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​Everything is alright now. Alex Brown Church — the man behind the dark folk, indie rock band Sea Wolf — wants you to know that from the start.

Really. Sea Wolf’s fifth LP, Through A Dark Wood, due out March 20 via Dangerbird Records, begins with Church clearing the air: “I can’t remember where I went before / I didn’t know if I could make it through the door,” he croons. “I’m coming out of it and it’s alright now / I see the day again and smell its sweetness.”

But beforehand, everything was decidedly not okay. Church wrote and recorded an entire album after 2014’s streaming-only, stripped down release Song Spells No. 1: Cedarsmoke, but decided to scrap it. He realized those songs lacked a through-line and felt conceptually disjointed, something he attributes to a sense of denial of what had been going on behind the scenes — dealing with the disintegration of a long-term relationship, reconciling with the death of an estranged parent, and trying to cope with the magnitude of current events, all while maintaining a passionately beloved, yet slow-burning creative career.

So Church mustered his courage to go back to the drawing board. He took some time to score an independent feature called Julia Blue, channeling skills he first started to develop in film school at NYU, and rejuvenate himself musically. Then, starting from scratch, he spent months in his northeast Los Angeles studio writing, singing, tracking, and producing a new set of Sea Wolf songs.

The result is a catharsis record, not merely a breakup record. Says Church, “The title comes from the period of time that I was in when I was making this record — going through this dark wood. And I’ve come out of it, and I’m on the other side, which is something that I want to start with. I’m through it.”

Three songs, “Break It Down,” “Back to the Wind,” and “Frank O’Hara” — an upbeat song named in honor of the New York poet that reflects on the day same-sex marriage was federally legalized in the United States — all came from that first pass of songs. But Church knew he reached a songwriting breakthrough when the heartbreakingly honest, thematically connective “Blood Pact,” “Fear of Failure,” and “Two of Us” emerged in quick succession. 

And with contributions from long-time Sea Wolf players — Lisa Fendelander (keyboards), Scotty Leahy (guitar), and Joey Ficken (drums), as well as frequent collaborator Zac Rae (keyboards), and Francesco Le Metre and Church composing strings for a quartet — Through A Dark Wood maintains a sense of musical familiarity. It captures the lushness of 2007’s Leaves in the River (co-produced with Phil Ek) and 2009’s White Water, White Bloom, while seamlessly incorporating the drum machines and electronics that marked 2012’s Old World Romance. In particular, Leahy’s electric guitar-work leaves a melodic, often reverb-heavy stamp on the record and the swooping strings’ rising prominence on Side B foreshadows brighter days to come.

Despite much of Through A Dark Wood coming from a raw, contemplative emotional state, Church highlights power in vulnerability and bravery in the face of fear. “I think a recurring theme of all of my albums has been this sense of hope,” he says, “coming out of a dark place and into a light place.”