There’s something immediately striking about ‘Lord Look After Me’: it sounds less like a song seeking salvation than one trying to survive long enough to believe salvation is still possible.
Drawing from southern gospel, old hymns and the darker storytelling traditions of artists like Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen, Noel Johnson NDJ creates something that feels devotional and desolate all at the same time. The plea at its centre is simple, but the world surrounding it is anything but.
Much of that comes from the production. He wrote, arranged, performed, recorded and mixed the track entirely himself, working from a windowless basement room in an old church. And that setting seems almost inseparable from the finished recording. There’s an enclosed, timeless quality to the song, as though it is unfolding somewhere cut off from ordinary life.
The percussion is especially distinctive. For this new release, he recorded individual hits with his hands and assorted tools, giving the rhythm a strange physicality. Around it, swirling echoes and layered harmonies expand the track outward, bringing flashes of gospel grandeur into a song otherwise steeped in uncertainty.
And that contrast is where ‘Lord Look After Me’ becomes most compelling. The harmonies reach upwards, but the frontman remains rooted in doubt. Redemption isn’t presented as guaranteed, and faith doesn’t erase alienation. Instead, he sits with the uncomfortable space before resolution, where comfort is wanted but not yet found.
It’s an unusually vivid approach, and one that feels completely aligned with his wider artistic identity. There are traces of Nina Simone’s emotional weight, Fleet Foxes’ vocal richness and Beck’s willingness to bend texture, but the atmosphere feels distinctly his own.
Haunting, raw and beautifully unresolved, ‘Lord Look After Me’ turns spiritual uncertainty into a powerful piece of gothic gospel-inflected songwriting, suggesting his forthcoming album could be a particularly compelling journey into the shadows.