Let me walk under weight like waves, and find the fool in the courage craved I’ll run into the house as it’s burning I can make it to the morning So I’ll find the revolution in a breath Square one always felt like the start of something beautiful I have been here before I can stand in my body like I own it
So bring me my tomorrow I swear by my sorrow, her hopeful hands to bear me Bring me my tomorrow
Light my sins in the lens of fault Let my edges blur as I stand like salt This dead head vessel blind to the curtain Let the siren sing certain If I could be rid of this, I would in a breath My words are a whisper, but at least I can call them mine Call out the warning More than a mantra, I can make it to the morning
So bring me my tomorrow I swear by my sorrow, her hopeful hands to bear me Bring me my tomorrow
I know every word, all this cold talk of redemption, but the night can’t hold a candle to shadows that I can’t overcome It was always there Growing louder yet Give me sight in the silence, and god help me, give me sleep
This softness I’m waiting weightless for, with only one thing more to ask these fragile bones in the end
Was it gentle? ‘Cause I need her to know But tomorrow hangs like a promise I can’t keep it alone, but I’ll meet you there
This softness I’m waiting weightless for, with only one thing more to ask these fragile bones
Stand, and bring me my tomorrow Bring me my tomorrow I swear by my sorrow, her hopeful hands to bear me Bring me my tomorrow
More More than the sum of scars More than the rope’s end More More than a call to arms More than the harm You’re more More than the damage done More than the hopeless More More than the dawn More than the end More than a mantra You.
If there’s been one constant in my life, one consistent thread that connects all the disparate phases that are past mes, it’s music. If you ask me what my most memorable Christmas was, the details are gone, but I very intensely recall getting Electric Light Orchestra’s “Out of the Blue” and Queen’s “News of the World” when I was seven or eight. I keep my earbuds in pretty much all day when I’m coding. Just about every bit of writing I’ve done (especially my screenplays) are done to playlists I construct prior to setting down word one.
I know they say that your music tastes get locked in when you’re in your teens and twenties, and to some extent I can agree with that, but I’ve never stopped seeking out new music. The trick for me is that a) I’m really weirdly picky about what really moves me (extending to vocal qualities, production values, and other niggling details) and b) my primary genre is pretty damn niche (progressive metal ain’t something you stumble across every day — well, not the good stuff, anyway). So, at the beginning of this week, when I stumbled across a review of Wilderun’s “Epigone”, my year was made.
The first thing I actually heard was their cover of Radiohead’s Everything in the Right Place — if it hadn’t been that, I’m not sure that I would have given them a chance. I’ve been disappointed too many times, and it’s made me reticent to check out new bands. But this? One of the most epic covers I’ve ever heard.
It’s faithful to the original, importantly. At the same time, it’s — well, it’s gigantic. Immense. Towering. And it encapsulates the rest of the album. The massive production, with so many things nestled into the mix that you might not notice until subsequent listening, is something that I seek out actively. The seamless shifts between gentle and brutal are both jarring and not. And — most amazingly — they combine so many genres that shouldn’t work together but do. If you told me late last week that I’d be listening on repeat to a progressive metal band that has elements of doom, death, Viking/folk, and symphonic power, I’d laugh, because there’s no way I’d get into that, right?
Right…?
Nope. These guys are mind-blowing. Even the parts of the parts of the album that I know logically I wouldn’t normally like are crucial to the flow of the album. And the lyrics are beautiful, to boot. “She is a mountain / Within a storm / How beautifully weathered / With no effort…”!
Normally, I’m lucky to find a song every four or five albums that give me frisson. Epigone has five that I can actively point out (such as the shift at 4:13 in Passenger).
Point of all this – don’t stop looking for more of what makes you happy. It’s out there, if you’re patient and keep your eyes (or ears) open.
One of the most powerful moments of acting I’ve ever seen came in an episode of The Nevers. Specifically, Laura Donnelly as Amalia True, in the song translation scene (potential spoilers, but you’ve had plenty of time to watch it by now):
If this manages to stay embedded, I’ll be amazed.
Context would probably help there, but I’ll instead encourage you to watch the show (the scene above appears in season one, episode four: ‘Undertaking’); it’s (so far) a lovely piece of fiction with a wonderful cast and crew. Out of context, though, watching the sadness build behind a steely stone gaze, only to break free – but even then only within the confines of True’s controlled exterior… I was watching live and it punched me in the gut, and I think I might have immediately texted a friend in Boston to tell her to watch the show based purely on this scene, and the way it affected me. And then, the next week, during the recap (‘Previously on…’), they showed the scene, completely free of context, and it still got me. Again.
(There’s a similar moment in, of all places, Mythic Quest — I guess it’s technically the first season, but it’s the pandemic episode “Quarantine”. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you see it.)
I can’t help it. I’m a sucker for both the Duran Duran original and that eighties hair metal sound. It’s the perfect cover.
Duran Duran’s Ordinary World, off the self-titled 1993 album (commonly known as ‘The Wedding Album’), is one of the most affecting songs I’ve ever heard. Simon Le Bon write the lyric as a message to his best friend, who had passed away some years before, and you can absolutely hear both the determination to accept the loss and move forward as well as the lingering grief that Le Bon carries (“Where is my friend when I need you most? (Gone away)”). The first time I heard it — and I was somehow a huge Duran Duran fan in the midst of listening primarily to guitar heroes and prog metal — it registered with me as a song that would resonate in my heart for a long time, and I was right.
I’ve been a George Lynch fan since the early ’80s — it’s less embarrassing than it probably should be that I was really into Dokken for a while — and got really excited when it was announced that he and Jeff Pilson (Dokken’s bassist and currently also playing with Foreigner) would be releasing an album of cover tunes that they both dug. The disc is a mixed bag for me — Tracy Chapman’s One of Us is a nice reinvention, while I could go the rest of my life without hearing Champagne Supernova quite happily — but it’s Ordinary World that stands out to me. There’s the obvious — one of my favorite songs combined with slick hair metal production (It’s BIG! It’s heavy! It’s cinematic!) — but it’s the solo that kills me. I mean — kills.
Look, what Lynch does to the main riff — the first guitar break, after the second chorus — I kinda hate. It’s a personal opinion (as all things music are, y’know), but the noisier take on one of the most identifiable ‘pop guitar riffs’ just hits wrong for me. I get that. But then, after the repeats of “Any world is my world,” when the lead guitar kicks in at 4:30… the first time I heard this, I was frozen, speechless, and probably got that weird creeping chill at the base of my skull that I get every now and then.
It’s that same feeling that I pull from The Nevers moment, when that mask you wear starts to crack, when your internalization and validation and rationalization of your sadness stops working so well — when the waters create too much pressure, and the control is no longer possible, suddenly, if only for a brief moment.
As a consumer of the creative, this is exactly the sort of thing I live for.
Stumbling across this on YouTube (the drummer is also in one of my favorite bands, Leprous), my brain is knocked completely loose from it’s moorings. The polyrhythms alone at the very beginning, beating against the piano’s already off-kilter timing – to me, like being thrashed about by rapids while at the same time realizing that you’ve developed gills, so it’s suddenly comforting to just settle in for the ride, knowing that you can survive long enough to hear the siren’s song to completion. The melodies throughout, the violin and the melodic transition at the half-way mark, the shifting time-signatures, the wall-of-sound production, and my god that flawless ritardando at around 8:00, right back into a half-time march toward the end…
For me, these moments — hearing tracks like this (for another example that froze me in my tracks, check out Nils Frahm’s ‘Hammers’, above), reading a unique voice like Chuck Palahniuk or Warren Ellis, seeing your first Dali painting or video by Floria Sigismondi — are less moments of rebirth, less reminders that the world I live in is glass-half-full with plenty of things that still taste great… and more reminders of all the doors that haven’t been opened for me. Aren’t there always more of these waiting for me out there? For all of us? Maybe not even waiting to be found, but instead waiting to find us when we’re ready for them?
(I’ve been thinking a lot over the past year about the differences between illusion and magic, and this all seems to fall in there…)
