. “You go into the underworld so you can find clarity about your own being and come back changed. That’s just my fundamental belief about healing, it’s not about wallowing but you do need to move towards the darkness in order to transform it and get unstuck. It’s how you discover your most important powers.”