Military Genius

Military Genius—aka Joshua Tree, CA-based songwriter/producer Bryce Cloghesy, also of Crack Cloud—today shared his new single “Window to the Soul” off his forthcoming new album Scarred for Life, due out November 1st via Unheard of Hope. The R&B-tinged track is at once expressive and crisp, bolstered by syncopated beats and Cloghesy’s poignant vocals, which switch in a moment from soulful to stony. "‘Window to the Soul’ reflects on trauma and its after-effects, exploring how the past can distort and reshape the present,” he says. “Attempting to explain what has happened takes us further away from understanding. Like looking through curved glass, each perspective reshapes and challenges our notion of objective truth. This life is a house of mirrors, and sometimes getting lost is the point. In that moment of desperation, logic is irrelevant. All that is left is feeling.” Stream the song at all DSPs HERE.

“Window to the Soul” follows lead single “Darkest Hour,” which earned support from Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, Under the Radar (Best Songs of the Week), Buzzbands.la, Northern Transmissions, and more. Military Genius will embark on a headlining tour of the UK and Europe this fall, including a show at London’s Sebright Arms on November 7th and a performance at the Netherlands’ Le Guess Who? Festival on November 9th. Tickets for all headlining dates are on-sale now. Scarred for Life is available for pre-order HERE.

The follow-up to his atmospheric 2020 debut Deep Web, Scarred for Life is a genre-flexing mix of bass-heavy R&B, spaced dub, and jazz that is newly grounded within a more traditional rock framework and centered on lyricism. The starting point for the album—which was written, recorded, engineered, and produced by Cloghesy—was to try and make sense of ‘the toll taken by a life lived, and the complex beauty of a reality that can never be repeated or replicated.’

The album’s title refers to a gruesome episode in Cloghesy’s life in 2012, when he had a near-death experience after falling through a window. “I tore up my left arm real good and never slowed down to process the trauma,” he says. Add a debilitating series of panic attacks and depressive episodes to the charge sheet—followed by several significant life changes like a move from Canada to California, getting married, and becoming a father—and it’s clear the record has a lot of heavy lifting to do. “It took some time to realize that I had been working tirelessly for years, white-knuckling life without any tools to process stress or trauma. So there are many lyrics about that mental health journey, learning to cope and accept,” Cloghesy explains. He found “a powerful catharsis putting these experiences into words,” and the music reflects and celebrates a greater understanding and appreciation of how life can be lived.

Cloghesy faced his creative crosswords by embracing raw acoustic sounds and a ‘human-first’ approach to the recording process. Ideas were formulated and initially recorded onto cassette tape with minimal editing. Blemishes and artifacts were welcomed, adding to the record’s realism and personal character. “I found excitement in creating something naturalistic and hand-made, flawed by its own humanity,” he says. Cloghesy describes the process as “extremely dogmatic and physically demanding but worth it, as something really passionate, poetic, and romantic came out in the final recordings.” 

While Scarred for Life is a predominantly quiet and reflective album, it’s also full of soul and positivity. It’s expertly crafted to be: Cloghesy can make a song suddenly twist on an unexpected chord change, or introduce an instrument that heralds a change in emotional weather. The music constantly plays between darkness and lightness, tension, and release.