Plates

Plates is a concept album telling the story of the Book of Mormon across three acts and twenty-eight songs. Each song inhabits a different character or moment — a father describing a vision he can’t fully hold, a mother walking through a wilderness she did not choose, a young priest in the back of a room watching a prophet die, a historian on a hill at the end of a thousand years.

The songs are not Sunday-school summaries. They are first-person testimonies — sometimes intimate, sometimes furious, sometimes quiet — from inside the story.

This album was made the way a small-press book is made — with attention to the things most listeners will not notice. Songs are written in specific keys for specific reasons. A suspended chord in one song resolves twenty narrative years later in another. A phrase spoken by one prophet returns in the mouth of the next, and the next. The music does theological work the lyrics don’t say out loud.

Every song has a Behind the Songnote — a short songwriter’s commentary on what the song is reaching for. They are written for musicians, for readers, for anyone who has ever wanted to know what the maker was thinking. You don’t need to read them to enjoy the songs. They are there for the listener who wants more.