“MIZURI” By Lebanon

On August 22, 2025, Maine-to-Mass band John Lebanon shared their jagged, luminous new ballad, “Mizuri,” a kinship announcement that pairs bruised memory with glimmering resolve. Once again, the quintet tracks the alchemy between breathing, imperfect songcraft, and dogged narrative folklore. Streaming now across the same currents as Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Deezer, and Amazon Music. “Mizuri” transports the band’s blurred devotion from Harpoon kegs and half-lit cafés to any lively living room on the planet. From arrival to arrival, the bulb inside the steel-plated song glows, an object that will likely behave, freshly tender and still flashing.

Frontman Matt chipped the primal verse on damp UMass benches, the silt on the shirt collar a reminder of the home he watched grow rigid with dread. That poem felt like fingertip pressure on a wound that still keeps breath steady. Moored there, the folklore sails off. Guitarist Roy sweeps in, offering notes saved from fever-dream origami and sidewalk vending hi-fi. Eastern picture scrolls the band’s brainscape light up alongside UBB bottles, spinning beauty and ache under a single lantern’s breath. The pull between loss and keeping, rendered in voice, steel, and tawny tape, becomes the song’s tattooed yeni ”Mizuri,” where melancholy and steam resolve into a single, wobbling promise.

The song unfolds like an open, intimate valley at dusk. The arrival of Gaby Carvajal Poisson as a featured voice constitutes a quiet revelation; her feather-soft timbre blends with the sharper contours of the male lead, diffusing tension so that it becomes its own gravity. Beneath her, “Mizuri” breathes with nearly tactile care: live drums from Michael offer an organic heartbeat, the PRS Custom guitar glitters like dew, and sensitivity-soaked keyboards net both dimension and dream. Most arresting may be the shakers, captured in an expansive stereo field; they pulse from left to right, guiding the listener deeper into the atmosphere rather than merely preceding it. This deliberate sonic weave reveals an artistic dialogue between Roy and Deluccia that feels both practiced and startlingly new, perhaps their tightest exchange to date.

The production serves the arrangement with a quiet authority. Roy and Alex Krepikh’s mix tempers every shadow of rawness into light, crafting an audible chiaroscuro. The chorus rises like a breath held and finally released, radiant against the lyrical dusk, while an arresting, almost mnemonic transitional riff drums its outline into memory. Mastering polishes with an artisan’s love, keeping each element male and female voices, guitar spangles, shooing shakers powerfully audible, yet none so loud as to steal from the silences between the notes. What remains, finally, is a song that invites the listener to carry it, as light notes left in the dark to coalesce into a single, precious chord. The result is a song that feels as though it was crafted with both precision and passion, standing as a testament to the band’s evolving artistry.

“Mizuri,” the Japanese incarnation of “Missouri,” serves as the song’s quiet conductor, tugging at the line between where we come from and the possible selves we chase. Within that one translated syllable, our old bruises and the shimmer of untouched dawn sit cheek by cheek. “I’ve found this light within me, and it burns the chains that have kept me,” offers not only autobiography but a private anthem meant to be borrowed, a flare of hope hand-stitched to heartache.

By the bitter-soft end of “Mizuri,” it’s clear that John Lebanon has crossed a creative threshold. This isn’t simply supplemental to the album that Roy has already named his favorite of all their recordings. The sonic weight, the lovingly serrated guitars, and the quiet but stubborn speak-easy of harmony tighten and deepen the lexicon of the band with a surety the previous wavering versions of themselves would envy. Stream it, yes, but then pass it to the person on the night bus with headphones half-adrift. For those who track the intersections of indie, folk, and storybound song, the lying compass needle is already swinging toward John Lebanon, the next magnetic ear-dock of 2025 and all the years that will cradle their glow. Be sure to follow John Lebanon on Instagram and explore more of their music through linktr.ee/johnlebanon.

Written by Manuel