OurStage

"Sometimes it is good to lay aside an album for a while when something intrudes and prevents the reviewing of it immediately. Now when I finally am able to sit down and relax, all the elements of the album started to comfort me, and I also began to understand the concept well. The songs are played in a certain simple and direct confronting way, and there’s no way around them. With a lo-fi nature and some distortion, this distortion goes beyond the form, and expresses a former disturbed life but with an ability to sit down and resume and admit all the mistakes that have been made, in relations (“alone”), an awareness of his parents efforts to make the best for their son (“my boy”), realisations how inner desires always tend to search for more and more, and to be of an inadequate nature. It really needs courage to realize everything, to stop the continuations of inevitable facts. But it sometimes is impossible for others to understand when someone is ready to start all over, so this sometimes can’t happen on the same spot, so another courage forces a person sometimes to move elsewhere and to search for what might be something better, where to start all over. This is to some degree still very possible to combine within the idea of the more commonly understood “American dream”, which in its core actually does not restrict this, but even promotes such idealism (“On my way”). Steven also looks back on his contribution to the Vietnam War, and does still not feel the human sense in it. Sometimes the slightly distorted recording is a bit painful, but so also are these thoughts, and this might not be the time yet to clean the mess of thoughts completely up, because all things need to be said first. What is left with them, is this feeling of loneliness, of being left alone with it. The new road is marked, and someone seems to be forced also to take this step at first, alone, at least as a decision. All small instrumentals, of guitar with keyboards are like the realisations of the nature of this new open road. These specific tracks lean towards neofolk/dark wave, without being so. A great song is “Puppet Show” about realizing how life first seems automatically to be lived by its own momentom, as if someone pulls the strings of the puppets which we are. Very good in this context is also the previous song, “We are the ones”, which realizes how much we ourselves could make also more responsible and conscious choices. About this “Puppet Show” track, I prefer to say more. For me it immediately stood out as the most powerful song, with a baritone-like singing, slowly moving, with a slowly moving bass in the voice, that reminded me more of groups like Sisters Of Mercy or even better, like Joy Division, with powerful and convincing dark chords. It is as if here the warrior had put down his sword, and makes this time his words like the sword, a powerful expression. The last instrumental concludes well with guitar and electronica, slightly neo-folk electro styled."