Emotionally stirring and intimately aching, Glass Heart String Choir’s glistening “Wounds” is a beautifully raw distillation of love’s pain: Of the ways we’ve been hurt by, and the ways in which we hurt those we care about the most.
Stream: “Wounds” – Glass Heart String Choir
Emotionally stirring and intimately aching, Glass Heart String Choir’s glistening new single is a beautifully raw distillation of love’s pain: Of the ways we’ve been hurt by, and the ways in which we hurt those we care about the most. A poignant and bittersweet serenade, “Wounds” captures a meaningful kind of hurt: The cathartic expression heartache and pain from a heavy open heart.
Please don’t go my love
Don’t walk backwards with my blood still on your lips
Don’t say it’s come to this
And what did you mean my love?
When you told me that each day burns
Like an iron on your skin
These wounds of love are hardly art
I wish the scars would be more beautiful
Than they really are
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering the music and video for “Wounds,” Glass Heart String Choir’s second single of 2021. Following this past July’s “California,” “Wounds” finds Ian Williams and Katie Mosehauer coming together in a spine-chilling display of vulnerability.
The Seattle-based duo formerly known as The Thoughts, Glass Heart String Choir channel fragility and beauty in both name and song: Atwood previously had the honor of premiering the pair’s 2018 debut single “Wildfires,” a tragically beautiful expression of depression and turmoil, longing, loss, and sadness. “‘Wildfires’ introduces us to a magnificent chamber pop sound that blends bittersweet tones with folk-influenced warmth,” we wrote at the time. “Ian Williams’ pristine voice shivers and quakes as he laments his inability to capture life’s magic moments in anything more than substantial than a memory.”
Following an EP and a smattering of singles, “Wounds” finds Glass Heart String Choir dwelling in a space of haunting reflection. “Our generation grew up with the lore of the tortured artist, with a firm belief that great pain begets great art,” Katie Mosehauer shares. “Culturally, we’re finally shifting to see that artists create great works not because of great pain, but despite it. Wounds feels to me like it embraces that idea, not only around art, but many of our other life experiences as well—sometimes we become who we are not because of the challenges we’ve lived through, but in spite of them.”
For Williams, “Wounds” is both an inner reckoning and a confessional all wrapped up in vivid orchestral wonder. “The verses of ‘Wounds’ to me are the distillation of the wounding moments of love; those times when your stomach drops, when you realize something, see something, or are told something that breaks your heart,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “These moments hurt, deep down. And as much as we want them to be beautiful in hindsight, as much as we want to learn from them (and maybe even if we do), they scar us and they hurt us. We like to think that trauma and pain leads to great art, and sometimes it does, but sometimes trauma just leads to more trauma.”
“We’ve all been hurt, and we’ve all hurt others. In the third and fourth verse, I’ve recalled those times when I’ve wounded others with what I’ve said and what I’ve done.”
What’s the point my love?
Why keep going through these motions
When every outcome is the same
Just close the door my love
Pretend you never saw what was entangled there
What was written in the air
“I think it all ties in with the cyclical pattern of hurt. What I’ve been told when I’ve been hurt, I tell someone else when I hurt them. I have these wounds, these scars, now what? It’s an open-ended question. I wish there was more beauty in this. I wish these scars were reminders of lessons learned. But sometimes we just want our scars to be gone, to heal, to not remind us, and to not be visible. Sometimes the scars are just ugly.”
These wounds of love are hardly art
I wish the scars would be more beautiful
Than they really are
He continues, “Although the lyrics are fairly dark, as I wrote the song, the melody and feel came out fairly gentle and light. I think there’s a freedom in realization, in letting-go, in floating downriver on a current that you can’t fight. The choruses are a matter-of-fact, to me. They are sad, painful. But, in realization, there is release, and the letting go can free you from the present hurt and ugliness. As I always strive for, it’s connection with others who have experienced these same feelings. That, to me, is the release. The understanding that we are not alone in our pain and struggles.”
Directed by Katie Mosehauer and filmed by Ryan J. Salva in Joshua Tree National Park and the Coachella Valley, the “Wounds” music video offers an intimate rendering of the song’s deeply introspective state: One that involves the greatness and solitude of the desert, as well as the channeling of emotion into movement through interpretive dance. Ultimately, Glass Heart String Choir help facilitate our own personal moments of visceral connection as we, too, open our “Wounds” and feel what’s inside.
It’s not going to be pretty, but it’s a stirring piece of art all the same. Stream Glass Heart String Choir’s new song below, exclusively on Atwood Magazine!
— —
Stream: “Wounds” – Glass Heart String Choir
— — — —
Connect to Glass Heart String Choir on
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
Discover new music on Atwood Magazine
? © Ryan J. Salva
:: Stream Glass Heart String Choir ::
