Simply Glorious.
I've been holding off on writing a review for this one for over a week now. There's an American song (I think, it's at least a song by a native-language English speaker with an American-esque vocal quality) that the bridge of this one reminds me of and it's been on the tip of my tongue since I first found it and I've been waiting to see if it'll come to me (it hasn't, so if anyone else recognizes the song, I'm talking about PLEASE let me know!).
Anyway, this track is absolutely glorious, and the irregular meter-changes just make me giddy! Normally, songs change speed at set points in songs, at transitions between verses and choruses, or through vamps or bridges, but this one changes in the middle of typically static sections. On a first listen, I thought it just slowed down during the chorus (something like what happens in Clock Strikes), which is a unique enough signature, but this one just shot it out of the park. Vamping up before the chorus, dipping down to a slower pace in the first lines and then picking back up to vamp speeds before dropping to the chorus (aptly during a moment of choral echo). And after the first round the beat bounces up and down over and over again, creating it's own pattern that doesn't mesh up with any system I've every studied before. each instrumental line moves with these changes in perfect compliment to each other and to the vocal line which is brilliantly expanded at key moments by the choral echo effects. Seriously, there are just SO many reasons that this track is beyond brilliant. And it's perfectly produced, spinning the listener around and tossing them about with surges of sound coming from all angles and at all sorts of beautifully varied volumes. Even Taka's screams slide in and out with a smooth simplicity that belies an incredible attention to detail.
There's a bit of creatively used English, but over all the English makes sense and the lyrics over all, while relatively simple at face value, are incredible poignant and powerfully easy to relate to. I'd be hard pressed to find anyone that can't connect emotionally to the notion of feeling so left out you can't bring yourself to care anymore, to feeling like screaming out is the only way to save your own sanity while being too afraid to do so because if no one hears you screaming you'll have absolutely nothing left... These lyrics are especially wonderful because not only do you get to put your own story into them, there's an uplifting tug to some of them, a sort of 'if they can change, then so can we' and 'we can be the change we need' vibe that makes everything seem just a little bit better.
And then getting onto the PV? Wow, another home run right there. (I'm both excited and surprised by my extensive use of sports metaphors, don't worry, it's not just you that finds it strange ^_~). The Video takes off where the lyrics let go and build upon the metaphors. There's so much here to point out that I considered making this an editorial. Starting right at the beginning, the water is deeply symbolic of new life, but it can also be used as an image to indicate drowning and the way it's used throughout the video show a deep awareness of both meanings being toyed with. The bullet casing dropping down in to the body of live-giving water is just too perfect not to mention, particularly as the first occurrence (and several more afterwards) is in slow motion, but by the end, the image returns and is vamped back up to full speed (signifying a resignation that, now that everything is said and done and out in the open, real life can start again). The bullet hit is timed perfectly too, drawing out the maximum emotive response, a vacuum of silence surrounds the water droplet, but for the casing? A string of notes first going down and then quickly up, mimicking the bullet's path... it's beautifully done. Every single one of the prominent timings is done just perfectly, in exactly the same carefully considered manner as that first one (so much praise and we're only 4 seconds into the PV...).
Symbolically speaking, the man and woman drinking and playing cards and counting up some quick cash represent the every-man and -woman, setting themselves up for just a bit of good fun and the assault team is the rest of the world crashing down. That's the reason the story seems to keep changing itself. It can happen to everyone, you change your story when the pieces don't fit right in your head. At first you think you can't be happy because the world won't allow it, so you try to fight back and hold on to what (and who) you love, but the tighter you try to hold onto something or someone the more you start to feel them slip away and then the reason that you're hurting becomes the people most precious to you rather than an outside force (and you know you're hurting them just as much as they hurt you, if not more so). When she dies his world stops and he has no means to recover and less than no desire to ever move on, and that just send the spiral going back to the beginning, not his fault, it's this shitty world that did this to them (the CG time stop with real-time water in the background is awesomely perfect to explain how time feels like its stopped for someone truly in mourning, but outside of their bubble, life is still going on just the same). When he grabs her arm and enacts real change to save her, thing go backwards a bit, rewriting the story, but all that really comes of it is the fact that he dies to, so change seems futile. But in the end, they're holding hands, whereas in the beginning, they weren't even facing each other. Progress. Baby steps, maybe, but still...
You can't resist the flow of time and you cant resist the inevitable, but maybe, just maybe you can tweak the outcome in your favor. All in all it's a pretty powerful message one that jumps between the visual and the audial realms with a beautiful fluidity that takes my breath away without even trying. Seriously, hot damn, if I ever doubted OOR was one amazing band, this song totally blew those fears away.
I'm hesitant to give it a ten, because there's not much in terms of actively on going story, and there's certainly no real-time in-story explanation for any of the action, but I am very tempted to ignore logic and give this release a perfect score. I am SO pumped for the upcoming album, it's not even funny.
Anyway, this track is absolutely glorious, and the irregular meter-changes just make me giddy! Normally, songs change speed at set points in songs, at transitions between verses and choruses, or through vamps or bridges, but this one changes in the middle of typically static sections. On a first listen, I thought it just slowed down during the chorus (something like what happens in Clock Strikes), which is a unique enough signature, but this one just shot it out of the park. Vamping up before the chorus, dipping down to a slower pace in the first lines and then picking back up to vamp speeds before dropping to the chorus (aptly during a moment of choral echo). And after the first round the beat bounces up and down over and over again, creating it's own pattern that doesn't mesh up with any system I've every studied before. each instrumental line moves with these changes in perfect compliment to each other and to the vocal line which is brilliantly expanded at key moments by the choral echo effects. Seriously, there are just SO many reasons that this track is beyond brilliant. And it's perfectly produced, spinning the listener around and tossing them about with surges of sound coming from all angles and at all sorts of beautifully varied volumes. Even Taka's screams slide in and out with a smooth simplicity that belies an incredible attention to detail.
There's a bit of creatively used English, but over all the English makes sense and the lyrics over all, while relatively simple at face value, are incredible poignant and powerfully easy to relate to. I'd be hard pressed to find anyone that can't connect emotionally to the notion of feeling so left out you can't bring yourself to care anymore, to feeling like screaming out is the only way to save your own sanity while being too afraid to do so because if no one hears you screaming you'll have absolutely nothing left... These lyrics are especially wonderful because not only do you get to put your own story into them, there's an uplifting tug to some of them, a sort of 'if they can change, then so can we' and 'we can be the change we need' vibe that makes everything seem just a little bit better.
And then getting onto the PV? Wow, another home run right there. (I'm both excited and surprised by my extensive use of sports metaphors, don't worry, it's not just you that finds it strange ^_~). The Video takes off where the lyrics let go and build upon the metaphors. There's so much here to point out that I considered making this an editorial. Starting right at the beginning, the water is deeply symbolic of new life, but it can also be used as an image to indicate drowning and the way it's used throughout the video show a deep awareness of both meanings being toyed with. The bullet casing dropping down in to the body of live-giving water is just too perfect not to mention, particularly as the first occurrence (and several more afterwards) is in slow motion, but by the end, the image returns and is vamped back up to full speed (signifying a resignation that, now that everything is said and done and out in the open, real life can start again). The bullet hit is timed perfectly too, drawing out the maximum emotive response, a vacuum of silence surrounds the water droplet, but for the casing? A string of notes first going down and then quickly up, mimicking the bullet's path... it's beautifully done. Every single one of the prominent timings is done just perfectly, in exactly the same carefully considered manner as that first one (so much praise and we're only 4 seconds into the PV...).
Symbolically speaking, the man and woman drinking and playing cards and counting up some quick cash represent the every-man and -woman, setting themselves up for just a bit of good fun and the assault team is the rest of the world crashing down. That's the reason the story seems to keep changing itself. It can happen to everyone, you change your story when the pieces don't fit right in your head. At first you think you can't be happy because the world won't allow it, so you try to fight back and hold on to what (and who) you love, but the tighter you try to hold onto something or someone the more you start to feel them slip away and then the reason that you're hurting becomes the people most precious to you rather than an outside force (and you know you're hurting them just as much as they hurt you, if not more so). When she dies his world stops and he has no means to recover and less than no desire to ever move on, and that just send the spiral going back to the beginning, not his fault, it's this shitty world that did this to them (the CG time stop with real-time water in the background is awesomely perfect to explain how time feels like its stopped for someone truly in mourning, but outside of their bubble, life is still going on just the same). When he grabs her arm and enacts real change to save her, thing go backwards a bit, rewriting the story, but all that really comes of it is the fact that he dies to, so change seems futile. But in the end, they're holding hands, whereas in the beginning, they weren't even facing each other. Progress. Baby steps, maybe, but still...
You can't resist the flow of time and you cant resist the inevitable, but maybe, just maybe you can tweak the outcome in your favor. All in all it's a pretty powerful message one that jumps between the visual and the audial realms with a beautiful fluidity that takes my breath away without even trying. Seriously, hot damn, if I ever doubted OOR was one amazing band, this song totally blew those fears away.
I'm hesitant to give it a ten, because there's not much in terms of actively on going story, and there's certainly no real-time in-story explanation for any of the action, but I am very tempted to ignore logic and give this release a perfect score. I am SO pumped for the upcoming album, it's not even funny.
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