Pleader

This choir-led folk anthem closes Alt-J's Relaxer album. The song is based on Richard Llewelyn's 1939 novel How Green Was My Valley?, about a small mining community in 19th-century Wales.

The track was partly recorded in Ely Cathedral where keyboardist/backup vocalist Gus Unger-Hamilton used to be a chorister. The band explained to NPR's All Things Considered: "The song takes the form of a hymn, and so we went to Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire to record the boys' choir and the organ there, to add a church feeling to the track. It is a long song, but we felt the sense of pride and hope it leaves by the end made it the right choice for ending the album."

The song's haunting music video is a six-minute, cryptic miniature epic telling an elaborate tale of the relationship between a Welsh married couple and their son who live in a small countryside village. "When we set out to make a video for 'Pleader,' Joe (Newman) sent the following one line brief to director Isaiah Seret: 'a Welsh mining love story; a tidal wave of earth,'" the band revealed to NPR. "What Isaiah came back with was an epic short film, inspired both by the song's source material and Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice. A family must pit their desire to have a child against the knowledge that this would destroy their community. The hypnotic, hymnal quality of the song binds the video throughout, hinting at redemption while destruction takes place."