Lea Thomas Shares Video For "River Runs Through" Via Under the Radar

Today we're sharing a video for "River Runs Through" - the third and final single from Cosmos Forever, the gorgeous new LP from Catskill, NY-based, Hawai'i-born songwriter Lea Thomas (pronounced "lay-uh"). "River Runs Through" comes with another dreamy and beautiful 8mm filmed video, this time shot in Japan on a trip to visit family.

When we were recording this album, we set up in the round, tracking live in a room where the windows overlooked the woods. I remember it was really quiet outside—no wind, and there were no leaves left on the trees to rustle anyway. Every sound we made felt amplified against the stillness of the season. I had the intention of leaving room for my band to stretch out on the recording of this song in particular– and I feel like that specific time and place influenced us to be more intentional and responsive to each other because we were able to really listen.

The accompanying video was filmed on 8mm while I was visiting family in Japan. Growing up half-Japanese, I often felt like I lived between cultures and I’ve spent a lot of time exploring how this perspective has permeated my life story. This song was inspired by my own reflections on how geography and ancestry shape our experiences as individuals, and also how all of the rivers that run through each of us are always just rippling and colliding together into this greater flow of time and space.

ABOUT THE LP

Lea Thomas’ album “Cosmos Forever” unfurls in a moment of exquisitely gentle suggestion: “Let’s go for a walk/Don’t talk.” Hers is a voice that is at peace with itself, that is trusting of its own ability to convey the truths of her experience and her personal philosophy, and to express her enduring love for the natural world. These truths, inspired by growing up on Maui, are embroidered with elegantly simple imagery. Fragments and fine details of a myriad different landscapes–a spray of leaves, a winding river, a bracing trade wind–seem to weave themselves together into a blanket of sound that is warm and wholly enveloping.

For the recording, Thomas, her co-producer John Thayer (YAI, Ezra Feinberg, Arp), and three other bandmates traveled to a house at the end of a mountain road in the woods. There, in a hushed landscape, they discovered a peaceful respite over the course of about a week, during which something benevolent and clear-eyed had enough time to be born.

There is a lot of space to move around in these compositions, which lightly sidestep the trappings of rigid structure. They’re more like expansive fields of wildflowers rather than crafted bouquets–their nature remains ephemeral, but it is also cyclical, which suggests something of the eternal, or of timelessness.

The Hudson Valley-based songwriter’s body of work could be regarded as cyclical as well. Her 2021 album “Mirrors to the Sun” is more of a pop-oriented songwriting endeavor; 2019’s “Blue of Distance” is something more ephemeral, open-ended, and hushed; 2017’s “Want for Nothing” is filled with straightforward, breezy, and engaging hooks. This oscillation of approach is something that Thomas says has come naturally to her over the years, threading its way through each of her endeavors.

Even if the listener finds themselves immersed in “Cosmos Forever” without the context of her earlier material, however, this is an album that shines on its own, warmly rewarding deeper and repeated listening with a sense of tranquility and gentle assurance. Lushness without drama, honesty without sharpness–rare and fine qualities that suffuse every song. Like a friendly hand resting on the shoulder, this music encourages the listener to become more at ease with the unanswered questions they might contain within themselves. It suggests that to forgive oneself for being uncertain, to allow oneself to experience pure and simple goodness, is to feel more at home in the world, and to better feel the embrace of the all-encompassing universe itself.

- Jen Powers

When I was writing and recording the songs for my new album, "Cosmos Forever," I was feeling deeply into a liminal space in my life. It was late autumn of 2020, when the world was just starting to stir again. I felt like I had just moved through some massive personal shifts yet I could sense that even greater changes were coming, though I didn't know what they would be or how they'd manifest.  

When I called the band together for a few days in a quiet house in the woods, all I knew was that I wanted to see what we could create by leaning into the spaciousness of the unknown. I left open-ended sections in each of the songs so we could let intuition stir our sounds together and we ended up capturing most of the record live in a way that felt true to my intentions.
My hope in sharing these songs now is that they offer a space for someone to sit with their inner knowing and explore the mystery of their own visions. Life moves in cycles. Seasons change. Ego deaths are often followed by renewal and re-emergence, echoed in the incredible pair of paintings by Iruka Maria Toro on the front and back covers of this record. Sometimes, we just need to be still enough, for long enough, to return to trust and maybe even find some excitement in these potent in-between times.

- Lea Thomas

LIVE SHOWS

October 7 - Avalon Lounge, Catskill, NY - Quivers, Field Guides, Lea Thomas
October, 17 - Brooklyn, The Owl - with Gushes, Adelyn Strei
October 18 - Woodstock - with Iruka Maria Toro