Procedural Note: This column marks two firsts. Of these, the more minor is that for once I'm writing it ahead of time, although technically it's early Wednesday rather than late Tuesday. That doesn't really make a difference, I'm including it for interest's sake more than anything else. This also marks the first WES that is about an album rather than a song.
The original idea for WES was to do a song a week at least until I had enough for a good mix CD, and then just do whatever from there. This has, I confess, added a slight element of planning into each week's selection, not that I mind. I still plan to do this, and announce it once the first volume of the WES archive album is complete; not that I'd ever send someone a copy if they asked me to or anything, because that would be wrong (the RIAA tells me so!), but, you know, just so you know.
The Dears' No Cities Left is an album that I have been listening to, enjoying, and thinking about enough to have me disrupt my plans slightly. Normally WES will continue to focus on single songs (albeit not necessarily singles), but every so often I'm sure I'll get distracted. In any case, enjoy.
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No Cities Left has been occupying an awful lot of my attention recently, and admittedly it has a pretty powerful concept: The end of the world as the end of a relationship, and the end of a relationship as the end of the world. Bandleader Murray Lightburn has said in interviews that he has loosely conceived as their first three albums as a trilogy, although in a more thematic and less literal sense than, say, The Lord of the Rings. No Cities Left is the second album, and thus our Empire Strikes Back.
Things begin pretty direly for the world and the relationship with 'We Can Have It', although already there are hints of optimism showing through. Things build to the crescendo of Lightburn singing You're not alone repeatedly, only to sing And you never said I'd see you again/You never said I will. Lightburn's tone throughout the album is worthy of discussion in and of itself; here he sounds wounded and accusatory. But the song is not a rejoinder to a lost love; it's about people searching for something, and during 'We Can Have It''s long slump of an ending, Lightburn says that even someone who's 'got it all' isn't what they want. There is some sort of transcendence being sought here.*
Next we have perhaps the oddest song here, entitled 'Who Are You, Defenders Of The Universe?' I think that might be political commentary, although the song is sung by Lightburn in an official monotone about people who refuse to admit to loving their families. Ultimately it comes down to the dilemma 'Cos I can't help you/And you can't help me/I can help you /And you can help me. Eventually Lightburn comes down on the latter side of the equation, but even then there's doubt we can do this. This is the end of the first, lightest part of the album, however.
Single 'Lost In The Plot' follows, with a bang: And I promise not to cry any more. The music is swelling and sweeping and very, very compelling, but Lightburn is demurely breaking down in the center. There is an ironic middle eight where the lines Our love, don't mess with our love/Our love is so much stronger are repeated, and perhaps one of the more overt uses on the album of Natalia Yanchak's occasional keyboard technique of having a single high, wavering tone sustained. By the end of the song, Lightburn's promise not to cry is beginning to sound like resolve, not defeat, but this is quickly disposed of.
'The Second Part' is where the despair that has been lingering around the songs finally grabs hold of the proceedings. It should be pointed out that No Cities Left is not a depressing album, although it may well be a depressed one. But it is showing the breaking down of something, so it has to go into some very dark places. Although Lightburn starts out with I left house/It was just to see you/For an hour over a light, acoustic strum complete with hazzy horn figure, he is escorted past the doorman for a second time, and then the music builts to a climx, and then
All of the time/I thought I was crazy because you told me so
The line, and Lightburn's delivery of it, speaks volumes about the cruelty of the past relationship (again, with a person or the world is left open). But still, everything Lightburn wants is gone for good this time, and he knows it.
To seque into the least reassuring song ever given the name 'Don't Lose The Faith' from here is natural, and while the verses speak of shut-ins who only think they have no friends, it's telling that in the chorus Lightburn sings most of it in his normal voice but the title phrase is intoned in the style of a backing vocal, an interior voice trying to shore up the narrator. But it's still a holding pattern, the music breezy pop again, almost AOR. But there's still one song left on Side A, as the album divides itself on the back.
'Expect The Worst/'Cos She's A Tourist' starts out a with brief, tense, repetitive string figure that reminds me of the Kronos Quartet's work on the Requiem For A Dream soundtrack, and as Lightburn begins to tell the tale of wastrel who hasn't been sleeping well/I've been a loner (going back to 'Don't Lose The Faith') the drums pound. The synth choir takes over as he sings My heart is aching/My back is breaking/It's me/It's you/It's me/It's you despairingly, and the strings and drums start to gallop, rearing to a new height
And it stops. Dead. A minute and a half into what was going to be a very good song and now it's a completely different sort of very good song, and will stick with this one for the next six-odd minutes. There's a becalmed synth wash and a three-note electric guitar pattern, and he sighs out So you'd decided on an art school/And it wasn't that you wanted to be cruel, too tired for resentment, too tired for life.
I'm not being melodramatic; Lightburn says The ocean is long and deep, but I'm gonna try/Maybe I'll die. He repeats the last line a few times, each time in a falsetto pitched between suicide and petulance, and Yanchak each times echoes on backing vocals Don't hold me back, don't hold me back, don't hold me back, don't hold me back. Is she talking to Lightburn? Is she supposed to be Lightburn? If so, is he saying don't interfere, or let me go, finally? Eventually they both fade, and some saxes come in, still over the same three notes. They vamp over the oceanic synth for a while, and then everything fades but those three notes. And they keep going by themself for twenty seconds. Alone, they sound more and more menacing.
Side B opens with 'Pinned Together, Falling Apart', apparantly a live favorite at much longer than the six minutes here. It opens with cacophony and resolves into what appears at first to be devotion; I/Have been terrified/By the thought of losing you. But two things interfere; we know he has lost her already, and his reponse is Stop telling me/I don't want to know/Stop telling me because I just won't ever want to know. It builds into an organ-fuelled blowout, Lightburn just repeating No, no, no over and over again, loss crystalized into pathology. Again the fake choirs take up the counterpoint. They're mostly just Yanchak, I'd imagine (and a whole essay could be written about her role in the album, but not by me), as the guitar burns and Lightburn howls.
'Never Destroy Us' could have been uplifting, in different circumstances. But here the assertion And I know we can last/If we could forget about the past sounds more sad than anything else. The horns are back for another light song, Yanchak harmonizing until the closing refrain of Never destroy us, which is presented in the lyrics as "Never/(destroy us)", which puts a different spin on things. It repeats in a dual monotone, sonding more and more like blind assertion than true belief.
And then the music pauses and when it starts us again it's the loudest it has been yet on the album, and Lightburn is absolutely screaming againstartagainstartagainstartagainstartagain (that's the way it's printed), in a rage for destruction, clearcutting what he's been through to start some new growth.
'Warm And Sunny Days' is no new growth. It's a plea, one last time as it turns out, for the other's return. There is a melodic purity in the way Lightburn sings Stay in the chorus, but as that sound dopplers out you can hear another Lightburn, in the back, distorted, adding that There's nowhere left to run. He can't even think of a reason for the other to stay, aside from a lack of options. The second verse presents what Lightburn's narrator has come to:
My arms are flailing
Am I a failure?
My god the pressure's on
And I still don't have a son
My body's sore from sleeping on the couch because you're gone
These feelings that I have tonight
Waiting for the phone to rung
My stomach hurts it's tearing us apart
But Lightburn reassures himself that he's got to think of warm and sunny days. The song drifts out in a haze of irresolution.
'22: The Death Of All The Romance' opens, not with Lightburn, but with Yanchak. The song itself is a surprise, seemingly pessimistic, but actually the beginning of the final, postive act of No Cities Left. Yanchak sings I have never cried/In anybody's arms/The way that I have always cried in yours, but this is only negative if you assume the crying, instead of the fact that she can't cry around others, is the problem. Since the chorus consists of Yanchak and Lightburn duetting on the lines I can't believe the things you say/Tell me, tell me, tell me the lies, to me the song resolves in a love song between two people who can't connect with anyone except each other, although they may be liars, cads, or worse. But Lightburn swears I/Shall avenge/The death of all the romance/Until I'm gone. It's a fucked up relationship, but it seems to be working, and even if they lies being told include the fact that this may be Lightburn's narrator's memory or fantasy, things are looking up.
That the next song is called 'Postcard From Purgatory' indicates that all is not sweetness and light, however. The song is mostly an instrumental, sounding initially like Pulp circa This Is Hardcore (which isn't a terrible comparison at least in spirit for the album as a whole). Lightburn and co. intone, as from a distance, the lines We have not wasted/Wasted all/All of our lives/Empty heads/Empty mouths/Empty hearts/Empty souls The music boils away and starts again with more distortion, and finally some of the Godspeed comparisons make a slight bit of sense. It stretches out to the horizon, and then coils back again, the organ hum persisting as it all shuts down. The snare ticks. The bass starts going. The guitar grinds in.
And then that flute. It repeats a simple little figure, almost cheery sounding. The music builds behind it, and builds and builds and builds, and almost thrashes, and that silly little flute part (officially my favorite rock use of the instrument ever, even though my girlfriend is a big Jethro Tull fan) just keeps going and going. The whole thing finally roars to a halt just shy of eight minutes.
One song left, the title track. We've had heartbreak, and apocalypse (especially if you consider that at almost no point did Lightburn have to be singing about a person), and despair, and at least some hope of rebirth; how will they end it?
Let's just keep fighting the end/We're holding hands/We're making plans/For life. It sounds like end-credit music. It's not as cheery as you might think; 'the end' is acknowledged as inescapable and inevitable, but there has been the choice made to fight against it nonetheless. At the end of the song Lightburn acknowledges that 'the end' is that of the world, but claims that We will hold hands/We will make plans/for life. Then the band gears up one last time, and as they fade out the choir comes in again. Transcendance of some sort has been reached, perhaps in fighting for life (the world? the other? love?) in the face of insurmountable odds.
Writing about this album so extensively hasn't really helped me articulate the way it makes me feel (not that I expected it to), nor am I sure that it makes much sense to those of you who haven't heard it yet (probably all of you). But now I finally have closure with the damn thing, this album so full of bombast and piety, love and hate, arrogance and despair. In their next album the Dears have basically set themselves the challenge of either saving the world or destroying it, but I think they might be up to the challenge.
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*I could make a better case for this, and probably many more point to come, if I quoted more lyrics at you. I don't see that as being particularly productive, however. I suggest you buy the album, which comes with lyrics, or perhaps they're now up at The Dears' site.
