Wednesday, January 8, 2014

after everything now this - numbers



obtuse lyrically yet the thematic narrative seems to portray a type of meditation on death, when your number is up, its up baby. there's no bargain one can make with the universe, no deals done, exchanges or plea bargains, no escape. you are born and die, that's the ritual i think steve hints at. 
and then within the chorus a stream of consciousness assault upon how we are all equal in death. privilege, rank and status hold no escape, even time because it's running out.
it's the opening song on a magnificent album of emotional and almost pathos-like energy combined with the melancholy  mood of steve's lyric. 
can i just mention that this music is absolutely magnificent on headphones, the guitars are mean and lean, perfect, the drumming has such an interesting feel, styles shift and morph from almost military to some sort of calamitous wall of rock and roll played by octopi, tim's drumming is outside any drum box i ever heard, i really think he's got a unique style of building rhythms, i can't really even begin to explain it because the process is a painting resulting in something complex and deep yet beautiful but difficult to describe. 
theres a brilliant keyboard sporadically thrown in the mix, it's barely accessible yet it give's the song a flavour that you surrender to immediately.  
the harmonies are perfect, the effects on the instruments indicate an ear for radiophonics and tone. 
i like the command in steve's vocals, he's got that sage like knowledge and the words fall out like they would some old roman god telling the us mortals the cosmic joke in answer to a dumb question we ask. 
'oh yeah...' 
someone said to me once, rock and roll is about attitude, and this song has an attitude, but it's not the usual anti authoritarian, rebellious right of passage angsty attitude, it's not political, defined by division, ironically it's the uniting principle we are all in denial about. 
this the ultimate fatalistic song, your numbers up, no one gets out alive, its a fucking brilliant song and its even better to hear it preformed live. 

i'm aware theres a prophetic notion out there about the song, it was written just before 9-11 and contains some imagery of events yet to pass but i think this is actually insignificant and incidental to the song, it certainly ties it to a time and event yet i think for myself its beyond an event, it's a song about an inescapable fate everyone of us faces, and in a strange way it becomes healing, uplifting and kinda glorious in the same way i feel about, 'block.' 
these songs seem to have a spirit within them that nothing can stick to, they can't fail to appeal to the element within me that is also spirit. 
these songs may appear dark to the uninitiated but they are made out of light and that's the spirit of the church for me in a nutshell, it's why this whole cd and the church as a band stand out for me, music made from light.


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