A promise is a colonoscopy is a promise
V: Goodnight Kiss:0:00 – 0:55: THAT, my dear friends, was a pretty proper outro-to-intro transition. They know how to work'em, hell, they can crap'em out on command, hence it's really puzzling when they don't. Fun fact: About to Crash ends with an Eb chord choosing to descend a half step to an ominous Dbm; what if it bravely chose to go a half step up to a E7, the perfect dominant for Goodnight Kiss' first chord? (Amaj7, I suspect with 9th spices) Alas, we'll never know.
0:55 – 1:23: That's what I like: James surfing on a nice phaser and lavender in my bed. We can have nice things.
1:23 – 1:51: I never tire of this melody and progression. I don't know why, but it's very reminiscent – without nicking anything – of Bohemian Rhapsody.
1:51 – 2:19: Tie him to the piano! Tie him to the piano! Such a tasty painting of gentle droplets, with distant thunder echoing, courtesy of Mighty Mike. It's focking Dream Theater when they plant pictures in your mind; we can leave the heavy posturing and ultra speed masturbation to Nightmare Cinema.
2:19 – 3:14: Not really a repetition, but still worth some considerations: this verse to chorus sequence may be DT in their perfect Dark Side of the Moon (which I suspect they were set to replicate here, but more on that later): pace, space, mood, the whole nine yards. Also, Johnny M bass lines are literally to cry for. What a focking artist of a human being(?).
3:14 – 3:42: Supertramp territory, surprisingly and in a good way.
3:42 – 4:42: Confession time, no jokes. I didn't talk until I was about 3; I knew the words and I was capable to learn what I heard (or so I'm told), I just didn't spit them out. My parents were scared shitless (there was no general knowledge about people on the spectrum – it turned out I'm not, but still - in the seventies), then I was allowed to cock around with grandad's piano and everything came out at once, with copious amounts of tears. Since then music speaks to me bypassing words and meaning, and some pieces bring me to tears before I even manage to dissect the musical score taking form inside my mind while listening. Rock tunes' specific melodies that manage to do that: Starless lick, Fool on the Hill chorus, Fifth of Firth guitar solo, this whole section.
4:42 – 5:39: Johnny P Satching on a groove, 15 years before A New Beginning. Precognitions aside, nice piece of songwriting as the sweetest melody ever is followed by a menacing stomp, just like deranged minds are often capable of both showing the purest feelings of human nature and scare you shitless on a dime.
5:39 – 5:58: IF YOU DON'T HAVE YOUR MEAT, YOU CAN'T HAVE YOUR PUDDING!5:58 – 6:17: (Let's pretend I don't know where this is going to) Wherever this is going to, THIS is a focking proper prog transition.
VI: Solitary Shell:0:00 – 0:16: I can help it, but I have to:
Climbing up on Solsbury Hill, I could see the city lights ...0:16 – 0:33:Jordan's signature solo? Solitary Shell's opening.
Straight and to the point yet melodically gorgeous and a clever wink to the '70s prog keyboards/moog tradition.
0:33 – 1:07: Evidence #45 the guys are at their songwriting zenith: every ¾ bar is followed by a 4/4 bar, suggesting a normality cyclically and hopelessly crippled, while the vocal line stealing a 1/8 on the upbeat every time shows the desperate struggle to compensate. Sorry for being somehow musically pedantic, but music is important: it's the only thing we made comparable to divine creation.
1:07 – 1:26: Nice little middle-eight. Nobody does middle-eights anymore. The Beatles did in spades and ruined it for everybody apparently.
1:26 – 2:04: Three things I will never understand:
1. Girls going to the restroom together
2. Snowboarding
3. How we managed to create a world where this song (and We All Need Some Light) aren't massive global radio hits.
2:04 – 2:14: Of course, leave it to Mike to perform a fill that is not a fill from, to, or between anything. Just a spontaneous burst of drumming emotion. If you think it's gratuitously random, please cut it from the song and see what happens.
2:14 – 3:45: Repetition (a big one, but we're obviously gunning for radio hit classic structure here) hence considerations: Jordan plays magic, Johnny P exhudes taste, Mike sweats genius, James is comfortably charming (the focking way he sings the last “he was fine” is gut-wrenching), yet this is absolutely Johnny M's song. Listen carefully. It's subtle, it's camouflaged, but such is the way of the ninja.
3:45 – 3:58: The most random comparison in this thread to date: Attack on Dollet, FFVIII OST, by Nobuo Uematsu, about one minute in. Do you see the aural cognitive hell I'm living in?
3:58 – 4:24: This, this right here, is the exact centre of The Compass.
4:24 – 5:21:“Hello, dad?”
“Jesus Christ! Do you know what time is?”
“Almost, it's Ale, and it's 2 in the morning ...”
“God, why the law prohibiting vasectomy was abrogated only in 1978?”
“ I said it's Ale. Check this ...”
“... You call me to make me listen to Al DiMeola, Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea and Steve Gadd?”
“tsk tsk tsk”
5:21 – 5:47:“Oh, it's your guys, innit?”
“Yeah”
“Good. Can you please fock off now before Margaret Thatcher wakes up?”
“At once!”
VII: About to Crash (Reprise):0:00 – 0:49: This is not jarring, this is cinematically and intentionally motherfocking turbocharging. There is a difference.
0:49 – 1:15: I've heard hundreds of fans whining about James flirting with the cringe here. You know what I never heard but should have? Millions of people gushing about the monstrous bass world domination Johnny M is performing. Be truthful, have you ever noticed?
1:15 – 1:57: Sorry, but these ideas where well worth a whole new song/mental condition. Isn't that awfully obvious? Ditch the pretentious Overture, make sense of War's and Test's best bits, turn this one into, I don't know, My Uncle Is Hyper, give up the long gong, et voilà: you have 6 nifty degrees sans bloat in a tidy ACOS-ish running time. My treat, boys, really.
1:57 – 3:00: Simply put, a Liquid Tension Experiment session, Levin and all, transplanted into DT's catalogue. Nothing wrong with that.
3:00 – 3:18: She crashed on the Bells of Notre-Dame!
3:18 – 3:36: She found a piece of Fatal Tragedy lying on the floor!
3:36 – 4:04: Sorry, you fool no one. This is a preposterous attempt to pretend War Inside My Head was an organic planned part, while it's clear to all and sundry it was just the answer to: “This is all so mellow, we need to seduce Pantera fans, dammit! If I can't have girls at my show at least I demand mosh pits!”.
VIII: Losing Time / Grand Finale:0:00 – 0:17: Please let it be ternary, let it be ternary, let it be ternary …
0:17 – 0:33: YES! Everything works smoother in three. Shooting basketball, marriages, DT music. Everything.
0:33 – 1:07: Remember The Compass? I think we've just touched the Journey border.
1:07 – 1:40: Seriously, I may be tripping now, but the beautiful Picardy third (i.e. Flipping a minor melody into a major one right at phrase's end by virtue of raising the third) carried by the vocal harmony – and underlined by the band – is the perfect portrait of an elusive self-deluded sense of bliss in desperate circumstances. Pity me, I say, pity me!
1:40 – 4:10: I could write a lot about this section (and the little well hidden Also Sprach Zarathustra nod), but I won't. I will only type Kevin focking James LaBrie. Also, be very careful what you wish for, you ungrateful unrespectful unsympathetic detractors: no Phil Anselmo, Russell Allen or whoeverthefock could ever bring this tune home this way, not in a million lifetimes.
Right, I promised an Overture analysis, but I realised I scattered all my points through the timestamp paragraphs. The heart of the matter is – beautiful as it may be - it represents an unnecessary bloated ballast of contrivance bestowed to an otherwise brilliant suite idea, undressing every sterile laboratory intervention underneath.
I get it, someone said: let's have ourself our Dark Side of the Moon, because we're the focking Stanley Kubrick/Quentin Tarantino of rock and we must re-invent every milestone. Too bad Pink Floyd never coldly decided to make a DsotM (or to have their version of Sgt Pepper), it came together through songs and ideas. Heck, they never “decided” to make I&W, they just made it. Jesus Christ wasn't a Christian, he just had ideas and the label came centuries later. See where I'm going?
This album, which could have been really an all-time great, is the start of DT gimmick albums, where decisions are made pre-production and the creative process must jump through self-imposed “our due place in rock history” hoops instead of flowing free and brewing with patience. It's a very slippery slope that will lead to their worst album ever, but this is a story for another post.
COMING NEXT: “Let's make Master of Puppets!”
Topic: Scenes From My Memory v. Honor Thy Father (Read 137306 times)
