39. FAR FROM HEAVENHere’s the third song from the latest album to be featured on my top 50 list. Just like with OTBOA, I got to listen to this song before buying the album (just a day before, though!). I was with a friend of mine, driving home at night. At first, as it often happens, I was not blown away by the song. I was expecting something more catcht, à la Wait For Sleep, but it didn’t happen, and as I was struggling to wait and not to listen to the leaked material, I didn’t give the song a second spin right away. Fast forward a good 20 hours. I’m still in my car, but I’m quietly watching the Bay of Cagliari from a high cliff with the CD in my hand. By the time the song was over I immediately realized how shallow I had been in my first judgement, as I had completely looked over the huge emotional depth of the song, from the wisely restrained piano work to the background strings, never out of place, never stealing the limelight yet always up there with the ivory keys laying a silky texture to the lyrics, the real treat of the song. James LaBrie pen has rarely, if ever, failed the fans (yes, I like the lyrics in POW), and this is for sure not one of those times, It is yet another set of lyrics dealing with a heartbreaking struggle within a person’s soul, a macro-theme shared with Vacant and Disappear. As always, James manages to convey at the very best the excruciating pain of being trapped in a tunnel with no light at the end, a state of mind and soul this time due to the child, from whose perspective the lyrics are told, not being able to meet the expectations, the wishes of his/her family. I’ve never really been through such a horrible condition, and yet I can easily relate to how a wretch could such a child feel: feeling like a stranger inside a shell others have shaped to fit their will and aims, like a cube struggling to fit in a sphere, a pawn performing the script of his own life. The song exudes these strong, albeit terrible, emotions, and to be able to reach this goal make in itself this song an accomplishment, regardless of everything else. And yet, the “everything else” is worth being praised as well, as I have already done before. If I had to choose the best bit of the song, it would be the little piano solo near the end of the song, a theme that would later be reprise in a much more grandiose fashion later in the album, which shines here of the light of a simple and naked beauty. Had I to make a top 10 ADTOE moments, those few seconds would rank very, very close to the top. To summarize, Far From Heaven is not my favourite song off A Dramatic Turn Of Events, and by a long shot, but is a sincere and simple song that only dares to speak to one’s heart. And it doesn’t fail.
38. ABOUT TO CRASH (REPRISE)This is probably one of the songs I come to listen the least often, as it comes near the ending of a long suite that I almost never feel the need to listen to in its entirety (it hasn’t happened in a year or so) and is not a common song in the live environment, where it is has never been played as a stand-alone piece, but always together with Solitary Shell and Losing Time/GF, to recreate the last section of SDOIT. Of the three I mentioned ATC(R) is the only one making to this top 50, and also the second-to-last song coming from the second disc you will get to see discussed here. I have no real reason to place this song higher than the first About To Crash, and you could swap the two song without me cringing. Yet, I found myself enjoying a tiny bit more the faster pace of a walk approaching the end that is so instrumental in the Reprise then the slow build up to a beautiful conclusion in the first part. But this is an opinion that vary with days, so you may thing the two songs as roughly equals to my perverse mind. The real highlight of the song is the beautiful lead solo at the 2:35 mark that, along with the uplifting instrumental section following right after seems to lead the unknowing listener to the darker section more towards the ending. As I said commenting the main song, this could be yet another way to convey on a more subtle level the psychic instability of the main character. So, an uplifting piece that is always pleasant to listen (the few times it comes out of its dusty lair!). Unfortunately, there are about 39/37 better song in the DT catalougue!
37. SPACE DYE VESTHere we go. A very good song? Yeah. The best DT song? Not by the longest show. The most emotional DT song? No, and you will see why. A song for all seasons? Maybe in the Ice Age...
Well, this song is for many reasons a one of its own kind piece, and I’m not going to tell you why as you already know. This song has been thoroughly discussed, disserted, bashed, praised and whatever else in the last 17 years that I’m not going to add anything to the great debate, and instead I will say some words about how I have so far fared with it. At the beginning of my “career” as a DT fan I used to keep a strongly biased opinion about this song: as a Jordan Rudess fan, I would (and to a lesser extent still do) find the aura of love and reverence for a long departed member quite annoying. How could he have been so good that everything he had touched was posthumously turned into gold by a crowd of adoring and nostalgic fans? Committing the exact mistake I scolded, I took a unjustified dislike of the song.
As the time passed, however, it became increasingly clear to my how foolish I had been, and gave the song a good number of second chances. I found myself to like the song a fair deal, and as of today I consider it the second best KM work in DT (do you know exactly how many songs are mostly Kevin’s with regard of music and lyrics? I daresay three). As a live listener, I wished for a long time to witness or simply listen to an en vivo rendition of this song, a wish that passed from “forbidden dream” to reality in less than five second (the time it takes to refresh a DTF page) when Rich Wilson dropped the bomb a few days before the still fondly remembered solo concert by JR and Tarrytown. Seconds later, I was certain of two things: that JR would have given the song a personal twist (and rightfully so, in my opinion), and that a fairly big shitstorm would have ensued as a result of Certainty#1. Thanks to tjsomething I got to listen and to watch the performance, and even included the audio on a ipod playlist for a while. I was not moved to tears (didn’t expect to) by the song and the way it was performed, and I can see where those people labelling the performance as lacking in terms of feeling and emotion come from , but I need to disagree, and quite strongly, on that matter. Space Dye Vest is an excellent song in that it is a 7 minutes long key to a precise set of feelings coming directly from KM. Another artist willing to pay a tribute to his songwriting effort may need to polish the key, or add and remove a few little things to fit his own lock and reach a psychological state similar to Kevin’s at the time the song was born. There is of course a limit to the freedom one could afford (you can open every lock firing a bullet at it), but I feel that this limit was not reached that night. All in all, this song is a beautiful piece of music and heart, meaningful, rich and simple at the same time. It’s beauty is probably dimmed by the whole KM thing that gave the song the curse of polarizing the fan base. Who knows what could have been the general perception of this song if everybody could just listen and judge without thinking to the real life events that followed this songs. Probably, we’ll never know.
Topic: Official DT Top 50 Thread Mark II (bss4life15 up now - starting page 79) (Read 245876 times)