Saying the past few years have been pretty taxing on our collective mental health is kind of like saying the Pacific Ocean is pretty wet — technically accurate, but a fairly wild understatement.
The Closner sisters are keenly aware of this truth.
Together, Natalie Closner and her siblings — twins Allison and Meegan — form the vocal-forward, Portland folk pop trio Joseph. After growing up in a very creative household — dad is a vocalist/drummer, and mom is a theater teacher — Natalie decided to pursue being a singer-songwriter on her own. Needing a creative jolt, she decided to recruit her sisters to sing alongside her, eventually settling on the name Joseph as a tribute to the small Oregon town and their grandfather.
The familial sonic chemistry was immediately apparent in Joseph's harmony-forward folk pop songs on the group's self-released 2014 LP Native Dreamer Kin. The band's sound only expanded further on 2016's I'm Alone, No You're Not and 2019's Good Luck, Kid, with I'm Alone's lead single, "White Flag," topping Billboard's Adult Alternative chart. The sisters soon found themselves performing on TV shows including The Tonight Show and Conan, opening for bands like the Shins, and being billed on major summer festival lineups like Coachella, Bonnaroo, and Sasquatch, where their ethereal sunny sound perfectly fit the open air vibes.
But in the lead-up to the creation of their new album The Sun, the sisters had a lot of work to do. Not in the musical sense, but on personal levels. At its core, The Sun is an album about therapy. The opening track, "Waves Crash," delivers a tender meditation on moving past tying up one's self-worth in accomplishments. That's followed up by "The Sun," which wrestles with the negative self-image that can fester in bad relationships. Heck, "Don't Protect Me" starts with the lyric "Pain is a gift within reason, and when things end you know it feels like a little death." But don't take it the wrong way, the vulnerability inherent on The Sun isn't a bummer — rather it's a celebration of realizing these therapeutic breakthroughs and coming out jubilant on the other side.
"We each went on our own journeys," Natalie says. "Ali really faced a lot of her experience with panic and anxiety through this really cool method called Panic Free TV. There are these different tactics that she's used that have been tremendously helpful for her in that. And Megan did a lot of work around emerging out of a really tough, diminishing situation in a relationship, and she moved from that into realizing her own value and worth beyond that voice.
"And for me, it was a lot of kind of peeling off the layers of perfectionism, and ways in which the belief system that we grew up in sort of imposed this idea of you have to earn your own worth and value. It's about what you do. It's about how much you achieve. It's about how you make other people feel," she continues. "And for me, that messaging really got in me, and had led me to some really dark places of being like, 'Well, if I do make mistakes, and if I can't be all of that, then what is the point of me?' And then being like, 'OK, there's still a point to you, even if you are imperfect and make mistakes.' So it was a lot of like working through that and finding peace and my own personhood, regardless of what I've achieved or done."
Not being primarily instrumentalists, the sisters lean on their co-writers and producers to help realize their music, which occurred largely over Zoom this time around due to the pandemic. The list of folks who helped make The Sun see the light of day includes Deep Sea Diver's Jessica Dobson, songwriters Tayla Parx and Wynne Bennett (Janelle Monáe, Haim), and producers Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, First Aid Kit) and Christian "Leggy" Langdon (Meg Myers, Amos Lee). That said, Natalie says she and her siblings were more willing to stand their ground and follow their "true north intuition" to make sure The Sun's songs felt fully their own. And now that the finalized album is out to the world, it almost acts as another therapeutic round each time Joseph takes the stage.
"I'm really pleased and comforted by a lot of the lyrics that we were able to articulate on this project. It was really birthed from a lot of time to reflect being, you know, a worldwide pandemic, and the three of us being able to do therapy and working through some very, very major obstacles in each of our personal lives," Natalie says. "It always amazes me, just getting to have these descriptions and monuments to those lessons that we learned in that time, and then to be able to sing them on tour every night. 'I thought I was the light switch you turned on, but I am the sun.' Just getting to sing that every night or like in 'Waves Crash': 'What if I'm not made of sin? What if I'm lightning?' These different lines, getting to sing them every single night and reminding ourselves of those things that we learned is just my favorite."
Beyond their individual therapeutic needs, Joseph also faced an existential issue in the lead up to The Sun. Because of the nature of it being a family band and the hectic life it fosters, the sisters realized they'd never really thought about the group being something they choose rather than an assumed commitment. While most people grow when they remove themselves from their family roles as they become independent adults, Joseph had somewhat stunted that for the sisters. So, while chilling out in the parking lot at a burger joint in northern Oregon in 2021, they decided to give each other the option to opt out of the band. They all decided to stick with it, but having that be expressed as a choice has further freed each of them up to enjoy the experience. Natalie wants The Sun to be a beacon of light for folks struggling, but Joseph will remain a glowing light for her family no matter how the record is received.
"We hope the album can be a companion to people just trying to recognize their own moreness and move through obstacles towards taking care of yourself and recognizing your goodness in the world."
"Regardless of what happens, we will hopefully be in our 80s someday, and just be able to look at each other and be like, 'Remember that?'" Natalie says with a laugh. "It's just amazing to get to do it together." ♦
Joseph, Flyte • Tue, May 16 at 8 pm • $28-$128 • All ages • Knitting Factory • 919 W. Sprague Ave. • sp.knittingfactory.com
