From the very first statement of the motif which carries throughout the entire work, I can feel my heartbeat slow down. My breathing deepens, and I begin to feel the magic of the world spread beneath my fingers. This album is palatial, and stepping into it gives you the same reverent feeling of entering a silent cathedral. And in case you forgot the cathedral was a holy space, the first cries of Pharoah Sanders’ tenor saxophone call you to prayer. The influence and teachings of Coltrane are immediately evident in Sanders’ playing, the young disciple who carried the torch from his mentor onwards into the new millennium. I should mention that Pharoah Sanders lived a life twice as long as John Coltrane’s, and this dichotomy of the two men’s lives unfolds across my two favorite albums. A Love Supreme captures the frantic energy of a man in the peak of his artistic dominance, blazing across the universal tapestry with a fire that no one could match. But Promises presents a man who has seen his star rise and fall, a man who has spent his life searching, a man who at the end of his life speaks his few essential truths with the certainty of someone who has accomplished everything he could ever hope for. Promises is the last album Pharoah Sanders released before his death, his swan-song.

Given the “magisterial profession of faith rooted in hard bop with flirtations of the avant-garde,” (Holzhall, 2020) I would turn to A Love Supreme in moments of spiritual need, seeking clarity on my purpose and higher calling as Coltrane had. However, as the years pass, I’ve grown to realize that our purposes can (and should) be entirely self-created and generated by our own personal relationships with the divine, by our own mystical experiences. No matter how many times I listen to A Love Supreme, the album will never pass my true calling down to me, for it ultimately serves as John Coltrane’s attempt to find purpose in his life. This album is his higher calling, not mine. But god damn, what a higher calling it is.

"Seigfried" is a track that I forever associate with driving the Kia Soul belonging to the brother of a girl I once had relations, now living in her house, interning at an opera house and returning on an empty Ohio highway at 11:30PM after a 12-hour day. "I'd do anything for you (in the dark)"

"What if I told you / I feel like I know you / But we never met?" Without question, these are the most romantic lyrics ever penned about a purely platonic meeting with an artistic influence. Elliott Smith's influence is worn on Phoebe Bridgers' sleeve, but this track's haunting arpeggios and vocalisms place him in the room with the singer for an imagined meeting between the two. A heartfelt tribute