In 1977 Annie Dillard wrote a book on art entitled Holy the Firm.
In it she wrote that artists of all kinds are to be ‘in flawed imitation of Christ on the cross stretched both ways unbroken and thorned. So must the work be also, […] spanning the gap from here to eternity, home’.
The opening track on Wilder Adkins’s latest album, Hope & Sorrow, speaks of being left behind, of head-in-the-clouds escapism, and of meeting a fellow ‘dreamer’. The song ends with a beckoning to ‘let’s get lost’, repeated as an enchanting refrain as we enter into an album conscious of the themes embodied in its title – the lyrics are littered with glimmers of hope and shadows of sorrow, often exchanging dreams for glimpses of nightmares.
