Talkdemonic’s Eyes at Half Mast
Label: Arena Rock
Release: September 16, 2008
Download “March Movement” | When talking about a beautiful, wordless album like Talkdemonic’s Eyes at Half Mast, I’m sure the temptation to decode the narrative will come as irresistible to many. You could start with the album’s mysterious title, though any dimwit will realize quickly that the story here is not of weariness. If anything, the music exuberantly spins and spins from pretty much a single thematic source of inspiration without ever running thin. That leaves us with at least three other interpretations of the half-open eyes that adorn the title and the album artwork: the rushing of the mind and the awakening of the better part of it right before falling asleep; the blurriness of one’s vision and the unseeing of contours in favor of shapes; and the eyes that have yet to close before death.
The song titles are full of evocations, too: the opening track is called “Leaving Light”, and elsewhere scattered are bits of colors, like “Ending The Orange Glow”, “Black Wood Crimson”, “Dim Sky”, and “A Hundred Faces In The Neon Forest”. The truth is, however, that these titles aren’t clues to what follows as much as they are postscripts to the whole thing; they are a mere confirmation of the idea inherent in the songs, which is that the band celebrates in this record the richness of life that comes to its full being only from its biggest frailty: the fact of inevitable death that concludes it. The album’s press release mentions “a sense of loss and memory”, but you could really just toss a full range of emotions to the mix, everything that sweeps through all forms of successes and failures, and they would fit right in; which is to say, the record is not so much about a specific story as it is a story of all stories, a narrative of all narratives, and in that sense, very much cathartic–wrap any story in this music, and it’s sure to be better told.
It serves the album well that it’s without words (one less “contour”). Amongst the occasional occurrence of monosyllabic human voices, the record’s tone is chiefly set by Lisa Molinaro’s viola and cello. There is one song, “Dim Sky”, where their absence is accentuated by the play of digital sounds, which, elsewhere in the album, have been molded by mastermind Kevin O’Connor to sound quite natural amongst the warmth of the strings, the accents of the banjo, and earthiness of the drums. The term “electro” barely comes to mind.
The album came out today and Talkdemonic plays Mercury Lounge on Oct 11.
