Modern Nature serve up a gorgeous addendum to ‘The Heat Warps’ on ‘Shasta’
Blackpool native Jack Cooper operates under many different guises, but no matter what project it is he’s using as his primary vehicle at any given time, you can be sure that it will have displayed a high degree of consistency in how inventive his brand of indie rock manages to be.
It’s no surprise, then, that ‘Shasta’, the latest single from the Cooper-led outfit Modern Nature is of his usual high standard, despite the fact that it was omitted from the tracklist of the band’s latest long-player, The Heat Warps, which was released to acclaim earlier in 2025.
In Far Out’s four-star review of the record, it was hailed as another step forward in their discography, and praised for how it “showcases the refinement in ideas the band have perfected,” but despite being an outtake from the same sessions, ‘Shasta’ manages to encompass many of the same highs that were displayed across The Heat Warps.
While bearing sonic and thematic similarities to the record, Cooper asserts that ‘Shasta’ was left out of the running for the band’s latest album on the grounds that it broke up the flow of the record in ways that felt unnatural, but after revisiting the song, he realised that it was too strong to be kept from public view after he noticed how it presented a missing link between tracks.
With the rest of the album’s lyrics having been penned “whilst looking out of a van window”, ‘Shasta’ describes Cooper’s experience of gazing upon the eponymous mountain while driving through Northern California and being inspired by its magnitude and ties to local mythology.
With the peak peering out over the top of the pine trees that surround it, Mount Shasta is a totemic figure in the geography of the area, but the approach that the song takes treats it with more of a subdued reverence, focusing more on it being a benevolent rather than malignant feature of the landscape, with Cooper delivering lines about how it reminds him of heaven.
Other standout lines from the song that underline the stunning beauty of this stratovolcano include “this place is a virtue, this place is mine,” which suggests that even though it towers over him in domineering fashion, he feels as though he is being protected by its vastness instead of being threatened by it.
As the rhythm of the song trundles along gently, much like the van Cooper wrote the song from would have done along the open roads, it feels slightly disappointing that ‘Shasta’ couldn’t be included on The Heat Warps, but it serves as a gorgeous ode to the environment that he was so stunned by, and a gorgeous coda to the album cycle.
Five albums in, and Modern Nature appear to be as adept as ever at conjuring up songs that evoke their name, with Cooper’s ability to tie together themes of natural history with modern anxieties and perspectives on life being the focal point that has consistently made them the perfect act to listen to when soaking up your surroundings.
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