Re: The Darker Album and the Songs
Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2016 6:39 am
I have been hearing this album consistently since it came out, something I have not done with LC albums since Ten New Songs, although I intend to go backwards to do just that with the intervening albums. Here are some of my thoughts and impressions, some general and some specific.
I mostly hear it early in the morning while driving to work, I find something about the album and LC’s voice that is very soothing and mellow at 7 am while I slowly make my way past the snowy landscape. LC once said a good album or song is something that gets you from point A to point B and this album has been doing just that most days for the past month or so. And when I reach point B, it is a thing of wonder to hit upon If I Didn’t Have Your Love – my favorite song on the album – and spend a few minutes in the car with windows rolled up and engine shut off. The best acoustics in the whole world in a cubicle of metal, plush and glass.
I like all the songs on the album but I guess at this time I particularly like If I Didn’t Have Your Love, Steer Your Way and It Seemed the Better Way. The first song that got my attention was If I Didn’t Have Your Love and it remains my favorite. Typically I do not read the lyrics until much later as I enjoy the sum of the parts together at first and for many subsequent hearings and I have to admit I misheard certain lyrics as:
If the sea should stand alone
And the flowers made of stone
…and heard it this may for almost two weeks until I took the trouble to read the lyrics. The misheard lyrics conjured up Dali-esque images of a body of water standing alone with no shore or cliff walls to support it on any side which totally blew my mind. Alternatively, I also considered an image of all life on land being petrified and fossilized – flowers made of stone – yet the sea still remained full of life (i.e. sea standing alone). Of course, I eventually realized I was totally wrong and getting high on nothing.
But to me If I Didn’t Have Your Love feels like the purest song on the album. This may sound somewhat pretentious – and it probably is – but it just feels that way to me. Whatever Mr. C was thinking and feeling at the time(s) he worked on the song I feel he meant every word of it and put a lot of emotion into it. I have no idea at all if that was really the case.
If the stars were all unpinned
And a cold and bitter wind
Swallowed up the world
Without a trace
These words evoke a vivid image of a Great Tent in the Sky that is being held together by stars (i.e. pins) and if the stars were indeed unpinned then our world would be swallowed up into the great void. Some ancient Native American and/or Central Asian cultures have this or some variant of this in their mythology. And if indeed the earth’s atmosphere is the Great Tent that protects and gives life to the earth, the holes appearing in this tent (i.e. ozone layer) might indeed eventually cause life to be swallowed up without a trace, although it would not quite literally be a cold and bitter wind that would do it.
On an even grander scale, if the Great Tent is the entire universe (the “Cosmic Model”) with all the stars keeping it in its place by their interstellar gravitational and other unknown energies, then unpinning the stars would cause our world to truly be swallowed into nothingness. And no one knows What Lies Outside.
Moving right along…
This album sounds like a cross between Recent Songs and Ten New Songs with a touch of The Future. The rhythm at the beginning feels like like Ten New Songs and the violins later on reminds me of Recent Songs but more understated, not quite as much front and center as in that album. I find Steer Your Way to be very cinematic in a post-apocalyptic sort of way. Especially the first verse -
ruins of the altar and the mall
fables of creation and fall
palaces that rise above the rot
One other line that caught my eye is in Traveling Light
I used to play
One mean guitar
There is a punch or bite to it that I like. It reminded me of a Sinatra song…also sung late in a bar that is closing.
You’d never know it
But buddy, I’m a kind of a poet
Anyway, these are some random thoughts the album evoked in me. I have one or two other things I will share about the “you” in above discussion.
I mostly hear it early in the morning while driving to work, I find something about the album and LC’s voice that is very soothing and mellow at 7 am while I slowly make my way past the snowy landscape. LC once said a good album or song is something that gets you from point A to point B and this album has been doing just that most days for the past month or so. And when I reach point B, it is a thing of wonder to hit upon If I Didn’t Have Your Love – my favorite song on the album – and spend a few minutes in the car with windows rolled up and engine shut off. The best acoustics in the whole world in a cubicle of metal, plush and glass.
I like all the songs on the album but I guess at this time I particularly like If I Didn’t Have Your Love, Steer Your Way and It Seemed the Better Way. The first song that got my attention was If I Didn’t Have Your Love and it remains my favorite. Typically I do not read the lyrics until much later as I enjoy the sum of the parts together at first and for many subsequent hearings and I have to admit I misheard certain lyrics as:
If the sea should stand alone
And the flowers made of stone
…and heard it this may for almost two weeks until I took the trouble to read the lyrics. The misheard lyrics conjured up Dali-esque images of a body of water standing alone with no shore or cliff walls to support it on any side which totally blew my mind. Alternatively, I also considered an image of all life on land being petrified and fossilized – flowers made of stone – yet the sea still remained full of life (i.e. sea standing alone). Of course, I eventually realized I was totally wrong and getting high on nothing.
But to me If I Didn’t Have Your Love feels like the purest song on the album. This may sound somewhat pretentious – and it probably is – but it just feels that way to me. Whatever Mr. C was thinking and feeling at the time(s) he worked on the song I feel he meant every word of it and put a lot of emotion into it. I have no idea at all if that was really the case.
If the stars were all unpinned
And a cold and bitter wind
Swallowed up the world
Without a trace
These words evoke a vivid image of a Great Tent in the Sky that is being held together by stars (i.e. pins) and if the stars were indeed unpinned then our world would be swallowed up into the great void. Some ancient Native American and/or Central Asian cultures have this or some variant of this in their mythology. And if indeed the earth’s atmosphere is the Great Tent that protects and gives life to the earth, the holes appearing in this tent (i.e. ozone layer) might indeed eventually cause life to be swallowed up without a trace, although it would not quite literally be a cold and bitter wind that would do it.
On an even grander scale, if the Great Tent is the entire universe (the “Cosmic Model”) with all the stars keeping it in its place by their interstellar gravitational and other unknown energies, then unpinning the stars would cause our world to truly be swallowed into nothingness. And no one knows What Lies Outside.
Moving right along…
This album sounds like a cross between Recent Songs and Ten New Songs with a touch of The Future. The rhythm at the beginning feels like like Ten New Songs and the violins later on reminds me of Recent Songs but more understated, not quite as much front and center as in that album. I find Steer Your Way to be very cinematic in a post-apocalyptic sort of way. Especially the first verse -
ruins of the altar and the mall
fables of creation and fall
palaces that rise above the rot
One other line that caught my eye is in Traveling Light
I used to play
One mean guitar
There is a punch or bite to it that I like. It reminded me of a Sinatra song…also sung late in a bar that is closing.
You’d never know it
But buddy, I’m a kind of a poet
Anyway, these are some random thoughts the album evoked in me. I have one or two other things I will share about the “you” in above discussion.