With
five years between The Light of Things
Hoped For and this release, I started to think we’d never get the end of
the astronauts’ story. But just like the
Gloria emerges at last from the dark side of Titan, so Brave Saint Saturn
returned in the end with this final chapter. With a superb array of songs and an overall
theme of coming home, Anti-Meridian
closes the Brave Saint Saturn trilogy with a bang.
Story
first: the astronauts have returned to
earth, where they receive a hero’s welcome.
The CD liner notes and a few spoken tracks on the album fill in the gaps
– trapped in a geosynchronous orbit, the Gloria was detonated to propel the
flight of the Starling, an escape pod. I’m
not up on my technobabble, but suffice it to say that the blast proves a new
method of antimatter creation, making the voyage and subsequent return of the
astronauts even more historic.
Not
many songs deal directly with the plot.
Dennis Culp’s “Hero’s Homecoming” is clearly the most explicit, exploring
the exhilaration, joy, and also regret (not everyone made it home) of the
heroes as they ride through the streets during their welcome-home parade. Beyond that, the final two tracks on the
album, “These Frail Hands” and “Invictus,” beautifully carry the metaphor of
darkness from The Light of Things Hoped
For and bring it at last into the light.
“These Frail Hands” is especially masterful – it might be my favorite
Brave Saint Saturn song of all time.
With a gentle melody that starts plaintively and grows into an anthem
that incorporates choruses from the previous two albums, it’s gorgeous to
listen to, and the lyrics are astounding.
I’m seriously resisting the urge to quote the entire thing right now,
but I’ll begrudgingly content myself with a single stanza: “Darkness can’t perceive the light, / Though
lightlessness has chilled us numb, / And though its wings may cloud the skies,
/ The dark shall never overcome.” I
mean, come on!
Several
other numbers touch on the light-and-dark imagery. “Through Depths of Twilight” is a thoughtful
piece that champions those who’ve brought hope in dark times, particularly
highlighting Abraham Lincoln’s “better angels” and the “thunderous words” of
Martin Luther King, Jr. The terrific “Always
Just Beneath the Dawn” reaches from son to father in an effort to connect. The chorus is stellar, and I love the lyric, “In
my bones, / Your twenty-three same chromosomes / Reside in twisted prophecy, /
Likening our destinies.”
The
songs on this album have the widest range of subject matter on the
trilogy. Some, like “Starling” and “Blessed
are the Land Mines,” are social-message songs.
Though “Starling” starts as a denouncement of killing animals for sport,
it gradually works its way to the larger issue of disposable people or nations
falling victims to others’ power-lust or fear-mongering. Likewise, “Blessed are the Land Mines” is a
darkly ironic rock number that condemns war-profiteering in general, and more
specifically, support within institutionalized religion for war – or as the
song puts it, “the church who rattles sabers.”
On a different note, Culp’s “Fields of the Fallen” is lovely, moody, and
mournful, and “Fortress of Solitude” is one of the coolest songs I’ve heard about
a superhero. I’ll cop to loving the
combination of superheroes and modern rock, and this song is a bang-up
example. I especially like the line, “This
prison of mine / Is to carry alone / The light of one red sun / Beneath my
skin, / And never, ever go home.” Tons
of variety here, with lots to love!
* * *
I'll probably talk more about the Emmy nominations later, but I just have to geek out over Laverne Cox's nomination for Orange is the New Black. First trans* person in history to receive an acting nomination for the Emmys (and I imagine for all the major Hollywood awards) - the barriers that woman has broken down in the past year blow my mind. The tip of my hat to Ms. Cox.
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