James Anthony Wolff isn’t your typical frontman. He’s not chasing pop charts or TikTok virality. He’s crafting symphonic indie-rock epics with a small orchestra, pulling from forgotten band sessions and reshaping them into soundscapes that feel more like film scores than singles. His latest release under the Harvest Runes moniker, New Age Oblivion, is a bold and beautiful resurrection of a once-lost chapter in his career and it’s unlike anything else in the indie world right now.
This is a time capsule. The songs were originally rehearsed and performed in D.C. and Wolff dug up the recordings, remixed, re-edited, and reimagined them, and turned the fragments into something remarkably whole. “Raise the Sails” channels Arcade Fire-style catharsis, but through the lens of chamber pop, complete with horns. Then there’s “Lakeview,” a slow-burning anthem for anyone who’s ever tried to outrun their own past.
The standout, though, might be “Invisible Forces,” a bruising track that lays out the album’s thesis: we are more than the parts they try to reduce us to. Mechanical love, cosmic strings, desert wanderings, this is music that wants to go big or not go at all.
Wolff deserves credit not just for his songwriting chops, but for his resilience. This record was almost lost to time, buried under the weight of broken bands and forgotten sessions. But somehow, New Age Oblivion came back from the dead, and it might just be the most vital thing he’s made yet.