“Sweet baby / Like you, I emerged / From a certain uncertain chaos,” Audrey Kang of NYC’s “folktronic” band, Lightning Bug, sings to open their latest album, No Paradise, released on their own label and recorded in their own studio, to mesmerizing effect. It is folk mythologizing of the highest order, playing with the idea of paradise and the fall, the lessons we learn from the natural world, and a grand attempt to sublimate life’s uncertainty and chaos, with beauty and sound.

It’s almost a futile attempt, they admit, to capture love and fulfillment in this broken world. “To keep that feeling of sky / Pressed between words / It can’t be done / So why do I try?” “To keep that feeling of love / pressed into song / It can’t be done / So why do I try?” And Audrey’s answer comes in the closing song, “No Paradise”: “In the hopes that you will hear it / So far away / So dimly alive / But alive.” It is an album full of subtlety and genius, that will be played in some people’s ears, for ages to come.

Fitting their “folktronica” label, there are certain nods to electronica artists, such as Bjork and Portishead (the song “Serenade” is dead ringer for Portishead, with its trip hop beat and ghostly leads), but Audrey’s voice and the bands oeuvre is decidedly folk, with lots of alternative flourishes. Filled out by Dane Hagen’s adventurous drumming, Logan Miley’s flourishing cello and synths, and Kevin Copeland’s backbone of guitar and bass, Audrey’s mythology is couched in the perfect atmospheric medium.

An album that came after a violent encounter Audrey experienced, and the trauma that followed, it is an even more deep and powerful offering. But it is not in strength that Audrey and company find their purpose, but often being okay with weakness, broken hearts, and the seasons as they give and take away. It is a love song to nature, to creativity, to the triumph and gravity of song.

I’m a sucker for a well written myth, and a good concept album, and the twelve song offering finds Audrey turned into a tree (“December Song”), experiencing a season of prolonged darkness (“weeks turned to years and the sun didn’t come”), being thankful for but not expecting the sweetness of blossoms (“The Flowering”), and many other nature-oriented stories that compliment and are in communication with each other.

A particular quirk of Audrey’s singing is that she sings almost every “the” as “thee,” giving the songs a particularly Midieval feel. If you like hearing an album that taps into some of modern music’s most thrilling sonic motifs and hearing the tried and true mythologies of the world updated and personalized, you might really enjoy this album, like I did.

Order No Paradise by Lightning Bug HERE