The Land, The Water, The Sky

It’s hard to listen to Katherine Paul’s third album as Black Belt Eagle Scout without thinking about nature, not because of Paul’s lyrical signposts—salmon, stars, wind, rivers—so much as the texture of the music itself. Recorded in a converted church in Anacortes, Washington, near the Swinomish Reservation on which Paul grew up, *The Land, The Water, The Sky* captures the mix of ruggedness and ethereality that makes the Pacific Northwest so unusual, whether it’s the way the chants of “My Blood Runs Through This Land” float over its drums like fog over a pounding tide, or how the distant soprano saxophone of “Treeline” surfaces like a figure from the mist. Beautiful music, no doubt, but never so beautiful that it transcends the garage-band intimacy. Case in point: “Fancy Dance,” a reminder that no matter how far our thoughts might take us, we still belong to our bodies, and our bodies to the land.

This land runs through Katherine Paul’s blood. And it called to her. In dreams she saw the river, her ancestors, and her home. When the land calls, you listen. And KP found herself far from her ancestral lands during a time of collective trauma, when the world was wounded and in need of healing. In 2020 she made the journey from Portland back to the Skagit River, back to the cedar trees that stand tall and shrouded in fog, back to the tide flats and the mountains, back to Swinomish. It is a powerful thing to return to our ancestral lands and often times the journey is not easy. Like the salmon through the currents, like the tide as it crawls to shore this is a story of return. It is the call and response. It is the outstretched arms of the people who came before, welcoming her home. The Land, The Water, The Sky is a celebration of lineage and strength. Even in its deepest moments of loneliness and grief, of frustration over a world wrought with colonial violence and pain, the songs remind us that if we slow down, if we listen to the waves and the wind through the trees, we will remember to breathe. There is a throughline of story in every song, a remembrance of knowledge and teachings, a gratitude of wisdom passed down and carried. There is a reimagining of Sedna who was offered to the sea, and a beautiful rumination on sacrifice and humanity, and what it means to hold the stories that work to teach us something. Chord progressions born out of moments of sadness and solitude transform into the islands that sit blue along the horizon. The Salish Sea curves along her homelands, and when the singer is close to this water she is reminded of her grandmother, how she looked out at these same islands, and she’s held by spirit and memory. The Land, The Water, The Sky rises and falls, in darkness and in light, but even in its most melancholy moments it is never despairing. That is the beauty of returning home. When you stand on ancestral lands it is impossible to be alone. You feel the arms and hands that hold you up, unwilling to let you fall into sorrow or abandonment. In her songs Katherine Paul has channeled that feeling of being held. In every note she has written a love letter to indigenous strength and healing. There is a joy present here, a fierce blissfulness that comes with walking the trails along the river, feeling the sand and the stones beneath her feet. It is the pride and the certainty that comes with knowing her ancestors walked along the same land, dipped their hands into the water, and ran their fingertips along the same bark of cedar trees. This is a story of hope, as it details the joy of returning. Katherine Paul’s journey home wasn’t made alone, and the songs are crowded with loved ones and relatives, like a really good party. And as the songs walk us through the land it is important we hover over the images and the beauty, the moments that mark this album as site specific. The power of this land is woven throughout, telling the story of narrow waterways, brush strokes, salmon stinta, and above all healing. Let it take you. Move through the story and see the land through her eyes, because it is a gift, a welcomed sʔabadəb.* *The word “gift” in Lushootseed, the language of the Coast Salish people“

Katherine Paul’s third album of patient, cinematic indie rock surveys a return trip to her ancestral lands in the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community—and the hard-won peace she found once she arrived.

Monochromatic in nature, the ballads and epics across Black Belt Eagle Scout's The Land, The Water, The Sky are the climax of an ongoing devotion to the landscape she was raised in.

While Black Belt Eagle Scout's journey has never been easy, The Land, The Water, The Sky makes particular effort to center the inherent hopefulness of her homecoming, one where unbridled joy meets a rekindled appreciation for rootedness.

Discover The Land, The Water, The Sky by Black Belt Eagle Scout released in 2023. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.

Following her 2019 sophomore album At the Party with My Brown Friends, Katherine Paul's latest missive as Black Belt Eagle Scout — the warm...

From the earliest moments of her life, Katherine Paul was connected to her home, her heritage, and her land through music.

There is something timeless about listening to Black Belt Eagle Scout. Maybe this is because Katherine Paul is Swinomish/Iñupiaq from the Pacific North

The Land, The Water, The Sky by Black Belt Eagle Scout: Katherine Paul returns to her Swinomish Native American home with great sonic results

With her third album, Black Belt Eagle Scout dazzles us with lush atmospheres, seismic rhythms, and a voice that unfurls from another and perhaps a better world.

Right from the opening electric guitar slide, the new Black Belt Eagle Scout record takes off in a new, louder, heavier direction from past releases. Frontperson Katherine Paul coos in her feathery timbre behind distorted chugs, and it only gets louder. Soon, Chelsea Wolfe-style drums enter the fray, and the whole thing just takes off.

Black Belt Eagle Scout - The Land, The Water, The Sky review: Home is where the heart is