Young Oceans

My name is Eric. I write and sing songs for this thing called Young Oceans. The two rules of this project have always been that we won’t sing anything we don’t truly believe and we won’t make music we wouldn’t want to lay on the floor and listen to ourselves.

So you’re cordially invited into our little world. Its a world of gut-honest prayers, of REAL communion with God and desire to tap into the conversation outside our current dimension. This is not a theology project. We’re not trying to align ourselves with any one Christians tradition. I love the sacramental traditions as well as the charismatic. All I truly know is my own way of connecting with the Lord and I just feel like I’m supposed to share that experience. I hope the lyrics and sounds speak more than I could explain here.

Most of the songs are written specifically to sing in a church gathering but the fun of recording them is to stretch them out, tear them up and sew them back in some strange new way. I’m privileged to work with incredible musicians and artists on all these songs… these folks don’t get enough credit. The ‘sound’ of Young Oceans is as much theirs as its mine.

Peace to you all. I hope this music can offer a bit of healing for your life.

Eric Marshall 2020

PS: Below, you can read a short history of our releases…

"Young Oceans push the furthest edges of the indie meditative genre with densely layered Eno-atmospherics of equal appeal to the devoted believer, meditative transcendentalist, and discerning artrock fan." (Noisetrade). Initially, a studio-only project of songwriter Eric Marshall, the band’s SELF-TITLED debut was named Top 10 album of the year for 2012 by RELEVANT Magazine and spawned the companion instrumental collection BEFORE THE BEGINNING and a follow-up EP title ADVENT.

The second full-length effort, I MUST FIND YOU (2014), proved a more complete realization of the sound vision, “a complete mastery of space....the ship that “Achtung Baby” and “Raising Sand” built finds a shimmering harbor in Young Oceans" (Kevin Ott). Companion instrumental album STEADY THE STARS followed in 2015.

VOICES, Vol. I, revisiting songs across the band’s catalog and featuring a number of notable outside vocalists (Harvest, Leeland, Evan Wickham, Ellie Holcomb, All Sons & Daughters, Sarah Macintosh, and Mike Donehey of Tenth Avenue North) proved an interim collection ahead of the 3rd studio album.

SUDDENLY (Or The Nuclear Sunburst of The Truth Revealed) released in October 2017 and saw the band’s first-ever tour with a handful of club and universities gigs in North America in late 2017 and early 2018. Enjoying the live setting, the band recorded the wholly live film and album AMONG THE RUINS as a representation of the Young Oceans live experience. After previewing two of those tracks in Fall 2018 the band released the new SONGS OF CHRISTMAS album in November 2018 as a holiday interlude ahead of the ‘Ruins" release in Spring 2019.

Young Oceans’ fourth studio album, to be released in late 2020 (YOU ARE FULLNESS PART 1 and 2) is the most intimate collection of prayer and worship songs to date. Forced into an unconventional workflow during the Covid-19 lockdown, the soundscape that emerged is more terse, more immediate, more vocal-focused and perhaps more honest than any work they’ve done to date.