Six years in the making, this self-proclaimed ex-“doom” metal band has put together something so inspirational you might wonder whether it’s being ironic. And who could blame you? With a name like Anathema (cursed, profane), gritty growl rock seems like the obvious genre. Instead, the group has used the space in their discography to evolve, moving album by album since 1993 away from angsty “gothic” themes and onto ground that couldn’t be more eloquent and adult.

We’re Here Because We’re Here is a document of 21^st Century spirituality, a melodic prayer to the gods of Struggle and Acceptance. It’s a wholly modern epiphany: basically, the idea that epiphanies in the traditional sense are overrated, the stuff of movies and melodrama. Clarity comes in embracing the unclear, it suggests.

We’re here because we’re here. And that’s enough.

Produced by progressive rock mastermind Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), there’s a lot of drama on this record. There’s a darkness, bass lines creeping below the surface of glossier rhythms, haunting piano melodies. And in a way, that prevailing mood seems to carry the brighter elements on its back, keeping the optimism from ever feeling hokey and the moments of relief that much more ethereal (“Presence” is the perfect mid-album respite; “Summer Night Horizon” builds a pretty kind of tension that permeates the entire runtime).

Through a lot of great vocal harmonies (you’ve really got to hand it to Lee Douglas for the depth of color she contributes) and some subtle and fantastic keyboard work, the album builds its atmosphere. The organs, the orchestral sections, it’s all icing after that, because although a lot is happening in these tracks, the compositions are pretty straight-forward. The musicianship is dense, but never showy.

This is not your everyday rock album.

Buried deep beneath We’re Here’s rolling piano-driven soundscapes is the suggestion that the space within us all holds the potential for divinity, the potential to love and be loved. But there’s no talk of God here—it isn’t that kind of record. It’s more about learning to be happy in a world where the concept of God is irrelevant.

“Only you can heal your life”—this line is sung over and over again (“Angels Walk Among Us”). Understanding it is the charge that keeps this album breathing.

Released last June (Kscope), We’re Here Because We’re Here could have (and maybe should have) been on my shortlist of “Albums About Starting Over” in January.  It’s recently been taking home awards (UK’s Classic Rock Magazine named it “Prog Album of 2010”), and I wanted to talk about it before getting any later in the year.

With their eighth and latest LP, Anathema—the ex-metal heads, the former “death” rockers—have made one of the most triumphant records around. It’s an experience, one that gets better on each listen. It’s also a response to the band’s earlier work—a response to itself.

We’re Here Because We’re Here may explore serious themes but don’t think it’s all ideas and philosophy. The album’s got listenability. It’s a musical diary entry, a soaring flight into the piercing light of letting go.

It’s an invitation to come along.
 
 
Listen:

*So I’m cheating again this week–and if you’ve been following this list even a little bit, you should be used to that by now.

They say in writing school that sometimes you can be “too close” to things to write about them. Usually traumas. They say that you can be too invested. But really that’s just a slogan; nobody actually waits. Because how could you? The insides are the most intense. So much nameless passion swirling around and, really, it’d be a shame to waste it.

This week’s entry, which I’m stealing from deeper in my blog (one of my first posts, actually), is one of those cases. “Too close.” I think I understand the theory better now than I did then, but I also think there’s a definite value in documenting the trainwreck instead of the aftermath. The aftermath is easy, all logic and reason and proverbs and distance. But the storm is chaos. It’s more honest, in a way–a mixed up, ADD, hyper-saturated way, but a way.

2007 was a big year for me. Not only did I get to live out my first real-life breakup, but it was also when I got to see my first Porcupine Tree show… which quickly turned into shows, plural. I related to the Fear of a Blank Planet album in a huge way. It was packed with this dark rush of adolescent angst; it was about being disconnected, locked in bedrooms and staring at screens. It was about growing up in the age of Internet.

Below I embedded a song from each album, as usual. One is an HD capture from a full, legit show, but I wish there were some footage from the We Lost the Skyline recording–since I was actually lucky enough to be in the crowd for that one, at an awesome little CD store in Orlando, FL called Park Ave.. If the piece I’m linking to this week doesn’t hint at what seeing this band live, twice, did for me that infamous summer, I hope the songs will.

CLICK HERE to read the article I wrote a few years back about experiencing Porcupine Tree during their Fear tour in the summer of 2007.

Listen/Watch:

“And I slow down… I slow down in love”

Hold a gun to my head and I’ll tell you Blackfield I is a better record than Blackfield II. But I think by now it’s pretty clear, my list isn’t about “bests.”* And I want to talk about II.

*Reread my 50AP preamble

Back 26 weeks ago when we started the Albums Project, Scott talked about how after a few picks he noticed a lean in his list toward Best Songs over Best Albums. I can’t say I had the same problem, but there was one track that I just couldn’t stop trying to make fit into my Top 50, and that was the opener to Blackfield’s second outing, “Once”

Blackfield is Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree, general prog mastermind) and Aviv Geffen (Israeli superstar). It’s a pop outlet. Its songs are sad, short, and self-contained. It’s focused. It’s about getting to the root of emotions, rather than building chapels around them.

This song, “Once,” I couldn’t justify it not being on my list. This entire process, the whole “write a review every week for a year” thing was setup completely for the purpose, in my mind anyway, of sketching a long and elaborate portrait of myself, using only words, sounds, association. You do that by focusing on pieces that mean something to you, that hold a certain weight, for whatever reason. Under that criterion, not including Blackfield felt like the whole thing was turning counterfeit.

“Doing nothing but staring at flickering screens”

“Once” kick-starts Blackfield II with the most tender look at depression, sad memories of how things used to be (in this case, used to be before a breakup: “Once she would hold me / she was my only / only true love”). But by the album’s end, we’ve devolved into something lower—not the “Oh, I’m so sad” kind of grief, but the kind that has no words, the kind they don’t make movies about or show on TV since it’s all in the eyes.

Potato chip crumbs on the shirt, wrinkled sweat pants, daytime TV—this is a pretty kind of ugliness. But when the album gets to “End of the World” in its final track, though, this kind of pain… this is different:

It’s the end of the world
The end of the world
It’s a prison for dreams and for hopes
And still we believe there is God
It’s the end of the world
The end of the world
We’re dead but pretend we’re alive
Full of ignorance, fools in disguise

And that’s it; that’s how the album ends. There isn’t any light at the end of the tunnel, no bright sides or silver linings. It just stops.

The thing about depression—actual depression—is that it isn’t dramatic. With Blackfield II, Wilson and Geffen go for that honest, hopeless form because they each believe there’s beauty to be found in it. As distorted as it sounds, they see something hyper-human in sadness, more than in happiness, something genuine and true. And so do I.

That’s not to say the songs on this record aren’t stylish; they’re just not florid. They’re direct, because that’s what you want when you’re a wreck. You want a confidant, an empathizer. And every time I listen to Blackfield II, I feel like I’m sharing something with anyone who’s ever willingly played depressing music just for something to cry and commiserate with. Which isn’t catharsis so much as organized torture.

You don’t have to wear black to honor the dead; all you have to do feel terrible and know that, for a time, nothing else makes sense.
 
 
Listen/Watch:

So I’ve been brought on as the Music Columnist for a startup alternative paper in Florida called the Saint Augustine Underground. Issue 1 will be hitting streets Black Friday (next week, Nov. 26), but a piece about my recent trip to NYC to see Porcupine Tree at Radio City Music Hall can be devoured now online.

Check it out, check out the site, and if you live around N. Florida, pick up a free copy of the Underground at any of 200+ racks scattered around the city. Black Friday. This is gonna be awesome.

Step into Radio City Musical Hall and it’s like you’re in a cathedral. The ceilings are lost somewhere in the sky, lights are hidden and dimmed, and if you’re one of the first inside you can hear your voice graze past every crevice, slide down every gold and maroon curtain, then ripple through the open air until it finally returns to you, somehow fuller, somehow different than it left. …READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE…

www.StAugustineUnderground.net

Every month Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree/Blackfield/No-Man writes a column for Electronic Musician magazine. His articles, like everything he produces, are thoughtful and earnest, written with a feeling of genuine concern for the music industry and how it survives in the 21st century.

My deep admiration for this guy is no secret. On top of being an incredibly talented musician and producer, he’s also an intellectual. I respect his methods as much as I agree with most of his insights. But that’s not why I’m posting this.

There’s a difference between admiration and obsession. Whereas the latter is blind and usually fleeting, the former is skeptical, even hesitant. You have to earn admiration; it’s tested and questioned. And in Wilson’s case, for me, it’s continuously affirmed. Challenging most of how modern music is conceived and covered, his demeanor is never abrasive, and I honestly have a hard time thinking of anyone whose stances I find myself nodding along to in agreeance as often as I do with his.

If you consider yourself any kind of serious music fan or writer, check out Wilson’s latest article about criticism in the Internet Age. Others have obviously made some of the same points he talks about here, but considering the Albums Project I’m participating in currently, and how I try to approach each of my “reviews” there, this couldn’t be more relevant. Read this and past month’s columns here.

From the beginnings of “progressive” rock with Rubber Soul/Revolver at #40, Frost* is the mark that we’ve officially reached the other pole of the spectrum.

What started as an in-his-spare-time synth experiment of pop music producer Jem Godfrey’s, Milliontown was never intended as a proper album. It was more of a pet project, an after-work “labor of love” that sort of took on a life of its own and gave birth to what is now Frost*, one of the latest and most uncompromising prog-rock outfits with a flair for layering, excess and the wonders of post-production.

Think of it this way: If Rubber Soul/Revolver was the start of a kind of musical awakening, Milliontown is what happens 5 cups of coffee afterward. In my review for Liquid Tension Experiment I (my #47 pick), I refer to the album as an exercise in “showy virtuoso freakout,” and in a sense, you could file Milliontown into the same log. Where this album is a little different, though, is in its sense of self-awareness. Is it self-indulgent? Definitely. Pretentious? There will always be people who call prog pretentious. But because of Godfrey’s background in pop, it’s a bit more grounded, also—emotionally. It chooses its melodies carefully, digging deeply into each as if it were trying to find out exactly what could lie at their ultimate ends. This core keeps the piece from ever devolving into that masturbatory “so what” kind of prog, where the guitarist and keyboardist take turns showing off just how fast and technically they can solo. It proves that this frenetic, long-song model still can work, that the word “progressive”* in 2010 doesn’t have to mean “clinical.”

*I think it’s important to acknowledge that the word “progressive” is probably one of the most loosely defined terms in music. Like all labels, it really means nothing: ambition, experimentation, non-traditionalism. But bits of these qualities are/should be incorporated into all forms. And so “Prog” was born, a category for the hard-to-categorize that over time became known for, among other things, its complex compositions and electronic elements. So (sigh…) for my purposes, let’s call “Prog” anything that ignores traditional song structure and, in borrowing from other styles, endeavors to create something that might surprise people. It’s a stupid setup: Neutral Milk Hotel is “progressive,” but good luck getting anyone in the community to call it “Prog.”

There is definitely a part of Milliontown that understands that clichés are clichés for a reason and that there’s value in tradition. But then there’s another, more enthusiastic part that gets off on breaking the rules. And, really, it’s that latter quality which makes this, Frost*’s debut record, special.

In Case of Emergency, Prog

Maybe one of the coolest things about Frost* has little to nothing to do with listening to its albums. It’s “The Frost Report,” a video blog* chronicling almost every part of the band’s life cycle: Jem in his home studio, Jem trying out new keyboard accessories, Jem showing you how to use ProTools, Jem and the band on tour, recording, rehearsing, acting stupid and always, every second, swept up in the awe and energy of taking their hands and creating something with them that wasn’t there before.

*Does anybody really say “vlog”?

Funny, informative and often ridiculously random, “Reports” are a window into Frost*’s creative process and, to me, kind of define this Internet-powered modern age of music we’re in, where album teasers are the norm and artists are releasing EPs on iTunes the second after they finish mixing them. With “The Frost Report,” we’re literally welcomed inside Jem Godfrey’s home, where we watch as he builds, passage by passage, the music we’ll soon be keeping in our CD racks and iPods and cars. And almost more interestingly, we’re invited into the personality of that music, the band’s group dynamic and inside jokes—we even get to see the pride and excitement in them when they put together something nobody was expecting.

You couldn’t say this about a band 20 or 30 years ago. Back then, music was something else entirely, something that just… was. It wasn’t pieced together by real people like you and me; it was a kind of magic, mysterious and spinning. (Check out an article by Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson for a deeper discussion of this subject)

What I write about Milliontown today is completely different than what I would’ve written if I had no access to the faces behind the noise. Or, who knows, maybe I wouldn’t have written about it at all.*

*The Internet has made our relationship with music interactive. In as much as “The Frost* Reports” have enriched my experience with the band, you have to wonder if this kind of overexposure is always a good thing. For an album like Milliontown and a band like Frost*, I would say yes, absolutely—because part of the point of this band is to relish the prog “formula” and celebrate its spirit. But for other bands, genres, this might be a different story.

In one edition of the “Report,” Jem discusses his love of pop music and compares the genre to a family sedan. It’s safe, he says, rides smoothly, is accessible. But every now and then, he pauses, you just crave a sports car, something dangerous to climb inside and tear through the streets in to remind yourself that you’re alive. Prog is that sports car. And Milliontown is the kind of album that’s best appreciated under that pretense.

Without even trying, it’s one of the most insightful metaphors about the genre that you could make. I’m all for smooth acoustic plucking and lazy piano lines, but whether it’s the beautiful “Hyperventilate” opener, the intense“Black Light Machine” or the 26+min title track, listening to Milliontown and albums like it remind me why I love and how I fell in love with this medium. It’s the enthusiasm and curiosity of boundaries that gets me, qualities in music that should never, ever be considered “progressive.”
 
 
Listen/Watch:

“Frost Report,” Feb. ‘08, Writing Album 2, Experiments in Mass Appeal

CHECK OUT THE REST OF THIS WEEK’S REVIEWS HERE!

The centre-piece is the title track, which takes up the whole of the first disc. The 55-minute work is described as “a slightly surreal song cycle about beginnings and endings and the sense that ‘after this, things will never be the same again’.”

The self-produced album is completed by four standalone compositions that developed out of band writing sessions last December – Flicker, Bonnie The Cat, Black Dahlia, and Remember Me Lover feature on a separate EP length disc to stress their independence from the song cycle.

Video footage of the band in the studio working on The Incident, as well as audio previews, will be available online soon. The band will tour extensively to promote the album from mid September onwards.”