The arc of Judah & The Lion’s career has always bent toward honesty. Their 6th studio album, ‘I Am A Prism’, arrives August 14 via Dualtone Records, and the Nashville folk-hop duo are marking the moment with the release of the first single, “Maybe The Best Is Now,” complete with an official visualizer.
This one carries real weight. After a trilogy of releases that moved through mental health struggles, heartbreak, addiction, and grief, ‘I Am A Prism’ finds Judah Akers and Brian Macdonald stepping into something harder to articulate but easier to feel: genuine optimism, earned the long way.
“Maybe The Best Is Now” works as a direct conversation with their 2019 track “Family / Best is yet to Come.” It’s a sequel in spirit, a shift in perspective. And it brings back a signature move first heard on their 2016 breakout ‘Folk Hop n Roll’: fan voices recorded live at recent shows, woven into the track itself.
That choice means something. These aren’t studio sweeteners. They’re the community Judah & The Lion have spent 15 years building, literally singing alongside them on the record.
Akers describes the song’s core idea plainly: “Life doesn’t happen to you. It happens for you.” It’s a line that fits the album’s larger arc, connecting who they were when they started to who they’ve become, through fatherhood, hard seasons, and everything in between.
Macdonald frames the whole project with equal directness. “We use our music to propel us through hard things in life and shoot us forward into a more hopeful space,” he says. “Getting to that space isn’t always easy, but we always come back better for it.”
“Maybe The Best Is Now” lands with warmth and genuine momentum, a song that opens the door to ‘I Am A Prism’ with exactly the right energy. If this is the first preview, the full album has a lot to live up to, and everything suggests it will.