Ian McCuen – After I Descend from the Sky, Before I Return to the Dirt
Ian McCuen operates on a creative clock that ticks a little faster than the rest of us. For the past nine years, the Buffalo-based singer-songwriter has delivered a new full-length record on a nearly annual basis, a pace that would exhaust most musicians. Their latest offering, After I Descend from the Sky, Before I Return to the Dirt, arrives just a year after the electronic-tinged As the Oceans Rise and the Empire Falls. But where 2024 saw McCuen experimenting with synthetic textures, this massive 24-track collection marks a return to the soil. It is a sprawling, organic entry into the bedroom folk canon that Ian has honed in on over the past decade, and it’s our album of the week.
Despite the “bedroom” descriptor (the album was self-recorded), the sound here is far from sparse. McCuen has once again assembled a recurring cast of collaborators to flesh out their arrangements with a chamber-pop arsenal including cello, trumpet, violin, flute, pedal steel, and–new to this album–the spectral hum of a musical saw. The result is a revival of the hopeful eclecticism that had a chokehold on mid-2000s indie folk. Fans of early Sufjan and Beirut will appreciate the orchestral elements, while McCuen’s uniquely whisper-quiet, doubled vocals found throughout the record nod to the delicate intimacies of Iron & Wine. It’s a sound that’s all very nostalgic, but McCuen is doing more than just looking back; they are reinterpreting that era’s warmth for 2025.
What sets this album apart is its dedication to “moodcraft” through a series of instrumental vignettes. A significant portion of the track list is devoted to short, atmospheric pieces that mimic the sounds of everyday life and nature, serving as connective tissue between the lyrical heavy hitters. “Foliage” opens with the crunch of leaves underfoot before an intricate acoustic guitar joins in, while “Sunrise” blends piano and banjo with field recordings of chirping birds and distant city dogs. “Thaw” is particularly clever, utilizing high-register piano notes to simulate water dripping. These moments suggest the album is best experienced with gapless playback; the transition from “The Glacier” into “The Mountain,” which share a chord progression, feels entirely seamless, blurring the lines of where one track ends and the next begins.
When McCuen does step up to the microphone for more traditional song structures, the songwriting is sharp and emotive. “Heatwave,” the album’s lead single, swaps the ubiquitous acoustic guitar for an electric one, offering a catchy, full-band sound anchored by pedal steel in the choruses. Elsewhere, “Barren” and “Snowglobe” channel the defeatist but comforting spirit of early Bright Eyes, leaning on western-tinged pedal steel and somber lyricism. “Falling” is a particularly ambitious album highlight: a seven-minute slow burn that starts with the casual pace of a morning stroll before erupting into an overdriven electric guitar outro—a rare moment of grit on an otherwise gentle record.
After I Descend from the Sky, Before I Return to the Dirt digs deep to find the profound in the smallness of the world. It is a dense, rewarding listen that favors atmosphere above all, trading the hard lines of ‘verse chorus verse chorus’ structuring for music that breathes and evolves across its 24 tracks. You can stream them all now, or support the artist more directly on bandcamp. I hear digital downloads make great holiday gifts.
Categorised in: Album of the Week
This post was written by Ronald Walczyk