A Pillar of Salt was written over a period starting in March 2020 and continuing well into 2021. In a post to Instagram the day the album released, Gundersen spoke about the process of writing and recording the album:
"In early March of 2020, I was sitting in a friend's apartment in Los Angeles, penning the words "I guess I just get nervous when things are going ok" with a sense of quiet dread. The sun was shining. Traffic snaked in an unending crawl. The city functioned with all the patterns of apparent normalcy. But below the surface ran a palpable undercurrent of mounting anxiety. The novel coronavirus has crossed the ocean and made landfall in my hometown of Seattle. Every day brought more sobering news of the reality of the situation. Life as we knew it was about to change.
Two weeks later, I moved off the grid as the world went dark.
There is a moss-covered cabin deep in the woods of Washington State, nestled in the foothills of Mt. Baker, just off the North Fork of the Nooksack River. It has no WiFi, minimal cell reception, a water supply fed by a nearby creek and a wood burning stove for heat. This is where I spent the last year and a half when I wrote this album.
The first couple months I felt like Wile E. Coyote after he's chased the Road Runner off a cliff. Wheels still spinning as the reality of the opening abyss below slowly sinks in. I'd start drinking at noon while chain smoking on the porch, the only spot on the property with enough reception to FaceTime my friends around the country, all of us grappling with our strange new normal. I resolved to read "Ulysses" and gave up after a few pages. I took long walks. I even made sourdough. And I wrote songs. In the deepening silence, the whirlwind of the last decade finally caught up with me. All the memories, the unresolved pain, the broken relationships. The fragments of a life constantly on the run. I was faced with the harsh reality of who I was without the validation of playing music.
For the first time there was nowhere to run, no plug to pull, no option for blowing up my life when the banality of existence triggered my anxiety into a blind panic. I was finally forced to face it. And in that space came these songs. Songs about memory, love lost, and love found, overcoming self-destruction, anxiety, saying goodbye. Attempting to break deep-seated patterns of co-dependency.
Chasing the dragon of love's first high. I recorded simple demos on my phone and sent them to my producer, Andy Park, who helped craft beautiful, lush arrangements around them. And like that, back and forth over quarantine, we crafted most of the record. Later, as restrictions loosened, we brought in friends and collaborators to put their own unique stamps on all of it. The biblical story of Lot's wife always fascinated me. On the surface it is a warning against getting stuck in the past. However, I can't help but admire her flagrant defiance of the angel's commands as she turned to say goodbye to her past and the life she had known there. I guess I relate. Nostalgia is a life raft when the world as you know it sinks. It's also a shallow grave for ghosts better left buried."[1]
Gundersen worked with several collaborators on A Pillar of Salt, including producer Andy Park, pianist Dave Dalton, and guest vocalist Phoebe Bridgers. Sonically, the album is a continuation of Gundersen's branching out from the acoustic niche he'd established in the first several years of his career. Along with Gundersen's guitar playing the album contains string sections (arranged by Gundersen's sister, Abby Gundersen), programmed percussion, layered electric guitar, and synthesized keyboards.
Phoebe Bridgers, shown here in July 2018, was a guest vocalist on the album.
Promotion for A Pillar of Salt began on August 30th, 2021, when Gundersen posted an image of a breaking wave with the words, "break my heart into a thousand parts"; the line would turn out to be from the third track on the album, "The Coast". Each day he'd post an image with another lyric from one of the album's tracks, cumulating in a September 9th post of the Seattle skyline captioned, "every bar in this city reminds me of somebody now". With this post he announced the premier of the album's first single on the KEXP show, The Morning Show with John Richards at 7:00 am PST the following day. He also announced it would appear on the music streaming app Spotify at midnight that night.
When the alluded time came, the single, "Sleepless in Seattle" released to major streaming services. Gundersen performed it on KEXP as promised the following morning. Once the song had been out for a few hours, Gundersen elaborated on its meaning, saying that the track chronicled his moving away from Seattle after twelve years in the city. Along with the rest of A Pillar of Salt, "Sleepless in Seattle" was recorded in the titular city by producer Andy Park.[1]
On September 13th, Gundersen announced that the full album would be released on October 8th, and provided links to pre-order vinyl LP or CD copies. The following day he announced the album would be performed live in its entirety at St. Marks Cathedral in Seattle on December 4th.
On September 29th, Gundersen outlined an upcoming 2022 Europe/UK Tour in support of A Pillar of Salt. Beginning in March of 2022, Gundersen will tour for two and a half weeks across the European continent, starting in Stockholm and finishing in Dublin.[2]
The long single for the album, "Sleepless in Seattle", premiered on streaming services on September 10th, 2021. The album released in its entirety on October 8th. Physical copies were made available for purchase on Gundersen's online store, and the album is on all major streaming services.[2]
A Pillar of Salt received widespread critical acclaim. Sputnik Music said that the album "takes ageless topics such as identity, vices, and faith and makes them both deeply personal and widely universal" in its 4.5/5 star review.[3] Gundersen's lyricism was a common theme across positive reviews. In its 8.0/10 review of the album, The Line of Best Fit remarked: "It’s a scrapbook of life and its lessons, considered in retrospect by a veteran writer and musician."[4]
Additionally, upon the release of the album Gundersen was featured on Spotify's Grade A playlist as the cover artist. The playlist, which curates what it describes as 'a quality alternative blend', featured "Atlantis" in its October 8th edition.[5]
Despite not being released as a promotional single, "Atlantis" was a major source of media attention for A Pillar of Salt, largely due to the fame of guest vocalist Phoebe Bridgers. British music outlet NME described the track as "somber" and noted the music video, which was shot entirely on an iPhone.[6] KEXP, one of Seattle's largest public radio stations, called the album "a well-crafted set of brooding folk-pop with an atmospheric sound featuring acoustic and electric guitars, piano, haunting melodies and introspective lyrics."[7]
Craig Manning of Chorus.fm called the album "a goddamn masterpiece." He observed in his review that the album served as an amalgamation of qualities from Gundersen's previous discography: "Everything he did well on each of his previous albums is here somewhere, and it all meshes together into a perfect tapestry. The throwback troubadour of Ledges; the thoughtful intellectual of Carry the Ghost; the architect of all those big, bruising crescendos that drove White Noise; the pop polyglot of Lover."[8]
As with some of Gundersen's previous releases, A Pillar of Salt details personal experiences with relationships, growing older, loneliness, religion, and life in the Seattle, WA area. The title of the album alludes to the Book of Genesis, in which Lot's wife was transformed into a pillar of salt after looking back to the city of Sodom, which she was leaving. She'd defied warnings by God's angels not to look back while she and Lot's family fled, and suffered accordingly.
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