Sadurn

 

Many songwriters will tell you that music is an outlet, a way of processing the material of their lives. For whatever alchemical reason, music can sometimes express what words alone cannot. This was true for G DeGroot of Sadurn—until it wasn’t. Cut off from their ability to sing just as their music had begun to reach people, DeGroot had to find new ways to heal. It’s from this emotional and spiritual journey that Sadurn’s sophomore album The Underworld emerged—a collection of songs that is heartrendingly personal and instantly relatable, a document of hard-earned catharsis that somehow feels at once grounded and miraculous.

 

Sadurn began in 2017 as a solo project for G DeGroot, and from the start their approach to songwriting was informed more by emotional intuition than any kind of real ambitions to be heard. “I discovered songwriting as an outlet for processing my reality,” they explain. “A lot of times when something is hard to say, it flows more easily in songwriting. It’s a place where you can circle back to your own truth.” After moving to Philadelphia, DeGroot was joined by guitarist Jon Cox, drummer Amelia Swain, and bassist Tabitha Ahnert; the group recorded Sadurn’s debut album, Radiator. After a cold email unexpectedly caught the attention of Run For Cover Records, the album was released in 2022 and despite Sadurn’s modest beginnings Radiator immediately connected with listeners and was met with critical acclaim.

 

It was an exciting and often daunting position to be in: suddenly this personal outlet had an enthusiastic audience. “Right after we finished Radiator I already had new songs, but the idea that now there was some kind of expectation did change things in a negative way for me. So much of my sense of self had become tied up in the band, I got kind of swept up in the pressure of these internalized ideas about what’s going to be good for you or your life,” DeGroot says. “I think culturally everyone is trained to just follow the success machine, and even as musicians or artists we don't always question that–you think you need to chase the momentum ‘cause it’s ‘your dream.’” The strain of following up a well-received debut isn’t entirely uncommon among musicians, but for DeGroot it wasn’t simply a matter of wanting to make LP2—it became a question of whether or not they could physically do it. The pressure around the band was one thing, but amidst it all, DeGroot was also going through a very challenging breakup. “All of this stuff led to medical fallout for me,” they explain. “I was having chronic pain, problems with my voice, gut issues—it felt so urgent to try and keep things going, but my body was saying no.”

 

The band was determined to share their new material in spite of these challenges, and finally began recording in January 2024. “It felt like we were already late,” DeGroot says. “But we did the same thing as with Radiator–we rented a house in the Poconos with our friend Heather [Jones] recording so that we could really drop in with each other and relax into the creative process.” Since the release of Radiator, Sadurn had toured heavily and their development as a live unit was now paying off in the studio: DeGroot’s songwriting had become tailored to a full band, the pedal steel that was a highlight of their live show was now lending itself to the recordings, and the band had a well-earned, expressive cohesion in their playing. The sessions were fruitful and Sadurn planned to finish recording vocals in a future session, but then issues with DeGroot’s voice cropped up again.

 

The band attempted a short tour while waiting to reschedule recording time. “By the end of that week I could hardly talk, let alone sing,” DeGroot says. “That lasted about eight months.” Things had reached a breaking point, and something was telling them that it was time to go. “I started trying a combination of vocal coaching and somatic therapy, and was making progress, but I realized I needed to leave Philly,” DeGroot explains. “I left without really knowing where I was gonna go. I set up some work exchanges and just put the album down. I let go of the idea that I was overdue on the record and set aside the urgency, and I think that released me. I basically lived on the road for a year, and that was when my voice started to heal.”

 

As DeGroot slowly regained their ability to sing, they found some mental clarity along with it. They began cautiously playing intimate solo performances in living rooms and reconnected with performing music. Eventually they returned to Philadelphia to finish recording what would become The Underworld, which was then mixed by Mark Watters at The Headroom (Alex G, Hop Along, Jessica Lea Mayfield). When the album was finally complete DeGroot found themself in a very different place than when it was started. “The record was definitely born out of grief, yearning, inner conflict… I wouldn't want people to think that’s where I am now. But when you write about things, that's your way to move through them. And you can tell it took me a long time to move through them,” they explain. “But that’s maybe the most critical part of it–we circle back to the same lessons in a spiral, as if we never learned them, and we have to make sense and beauty out of that, too.”

 

Throughout The Underworld, the rawness of DeGroot’s lyrics are matched by Cox, Ahnert, and Swain’s evocative playing. Stunning opener “the weight” describes the early stages of a relationship deteriorating, with brilliant soloing from Cox and DeGroot’s warm voice intertwining through its widescreen outro. Highlights like “mess,” “never tell me,” or “whole thing” strike a perfect balance between lush arrangements and intimate performances, while tracks like “why does my heart” or “can’t stop” add unvarnished, single take moments of spontaneity, or GarageBand demo looseness that perfectly compliment the unabashed longing in the songwriting. “After this relationship ended, it felt like a sacred part of myself didn’t belong to me anymore,” DeGroot explains. “Writing these songs helped me reconnect with my spirit and confront the hidden belief that I needed something outside of myself to be safe or good or whole. The same belief was perfectly mirrored in my urgency with the band, so somehow it was also necessary for me to face all these obstacles in finishing the record itself in order to get to the other side of this lesson. I had to be forced to put it down, to learn that I could be okay without the relationship, without knowing if my voice would ever heal, or if the project would ever move forward. It was kind of like an allegory–I needed to learn all that, and then I could go back and finish it.” The result is an album that’s full of lived-in, earthly details, that also seems to reach beyond the things we can touch and see–a highly personal and metaphysical dedication to coming back to oneself told through one of the most universal experiences imaginable.

 

Perhaps no song captures The Underworld’s musical and lyrical scope better than its closing track “only angels.” The eight minute-long song stretches out methodically, its first half sparse and gentle, just DeGroot’s voice and acoustic guitar, with every strum and syllable sounding deliberately placed and imbued with emotion. Then four minutes in, the bass and drums finally join, followed by fiddle, then vocal harmonies as the song builds in urgency, sprawling out and wrapping around the listener like a realization that can’t be avoided any longer: things have changed for good, and acceptance is the only way forward. “The underworld is the hard times, but it’s also about getting back,” says DeGroot. “You go into the underworld so you can find clarity about your own being and come back changed. That’s just my fundamental belief about healing, it’s not about wallowing but you do need to move towards the darkness in order to transform it and get unstuck. It’s how you discover your most important powers.”