"The Seeker" follows Grace (portrayed as a child by Lillia Gray, left), who sees her idyllic life turned upside down after the death of her father (Josh Radnor).
Under a ceiling of dark clouds, fighting a deluge in open sea, a woman desperately bails handfuls of water from her rainbow-painted boat. As the boat sinks, orchestral strings swell in the climactic finish of “Three Storms Until You Learn to Float,” one of the closing tracks of The Seeker.
The Seeker is the most recent album and first feature-length film from the Viroqua-based musical collective Cloud Cult. It falls somewhere between cinematic tone poem and concept album. The band takes The Seeker on tour this summer, performing live alongside screenings of the film. It plays at Madison’s Majestic Theatre on June 2.
Cloud Cult has a history of blending mediums — the band’s shows have often featured live painting or interpretive dancing — and The Seeker follows those impulses even further.
“Our writing process has always been narrative,” says Cloud Cult bandleader Craig Minowa. “Turning an album to film is a dream that’s been manifesting a long time.”
Directed by Jeff D. Johnson and starring Alex McKenna and Josh Radnor, the film follows a character named Grace through the death of her father, portraying her triumph over despair.
Much of The Seeker’s visual narrative is told in impressionist shorthand. The uplifting first act focuses on Grace’s childhood and leads up to her father’s death. But The Seeker is strongest when Grace begins her search for meaning after he dies.
As an adult, she builds a life-sized version of a toy boat her father made her, painted in matching rainbow, and sets off to sea. She weathers a storm, and eventually washes ashore, renewed.
The Seeker’s most pronounced tracks carry this act, especially “No Hell” and “The Pilgrimage,” and longtime fans, or listeners of emotional, folk-electronic acts such as Radical Face and Beirut, will find much to enjoy.
The religious symbolism in the lyrics and visuals seem obvious. But the ultimate message is universal. “We had an intention to draw from religious backgrounds, though we wanted not to give an answer, but give respect to the search,” says Minowa. “We wanted to show witnessing tragedy and beauty like a kid — relearning how to live in awe.”
The Seeker succeeds at illustrating a poignant truth about loss: Suffering is inevitable, but it can be the crucible through which we find appreciation.
“Everything is magic ’til you think it’s not,” Minowa sings early in The Seeker. “It takes guts to give thanks for the things you’ve lost.”
