Illiterate Light

Jeff Gorman and Jake Cochran started Illiterate Light in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in 2015, having met five years earlier at James Madison University. Before the band took hold, the two ran an organic farm together in nearby Singers Glen, Virginia, and spent summers touring by bicycle with a group of other local musicians and activists.

Their self-titled first album arrived in 2019 on Atlantic Records, recorded at Montrose Recording in Richmond and Sputnik Sound in Nashville with producer Vance Powell. The single "Better Than I Used To" stayed on the AAA radio charts for months, and NPR named the band one of its artists to watch for 2020.

They have spent most of their time since in clubs and on support slots, playing loud enough that people rarely notice how few of them there are. Gorman plays guitar and works a Moog synthesizer bass line with his feet while singing, and Cochran drums standing up, one of the few drummers known to crowd surf mid-set, with nothing triggered from backing tracks.

The songs tend to build from a single repeating guitar figure into something closer to a garage-rock climax, with the two voices meeting in the chorus. After leaving Atlantic during the pandemic, the band released its second album, Sunburned, independently in 2023 on Thirty Tigers, again at Montrose Recording, this time with producer Adrian Olsen and engineer Danny Gibney.

Sunburned marked a shift toward heavier, more introspective songwriting built on fuzzed-out guitars and heavy reverb, and SPIN named it one of the best albums of 2023. Gorman's first instrument was the drum kit, one he shares with his uncle Steve Gorman of the Black Crowes.