Lantern By Sea to Release Their Long-Awaited Debut

_{By Mike Romero}

Provo folk/rock band Lantern By Sea will release their first full-length album, Rim of the World, on Tuesday. This is their first new release since their single “The Deep End” dropped in April 2019. The record will be accompanied by an album release show at Velour Live Music Gallery on Saturday, March 26.

The band spent over two years writing and demoing before heading to June Audio for three weeks to work with Scott Wiley and Maren Belnap. The writing process was a special experience for the band.

“From the very beginning, we all felt we were creating something bigger than ourselves,” says lead singer Porter Smith. “Alvey, Tate, and I would always say we created Lantern By Sea as its own entity – something that we each feed and give our hearts and souls to. As we kept writing, most of the songs would just write themselves. It’s as if the album knew what we wanted and knew what was best for us.”

The band hosted a listening party at June Audio last Saturday. We got to sit in a packed Studio 1 with other local music enthusiasts, and lemme tell you: this record has the quintessential Dusty Deseret sound. Reminiscent of Mumford and Sons in places, it’s full of emotional, dusty, organic tones and is epic and cinematic in scope.

“Everybody in the band loves film,” says Smith. “So we took a cinematic approach to writing about our lives. We took a protagonist and sent him on a journey similar to ours.” He says the album grapples with themes of loneliness, rejection, heartbreak, and failure. “But in the end, we found there was undeniable hope and youthfulness that bled through.” He hopes the record is the kind that changes you again and again.

Lantern By Sea has been a local staple for years now. Smith and his brother and bandmate, Tate, moved here specifically for the music scene. He was even the MC for the Velour Winter 2021 Battle of the Bands. It’s good to see the band actively releasing music again – especially something so ambitious.

“We’ve found so much joy journeying into the unknown,” says Smith. “Whatever your unknown may be or whatever the Rim of the World is to you, we want to encourage you to go through it with every fiber of your being and experience the joy and peace there is to be found on the other side.”

Make sure to follow Lantern By Sea on Instagram. You can stream Rim of the World on March 22^nd, 2022. While you’re waiting for the album to drop, enjoy our favorite Lantern By Sea song, “Secondhand Church” below.