Young Oceans

Young Oceans is the work of songwriter Eric Marshall, who describes what he makes simply as prayer music. Two rules have held from the start: he won't sing anything he doesn't truly believe, and the band won't make music they wouldn't want to lie on the floor and listen to themselves.

It is deliberately not a theology project. Marshall says he loves the sacramental traditions as much as the charismatic ones and much of what lies between, and that all he really knows is his own way of connecting with God. Most of the songs are written to be sung by a congregation; others exist purely for personal devotion. The pleasure of recording them, he says, is stretching them out, tearing them up and sewing them back together in some strange new shape.

What began in 2012 as a studio-only project — the self-titled debut was named a top ten album of the year by RELEVANT — has grown into five studio albums, several instrumental companion records, two collaborative albums drawing in Josh Garrels, Ellie Holcomb, Molly Parden and many others, and a live album, Among The Ruins. The most recent, Somehow I Know It's Love, arrived in 2024 and is the most experimental of them.

Marshall works with a rotating cast of musicians whose contribution, he insists, is as much the sound of Young Oceans as his own. The project is based in Nashville, by way of Brooklyn, and plays worship nights, prayer gatherings and house shows.