“We are such stuff as dreams are made on / And our little life is rounded with a sleep” — Shakespeare

I sat down at the piano in early 2025, in the wake of the current administration’s resumption of power in the US. I was in Los Angeles at the time. The song I wrote, Revelry, was one of desperation—USAID had just been decimated. The livelihoods and lifelines of my friends, colleagues, and thousands of people across Southeast Asia and beyond, were obliterated. Outside, the streets of LA would soon be militarized, our immigrant neighbors tormented. America’s soft power, our global reputation built over decades of fragile, painstaking trust-building, was being shattered. When I opened my laptop, chaos and fear seeped through the screen, at turns repellent and hypnotic. My country—we—were at a turning point. And so the music started coming.

Back home in Thailand, several months and 12 songs later, I understood what I was writing.

Reckoning responds to the chaos that’s befallen the United States and, by extension, the world. Loosely inspired by themes of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the album is my take on the comeuppance we face as we move through this era of enchantments, dramas, and stormy seas.

It’s become almost cliche to observe that the U.S. has lost its collective mind. Whereas once we were, like the play’s Prospero, at our zenith, thriving under a “most auspicious star,” we now seem to have fallen into a state of illusion—­­­trapped under Ariel’s spell, in a state of child-like exceptionalism and wide-eyed fealty to flattery, hearing voices, wandering around an island full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs. ­­­­­­­

And like Prospero, who, despite dwelling in a beautiful, mystical paradise is nevertheless preoccupied with his own grievance, we too seem perpetually haunted by the pain of the past, bitter toward those who’ve wronged us, determined to enact revenge and balance the scales in our favor. As citizens, we are all so consumed by vengeance that we’ve conjured a tempest of our own—a storm seemingly designed to force a collective reckoning. A confrontation not only with one another, but with ourselves.

We have lost sight of who we are. All we know is that the old America is gone, while the new America has not yet been born.

In writing these songs, I found myself weaving together musical genres that, as a member of Generation X, are both personally meaningful and quintessentially American. From the emotional theatricality of 80’s pop, to the soulful lyricism of 70’s acoustic rock, to the narrative confessionalism of 90’s singer-songwriters, to my own Michigan Motown roots, these songs are a tribute to both my culture and generation. They evoke the music that underscored our coming of age as we stood on the threshold between worlds: analog and digital, organic and synthetic, material and virtual. Straddling realities, displaced in time and space—much like where the country finds itself today.

Now we face the urgent question of what to do with this liminal moment. Will we choose to stay mired in conflict, sinking deeper into the illusions we’ve conjured through our addictive screens, toxic politics, and neglect of our social well-being? Or will we meet our new world with humility, instead? Through these songs I ask: when our revels finally end, what will we be left with?

Maybe only each other, and the chance to choose grace.

My deepest, heartfelt thanks to the incredible artists who poured their joy, talents, and energy into this project: from Thomas van Nes’ team in Chiang Mai, who patiently undertook a development process that involved recording twenty-three songs in order to finally land on these twelve; to David Shenton and Matt Noble’s team in New York, who creatively and masterfully brought these songs to a bold, new level; to Kate Turning’s team in Todos Santos, Mexico who, with extraordinary imagination and precision, created a visual world unlike any other; to the wonderful design team in California and Canada, who anointed it with a final polish.

You represent the best of what this human story is all about, and I am forever grateful.