I will keep breathing, but I won’t feel alive
I don’t know a better feeling than standing on stage (or just in front of people if there is no stage). The excitement that builds before you go on stage, the tension building when you walk up to the microphone to say the first words, the emotions you get thrown back at you by the crowd, all that. But most importantly for me, at times it felt like an act of self-cleansing. Once you are out there, you spit everything you’ve got to offer into the faces of the staring audience. Back home, when I played gigs people didn’t know what was going on. There was hardly any hardcore kids (most of them loved Usher and other R’n’B rubbish), so there was noone singing any lyrics back. But for me, these were the most intense shows. I had something to say and if noone was listening, I had to scream louder and make more noise to make myself heard.
Old Gray pull of quite an amazing tour de foce on their new record. Never ones to take a too light approach to their music, their new oeuvre condenses the more melodic parts and the heavier parts down to its core. It baffles me how much I feel this record. I’ve been listening to it a few times today and by the second time I was close to tears when My Life with You, my Life without You came on.
I haven’t seen clear in 19 years; will you please save my life?
Last year brought us the more than intense Pianos Become The Teeth record. But I would actually argue that this album tops the intensity of The Lack Long After. And Old Gray actually allow some breathing space (Show Me How You Self Destruct) with effective strings and spoken rather than screamed vocals only to break them down again. As the sun has arrived over here after more than 4 months in the dark, it feels like so many feelings are just waiting to surface and this album is the catalyst for me to release them all. Anger, passion, love, desperation and this ever present feeling, that everything is going to be alright. I love this album. Enough said!
