A little quiz game for the All-Saints festivities perhaps?
Why? Well, because I for one feel like it, my name's Alex so I can do some bootleg Jeopardy, and because I need vagons of levity to go back in 2002, when the next song didn't resonate the same way it does today. So:
1) It put MetalliMascara in the movies
2) Could very well be my wrestling entrance music's title
3) An all time top 5 side A closer.
Yep, you got it, it's Disappear:
0:00 – 0:34: We may talk too much about DT, but we seriously don't talk enough about their uncanny ability to frame a mood with a handful of bars. Funny, because the very band's name is a pretty accurate description of what I've just described. Those notes longing to be together but deceptively suggesting dissonance, the Ill Honky Tonk Piano lifted from an hypothetical Scenes parallel narration …
0:34 – 0:58: … Right. Same Regression/Spirit 6/8 signature strumming. This is both musically promising and songwriting/storytelling wise intriguing. The piano changes are a little bit close to Karma Police for comfort, but since Karma Police is a shameless Sexy Sadie theft I'll let that slide. (If you think I would perform my italics “couldn't help it” schtick for focking Radiohead, you haven't been paying attention).
0:58 – 2:06: Let me put my LaBrie's Avenger cape on. I promise you it's waaay more difficult to be so expressive and soulful at the bottom of your range than it is near the ceiling. High notes are pole dancing, low and slow ones are ballet. On a sidenote, I don't see the need to drown the vocals in such reverb; it must be this album's “thou shan't leave thy voice unprocessed” mantra.
2:06 – 2:32: Lucy in the Sky mellotron, on the same time signature and tempo I might add! I was not mistaken, this is a Lennonesque piece of songwriting (although the mellotron was allegedly a Macca idea). Do what you please with this information, but for me it's huge. Whenever your music shines a light on your tether to Bach or the Beatles, you're doing it extremely right.
2:32 – 2:35: Four notes, four focking simple notes, yet impossibly important. Please, do me a favour and edit the whole song without this section, instantly forget you did it, listen again, and tell me whether it feels completely different. Such is the power of emotional transitions. I know, you won't do me this favour, so you'll have to trust me or wave this paragraph off as musical lunacy. No hard feelings.
2:35 – 2:48: Repetition, hence considerations: I've jus waxed poethical about transitions after celebrating this piece's Lennonesque qualities ... and John Winston Lennon was notoriously one to eschew the very notion of transitioning. I know sweet fock all.
2:48 – 3:56: Is it possible to enormously contribute to the emotional mood (in a trasformative way I dare say) just by snare placement in the groove? It is if you are Michael Portnoy (big Lennon fan, I hear). Speaking about mood, I could do without the keyboard choir patch. Keeping with this installment theme, I'd like this section best “naked”, a sort of Across the Universe without strings. Does the DT Custom Shop still exist?
3:56 – 4:26: And of course, the harp plus Money for Nothing wah coupling is so perfect it moves to tears, way greater than the sum of its parts. Plus, let me point out that Johnny P is showing a structural restrain on par with Bill Bruford's writing credit winning (lack of) performance in Trio.
4:26 – 5:20: Perfect orchestrational and vocal crescendo: this song is really the perfect companion piece to The Spirit Carries On. Same ts, tempo, almost parallel negative harmony, yet stripped down and on opposite mood and landscape. A very different but related way for a soul to change plane of of existance. Again, as far as I'm concerned, Toilet Wall is showing DT at their songwriting maturity peak. Before I forget while wallowing in my tangents, in this instance the vocal processing is focking brilliant: a way to hear and feel both narrator and subject. Also, the way “never forget” is sung is reason #649 I love Big James, who vindicates the whole side A with a bunch of measures.
5:20 – 5:40: And tis is the sad brother to the “familiar voices shining through” section just before the acoustic breakdown in Scenes' last song. Appropriate and brilliant. Someone here is Finally Free, just in a very different but related way.
5:40 – 6:45: Full circle (again) hence return of the son of considerations: with this song (and Misunderstood) we have DT at their most songwriting confident; not “we can go out of our ballpark” confident, but “we still need to find out where our ballpark's fences are because we can't see focking any” confident. Strangely enough, this confidence is articulated both via obnoxious experimental fat in desperate need to be trimmed (Glass Prison and Great Debate) both via elegant restrain* (Misunderstood and Disappear). Blind Faith is just what it is: a motherfocking great great DT banger.
*Devil in the details: listen to Jordan closing up Disappear. You'd expect his patented minMaj7 flourishing arpeggio. Not this time: this song needed just a gently tap on a simple minor triad. And it takes the strenght of a genius and some state of grace.
Coming Next: I haven't forgot about you, Black Bitch.
Topic: Scenes From My Memory v. Honor Thy Father (Read 136844 times)
