The Rock of Renewal of Illiterate Light: CoSign Interview

Every month, Consequence spotlight an emerging artist with our feature film series CoSign. For November 2024, we’re excited about Virginia duo Illiterate Light and their new album, Bows.

The first few seconds are shocking. Illiterate light’“Norfolk Southern” opens with Jeff Gorman singing “Round and around and around the clock,” played through a vocoder, with the frontman stretching the vowels and overpronouncing each consonant. Then comes the bang: drummer Jake Cochran bursts through the door like a SWAT team, backing Gorman’s growling guitar with a Can-inspired breakbeat.

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If it feels like a train is rushing past you at a railroad crossing, that’s intentional. “I feel like some songs write themselves,” Gorman says on “Norfolk Southern” via Zoom. “It just came from being glued to the news cycle.” He is referring to the song’s charged subject matter, which concerns the 2023 East Palestine train derailment in Ohio. The Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed, leading to widespread environmental pollution, forced evacuations and ongoing health concerns for local residents.

Even though Gorman and Cochran don’t live in Ohio, they were still affected by the incident. “For us, (the song) was just a way of saying this happens over and over again. We choose industry over the environment and we are all complicit in it.”

A press release notes that “Norfolk Southern” also serves as “a metaphor for Gorman’s turbulent feelings,” and during a conversation with the duo, it becomes clear that the song came from an urgent, emotional place. The intensity found in the song’s compelling opening, the frenetic guitar solo and Cochran’s cries of “Break! Break! Pause!” are the unlettered light’s way of wondering how we can make this happen again and again.

This cards-on-the-table approach is a rewarding aspect of Illiterate Light’s stellar third album, Bowswhich arrived last Friday, November 1st. In many ways, it’s a level up for the Virginia band, which has evolved considerably beyond the barebones approach that a guitarist-drummer duo might imply. Now they’ve become much more ambitious as producers and arrangers, recruiting veteran Joe Chiccarelli backstage for a few songs and mastering the alt-rock gamut in the process.