Adriana Tegova has tweeted a link to a great new song. I can’t wait to hear her debut album next year.
Listen online to the new track in its entirety while you can. Download it now, because it’s brilliant.
I first heard her as lead vocalist for All Eyes on Saturn, a fabulous Australian band that released a magnificent but hard-to-find EP with five amazing tracks.
Thanks in no small part to Adriana’s distinctive singing, the EP is a favorite of mine. Watch out for her in 2013.
You can also hear online (but not download) the lovely track, “Hiding“.
And here’s a video preview of another song, “Heaven“:
Leah’s 2012 Symphonic Metal Debut: Of Earth & Angels
Leah released her first full-length album in 2012, Of Earth & Angels, and I first learned of its existence when Leah’s song “Ex Cathedra” (featuring suitably epic Latin lyrics) found its way into my Facebook feed, thanks to a student who had taken a number of my Latin classes over the years. After a quick sample of the album’s songs online, I knew I had to download the whole thing.
That was back in September. This month, as I was assembling my Top Ten of 2012 for the Progarchy archives, I realized that Leah was in my upper echelon, because, months later, I had not moved on from her album; if anything, I was enjoying it more and more, which is a sure sign that an album is a rare and special find, especially with a new artist. I love this time of year, when I look back and survey the wreckage and the survivors: the many albums that I had such high hopes for (but then turned out to be sad disappointments); the few surprises that came out of nowhere (to become treasured discoveries). Leah’s music has surprised me, and it stormed its way into my Best of 2012.
Dan Flynn makes a very strong case that the greatest Christmas rock song is The Kinks’ “Father Christmas“:
The number that most embodies the spirit of the season depicts a violent robbery of Santa Claus. Thirty-five Christmases ago, The Kinks released “Father Christmas,” a gritty tale about a department-store Santa getting rolled by a gang of teenagers. “Father Christmas, give us some money/We got no time for your silly toys/We’ll beat you up if you don’t hand it over/Give all the toys to the little rich boys.”
It’s a 45 with a sense of humor. It also has a sense of the Beatitudes.
If upon first listen “Father Christmas” rings as cynicism inverting the spirit of giving into one of taking, subsequent spins reveal a track telling us to give thanks for our good fortune rather than the small fortune under the tree. A hoodlum instructs St. Nick to hold off on the Bionic Man costume for his brother and the cuddly doll for his sister. “But give my daddy a job cause he needs one/He’s got lots of mouths to feed.”
“Father Christmas” invites us to be more Christ like. An ode superficially about the ultimate expression of materialism (theft) becomes a spiritual admonition to remember the least among us.
And, as Dan points out, the ultimate coda to the song is how Ray Davies actually got shot in New Orleans when he chased two muggers!
By the way, Dan says the best Christmas songs “can be counted on an eight-beaded abacus” and lists “Silent Night” as one of the eight best.
I have to say that the only version of “Silent Night” that I can wholeheartedly endorse is Leah’s version. And I wish Dan could have seen her amazing show last night, because she did epic metal versions of “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence”, “The Holly and the Ivy”, and “God Rest Ye Merry”, which Dan will have to make room for on his abacus! But more about Leah’s incredible concert later on, as Progarchy shall post a full review…
I had the privilege of seeing an epic evening of symphonic metal tonight, as Leah rocked New Westminster with an orchestra of superb musicians. My full review will be posted tomorrow, but those who want a sneak peek at the set list can search Twitter for #Leah121212 because I tweeted the whole concert live. It was an amazing show, and I promise to share the details with you soon.
Another one of the albums in my Top Ten for 2012 is Leah’s Of Earth & Angels.
First, I heard her track “Ex Cathedra” and was immediately intrigued by the mix of medieval Latin and symphonic metal.
Next, I encountered the lovely track “Ocean,” which sealed the deal.
Buy your copy of this superb album today and support this talented artist; then you will remember 2012 as the year you discovered Leah:
The art of LEAH is one of diverse influence: Haunting celtic melodies, mysterious eastern vibes, heavy symphonic rhythm, and most of all… A voice that will utterly enchant and inspire you.
Listen to LEAH and you may hear a touch of Loreena McKennitt, a glimpse of Enya, or of something darker like Lacuna Coil or Nightwish. Mostly you will hear something unique from this emerging artist from British Columbia, Canada… And it will please your senses.
LEAH has accumulated a catalog of original songs. When you hear her work, you agree her song writing knows no limits: From symphonic metal, to organic singer-songwriter ballads, to ethereal electronica—she does it all—almost effortlessly. She specializes in the darker, more mystical melodies which gives Christmas carols and ancient Irish poems a haunting and tantalizing twist.
LEAH also has a work ethic that much of the young generation is missing. As a homeschooling mother, writer and prolific songwriter, she knows how to get things done—and done well.
A few footnotes:
Electronica is not really my thing, but I love what Leah has done with her track “Sanctuary.” Amazing that she does both symphonic metal and this sort of experimentation equally well.
At Christmas, I have always considered “Silent Night” one of the most musically boring carols ever; so I will always welcome a clever makeover. Now, here is Leah, doing the unexpected and making it sound truly incredible. Enjoy!
I agree that this is a great way to keep the peace when people are being obnoxious and unreasonable.
And it’s also a fine way to habitually cultivate humility on a personal level.
So okay, Mike, you got it. You’re one of my favorite drummers, and you are on many of my favorite albums this year!
But surely something only becomes a favorite because we consider it the best.
And the real reason we share “best of” lists, is not because we claim omniscience, but because we want to share what we know and love, so that others will do the same for us.
If they do, we can thereby learn from them, and thus grow in our love…
We don’t want to merely win musical arguments. We want to learn from the musical experiences of others, and to expand our own experiences, and to enlarge the way we think about music.
But still, when it comes to aesthetic argument, Roger Scruton gets it right:
Perhaps the most persistent error in aesthetics is that contained in the Latin tag that de gustibus non est disputandum— that there is no disputing tastes. On the contrary, tastes are the things that are most vigorously disputed, precisely because this is the one area of human life where dispute is the whole point of it. As Kant argued, in matters of aesthetic judgement we are “suitors for agreement” with our fellows; we are inviting others to endorse our preferences and also exposing those preferences to criticism. And when we debate the point we do not merely rest our judgement in a bare “I like it” or “It looks fine to me”; we search our moral horizons for the considerations that can be brought to judgement’s aid. Just consider the debates over modernism in architecture. When Le Corbusier proposed his solution to the problem of Paris, which was to demolish the city and replace it with a park of scattered glass towers and raised walkways, with the proletariat neatly stacked in their boxes and encouraged to take restorative walks from time to time on the trampled grass below, he was expressing a judgement of taste. But he was not just saying, “I like it that way.” He was telling us that that is how it ought to be: he was conveying a vision of human life and its fulfilment, and proposing the forms that gave the best and most lucid expression to that vision. And it is because the city council of Paris was rightly repelled by that vision, on grounds as much moral and spiritual as purely formal, that Le Corbusier’s aesthetic was rejected and Paris saved.
Another one of the albums in my Top Ten for 2012 is Neal Morse’s Momentum.
Brad Birzer appends a useful album overview to the end of his epic CWR review of Neal Morse’s career:
Not a concept in the way several of his other albums are, Momentum most resembles his penultimate album with Spock’s Beard, “V.” As with its 2000 counterpart, Momentum has six songs. The first five are eight minutes or less long, with the last song being a 34-minute epic.
With skill and passion, Morse’s new album considers [in “Momentum”:] the pace of modernity and our reactions to it, [in “Thoughts Part 5”:] the necessity of appearing deep in conversation, [in “Smoke and Mirrors”:] how to weather deception in this world, [in “Weathering Sky”:] how one interprets his calling in the world, and [in “Freak”:] the way a powerful spiritual figure would be perceived should he arrive bodily in the present day (I’ll leave it for the reader to discover the identity of the protagonist in the track, “Freak,” as Morse deftly leaves the identity a mystery until the very end of the song) in his shorter tunes.
The epic is, well, epic. As the title, “World without End,” suggests, the thirty-four minutes explore the motivations of a person, and especially whether he or she is trying to shape the ephemeral or the permanent and timeless.
I have to admit that one of my favorite moments on the disc is when the title track glides on into the killer guitar solo that is expertly framed by an ecstatically swirling keyboard flight path:
Go listen to 3:10—4:10 on the album track…
Indeed, that is definitely one of the best minutes of prog we have heard all year.
(Note: 2:49—3:18 in the video below has the killer guitar solo, but omits the awesome keyboard/guitar dogfight. But I am not complaining: I love that I heard the Single Edit version first by watching it as a sneak peek on YouTube; and then, even though I had already fallen in love with the song, when I downloaded the album itself, I got the extra thrill of hearing the suddenly-new keyboard/guitar dogfight now added to the end! It was a unique experience unparalleled by any previous prog preview encounter!)
Another one of the albums in my Top Ten for 2012 is Rush’s Clockwork Angels.
Stories like “Xanadu” and “Cygnus X-1” were what first enthralled me. So it is a dream come true to have a full-blown concept album from Rush after all these years. And with an accompanying novel, no less.
“Though Rush has often embraced huge themes and stories, sometimes over several albums, this is the first time the band has attempted a full concept. The story, nearly sixty-seven minutes long, follows the journey of a young man finding his own voice in a society ruled by indeterminate god-like fates (the Watchmaker and the Clockwork Angels), a rule-based conformity but peopled by a number of eccentric persons and subcultures,” writes Brad Birzer.
The story seems to be ever ancient (obviously it’s an epic remake of Red Barchetta, and Subdivisions, and [insert your favorite Rush song here]), yet ever new: “a very Calvinistic set of gods attempt to control all through mechanized precision, while alchemy, rather than science, has progressed. The album is divided into twelve songs, each represented by an alchemic symbol positioned at each hour of a twelve-hour clock.” (Brad Birzer on the story)
Brad also notes:
What is especially fascinating is that Rush—in music and lyrics—has with Clockwork Angels created an all-embracing mythos, referencing their own works and music going back to the band’s very first album. There are hints, some overt and some not, from albums across the past four decades, and the protagonist must—as with Aeneas and a number of other classical heroes—experience, survive, and outwit the gods.
In Clockwork Angels, though, the hero realizes one very vital thing: the divine will always control time. The gods might not control our individual fates—despite what the priests and politician tells us—but, in the end, Chronos devours all. But, within that given time in the world, man can do many things, and he can even dream and pursue the highest of all things.
In other words, Neil Peart continues to inspire. As Brad has noted elsewhere, “Neil was the big brother who introduced us to the literature our teachers seemed to have misplaced: classical myth, Voltaire, Coleridge, Twain, Dos Passos, Hemingway, Rand, Tolkien, Eliot, and others.”
Brad’s tribute to Rush there hits the target:
In the late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s many of us lovingly thought of ourselves as the younger brothers of Peart. He was the genius kid with integrity, who always walked through the halls with two hilarious, equally smart (if not overtly intellectual) and infinitely loyal friends. One of his friends had parents who had survived the Holocaust camps of the Nazis. The other friend had folks who had escaped the prison camps of the Communists. Now, the three were free to express themselves in any way they so decided on this side of the Atlantic.
These three confidently confronted the world as a perfect trio, unbreakable and ever mutually re-enforcing and inspiring.
We looked up to all three as those who could understand our failures and successes, our desires and our alienation, our rejection of conformist culture and our drive to better ourselves.
Going where I want, instead of where I should I peer out at the passing shadows Carried through the night into the city Where a young man has a chance of making good
A chance to break from the past The caravan thunders onward Stars winking through the canvas hood On my way at last
One of the albums in my Top Ten for 2012 is The Smashing Pumpkins’ Oceania.
Volcanic bass guitarist Nicole Fiorentino and Rush fanboy Billy Corgan deliver some especially mind-blowing musical moments. The title track invites us to go swimming in 9:07 minutes of heavy prog wonder, in which we encounter an acoustic guitar island and then ride out more waves with multiple distorted guitar solos.
But every track is a keeper. In the album order, my four fave tracks are “Quasar” (which rocks things off with an appropriately heavy mystic quest, as the chorus sings out the Tetragrammaton—YHWH—until meditative bliss is encountered), “The Celestials” (complete with a heavenly epiphany—see next paragraph below), “My Love is Winter” (an incredibly melodic mind-grabber that builds the tension expertly in a prolonged way and then attains delirious resolution after teasing us delightfully with the extended musical deferral), and “The Chimera” (for its epic monster riffing).
“My Love is Winter” was the divinely lovely song that stayed with me most when away from the headphones; but “The Celestials” is perhaps my upper-echelon selection for epic greatness. It opens with an awesome sing-along acoustic guitar enticement. Then it blasts into rock trio orbit at 1:16 as the bass (oh yeah! dig the bass!), the guitar, and the drums prepare for the jump to light speed. And wham, at 1:52 we launch into hyperspace and the whole world suddenly accelerates and then magically slows down as, now outside time, we cosmically survey it all via the synthesizer’s lens. Powered into crazy warp speed by the ripping guitar beginning at 2:22, then eventually, at the edge of the universe, at the three-minute mark, the horizon of spiritual enlightenment is crossed as the music invites us to contemplate the spiritual master’s most divine insight (sung in harmony with the guitar): “Everything I want is free.”
Wow.
“Everything I want is free.”
Give somebody this album as a gift for Christmas.
May the music help you swim in the ocean of love. Ride on!
Progarchy 