“Not at all would I name this a pandemic file, however the songs did have their first incarnations throughout that point,” says the Bones Of J.R. Jones’ Jonathon Linaberry, attempting to be sincere whereas additionally downplaying what’s now turn out to be a music-industry cliché.

COVID or no, the native New Yorker does acknowledge that anxiousness was the first artistic gasoline for the pressing uphill grind of “Heaven Assist Me” and different tracks on his upcoming LP, Sluggish Lightning, set for an October 13 launch on Tone Tree Music. As he adjusted to a less complicated, more-rooted existence within the Catskills after quite a lot of years in Brooklyn and lots of days on the highway, Linaberry turned inward.

“Honestly, I used to be fairly pissed off with myself,” he says. “Now I can step away from it and get a little bit of readability. However within the second, it felt very muddy.”

The place 2021’s A Celebration EP was pushed by an infatuation with the wide-open areas of the American West, Sluggish Lightning finds its inspiration at the hours of darkness corners of the thoughts. Issues got here into focus throughout the recording course of, when he and co-producer Kiyoshi Matsuyama started to chart a brand new course for a broodingly propulsive, blues-inflected formulation initially impressed by the sector recordings of Alan Lomax.

“I see ‘Heaven Assist Me’ as this transition between the heavier stuff I used to be doing and the place I see myself going creatively,” says Linaberry. “I really feel like I’m leaning into extra of a synth-inspired Americana factor.”

This was additionally the primary time Linaberry had a recording finances to work with. “We rented a studio in Westchester, N.Y,” he says. “It had an house above it, and we hunkered to down and did all of the dwell recordings in six days. As luck would have it, we truly received snowed in throughout the recording, which was type of magical and enjoyable.”

MAGNET is proud to premiere the Bones Of J.R. Jones’ “Heaven Assist Me.”

—Hobart Rowland; photograph by Chloe Horseman