“The Brightest Light,” the latest song from the forthcoming collaborative project between Dallas Good of The Sadies and Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire, arrives as Were The Watchtowers. The new track follows the debut single “There’s Time” and comes as the project’s extraordinary communal tribute culminates: a fan-sourced chorus for “Not In This World,” the final song Dallas Good ever wrote, featuring over 500 voices from fans and artists worldwide.
“Dallas and I met for the first time at the Dawson City Music Festival in 2008,” Parry offers. “We were thrown onto a workshop stage together and with a tiny bit of discussion but no rehearsal, we decided we’d play a gentle, echo-heavy version of ‘All I Have to Do Is Dream’ by the Everly Brothers. We were making layers and layers of beautiful, pillowy echoing guitar and upright bass feedback for what felt like a really long time, and then the audible gasp from the audience as we emerged from the dreamy intro echoes into the two part vocal harmony of that song was a feeling I’ll never forget, one of the highlights of my musical life for sure. What a feeling, showing up to perform unrehearsed music with someone you’ve never met, taking a chance and landing somewhere magical. We resolved then and there to make a record together, and ‘The Brightest Light’ is the very first song that we wrote.”
The “Not In This World” chorus campaign drew contributions from Neko Case, Kurt Vile, Yo La Tengo, and others, making it a sweeping, emotional finale and testament to the bonds Good forged through music. “Dallas died before we had completed our album and there were two songs that we still hadn’t written lyrics for,” Parry explains. “One of them is the final song he ever worked on, called ‘Not in This World.’ That title, which is also the main refrain in the song, is extra poignant now that he’s gone, almost eerily so. Finishing the lyrics and the record without him has been a strange and very emotional journey. Thankfully, Dallas’ brother Travis came and sang harmony in his place.” Parry describes the song as a “communal farewell” to his late friend and collaborator.
“The Brightest Light” deepens the album’s cosmic, psychedelic Americana sounds that The Sadies perfected on their 2022 release ‘Colder Streams’, produced by Parry. Following “There’s Time,” whose themes of youth and impermanence took on haunting resonance after Good’s passing, “Not In This World” illuminates as both an elegy and a celebration, a final transmission from one of Canada’s most beloved musical voices, finished with the help of friends, family, and hundreds of fans singing together in harmony. Were The Watchtowers began more than a decade ago when longtime friends Good and Parry would steal away from their respective bands for weekend writing and recording sessions. “It has been the slowest-moving musical endeavor of my entire life,” Parry says. “We didn’t plan to do it this way; it’s just how it happened. Inching along in tiny, joyous flourishes of activity a couple times a year for over a decade, until sudden death brought it to an unexpected end.”