Let's stop for a minute (isn't that sentence just hysterical in a thread featuring a 8 years hiatus and a 8 months vacation?) because this is a pivotal moment in my opinion of DT; sure, I couldn't know it at the time, but we're meta-ing this sucker since day one and there's no reason to stop now while the reader base couldn't fill a minivan. There is a b. and an a. Misunderstood for me, and while I try to explain the concept, please remember the only info I had on the band and its opus were one record, four cd's, and two live shows I had gone to. No interviews, no websites, no VHS/DVD commentaries (bought much later). Where did our relationship stand?
1992 (14yo – heavy metal phase) I&W: The Perfect Album, from the first E to the last audible fade-out note. Instant love, the rock upon which I build my church while the barbarians are vandalising the metal landscape.
1994 (16yo – conservatory snob phase) Awake: 75% great, 15% worrisome, 10% surprising. All the joy and hope (musical and lyrical) from the debut turns into gloom and claustrophobia. Not the perfect Evil Twin only because … well, not perfect.
(ACOS is a great huge song to play with while waiting for the next album …)
1997 (19yo – don't give a shit about rock music anymore) FII: Half treasure, half weak sauce. It's been good while it lasted, guys. I have to become a man, you are probably going to either break up or pull a Mascara Metallica.
1999 (21yo – just happy to be alive) SfaM: Comeback Player of the Year AND season MVP. The second DT album with the power to make an instant fan out of me, pretending I don't already know them (little I knew I had to wait 17 years for the third one). Where the fock are we going from here?
2002 (24 yo – balls deep musical theatre) SdoIT (which we're gonna call Toilet Wall): so far a hateful mess of a tune and a good rocker. Boring. They're content to play with house money and do my buddy James dirty. Then comes the masteclass in songwriting that is …
03 – Misunderstood:
0:00 – 0:40: These forty seconds will forever be my star witness in the John Petrucci Canonisation Among The Greatest Musicians of My Generation Trial. Harmony established in maximum economy, wonderful melody, and a progression of bass root tones that should grace the cover of every arrangement manual. Its deceptive “simplicity” is further proof of its greatness.
0:40 – 1:26: And, as always, great vocal melodies bring the best out of Big James, while he's at his worst with the sketchy ones ( ala Glass Prison). He's the ultimate gourmet singer.
1:26 – 1:42: Can you feel the tension growing under the progression, leaving it intact in its musical message, but completely twisting its mood to the point of giving the illusion to hear a whole different set of chords? Just like the way you talk and begin to increasingly feel … misunderstood.
1:42 – 2:20: And the discourse is left suspended, leaving a hyperventilating tambourine, a stubborn fat bass, and a blade of e-bowing discontent. Songwriting, storytelling, and painting combined.
2:20 – 3:00: But despite the silence, or maybe by its virtue, the melody goes on inside the misunderstood one's mind. There are constant nodes disrupting communication (the swift percussion licks) and droplets of regret (the reverse effects). After all, you are misunderstood because of hurdles and loops in your thinking/communication process.
3:00 – 3:20: Ok, let's try to organise our speech one more time, articulating serial ideas raining down like echoing keyboard notes until ...
3:20 – 3:35: … frustration ramps up, once again.
3:35 – 4:33: Please, don't be distracted by this chorus' sheer beauty, and notice three things: 1) THAT harmonic is the sound a dam crumbling in your mind does when you can' cope with being … misunderstood anymore 2) The fifth ¼ every other 4/4 bar (hence 4/4, 5/4, 4/4, 5/4, etc) is the resolutive sentence you always fail to deliver when you're … misunderstood; it's like a breath taken in order to speak but never spoken. 3) Once James sings “misunderstood”, the tempo goes even; admission brings clarity.
4:33 – 5:13: And clarity brings terror in all its atonal qualities. You think your words and intentions are clear, but the outside world hears them as (cue the brilliant and crucial guitar solo) slightly duplicitous, almost backwards, with such a internal eccentric logic sounding illogical and discordant. A melody “seen” through moving oily waters.
5:13 – 6:37: The mind gives up, the heart bursts out; it's time for the drums (in this infinite recurring ritual John Woo duel/ballet between Johnny P and Mighty Mike) to grab the paintbrush and draw this amazing tune's electrocardiogram.
6:37 – Hall of Fame: A hellish descent into incoherence is all that's left, with twisting sense re-emerging now and then. For the way I like to listen to songs and my point of view on songwriting, this is an absolute masterpiece. The first of its kind since SDV.
Coming Next: 04 – The Great Debate