Review – Future of Forestry – Sojourner
Eric Owyoung, the writer, producer, composer, and arranger behind Future of Forestry, is constantly creating, broadening his horizons to new sights and sounds. His work is unparalleled in its stylistic diversity. (What other band could pull off both Twilight and Awakened to the Sound?) Over the last several years, Eric’s work has shifted to sounds of cinematic proportions, so much so that he scored Lee Strobel’s The Case for Heaven in 2022 and The Case for Miracles in 2025.
When he announced this new project, you can imagine both my excitement and my intrigue. Was this going to lean more to the alternative rock style of his early work, or would it live in the vein of something more recent like Remember?
The answer to this question, which should come as no surprise to long-standing fans of the band, is that Sojourner sounds like nothing Future of Forestry has made up to this point in their career. That’s not to say it’s a departure from Eric’s outstanding production quality, thoughtful lyricism, or expansive sound—quite the opposite, Sojourner blends the breathtaking execution of Awakened to the Sound with the cinematic inspired scope of his recent instrumental work.
Sojourner as a whole walks a fine line in ways I haven’t heard an album ever do. It finds itself standing between the sights of the heavens yet grounded in the humanity of earth. It’s wonderfully celebratory of our achievements yet equally profound in its ambition for something greater. Eric sings of the “eternal heavens” in breathtaking magnitude while also celebrating the beauty and gift of something as personal as his garden.
This album has done more for my personal imaginative enhancement of the world around me than almost any record ever has. Sojourner mentally paints the grand, awesome, eternal power and presence of God while equally and tenderly emphasizing the Word made flesh that dwelt among us. The album cares just as much about deeply human experience as it does monumental universal questions.
Eric exclaims, “The healer brought me here. He led me to the water’s edge. The invitation called me from the depths with wind and whispers.” There’s something indescribably cosmic yet personal about this idea. The Maker—of the universe, the world, and the plants themselves in the garden—invites us personally with perfect love and tenderness to that garden. Future of Forestry’s records have always had thematic unity and cohesion, but none quite like Sojourner. It’s a record in which its individual parts are great in their own right, yet the sum of those parts is truly extraordinary.
There is a hope scattered throughout the album that something greater than ourselves is picking up the broken pieces of our lives and making something new. “Density of a Star” ends in the presence and awe of what that thing is. Eric ends the song in Latin, crying out “Aeternitas Caelum,” roughly translating to mean “eternal heavens.” I mentioned before the cosmic feel of this record, and this song is the clearest example of it. Rarely do we find songs so powerful that they stop us in our tracks and cause us to reflect on what we’re hearing, but “Density of a Star” did that for me.
When oftentimes music tends to revel in darkness as artists are wrestling with difficult seasons or unanswerable questions, Sojourner is a joyful celebration. “We Are Grand” showcases this perfectly. As Eric wrote on his website, “Across generations and cultures, humanity has imagined, built, explored, and created, leaving behind a legacy of curiosity, resilience, and expression. The accompanying video is a tribute to that collective journey and to the courage, creativity, and wonder that connect us across time.” “We Are Grand” is all that the name implies. It’s musically grand in every sense of the word, and wonderfully radiant in its message.
Though the album is unashamedly celebratory, it never loses sight of the ground it’s standing on. Everything about Sojourner shows patience and wise restraint from an experienced musician. Not every song shoots for the stars, and because of that, the ones that do feel all the more special and impressive.
The songs focused on the heartbreaking and very real aspects of life speak more powerfully in context of the record they’re on. “Trolley to the Moon” for example, carefully and tenderly deals with real and personal hurt. Eric sings, “If I could take the hurt away I’d take it every night and day, and send it on a trolley to the moon. If I could carry all the load I’d follow you on down the road and send it on a trolley to the moon.” Throughout the whole record, he’s pouring his heart out in ways similar to this, and we’re all the better for it.
Sojourner left me completely speechless when I first listened to it. I have been as big a Future of Forestry fan as possible for most of my life, and just when I think they can’t possibly outdo themselves again, I’m proven wrong. Sojourner is decidedly my favorite album of 2026 and is on the shortlist for my favorite album this decade. It is profoundly beautiful in ways I couldn’t imagine and has done more good for my soul than most music ever has. Listen to it when you can and become “shaped in the form of grace” as Eric encouragingly reminds us.
Editor’s Note: We would like to give a huge thanks to Eric for giving us an advanced copy of the album so we could review it.
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