Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Brave Saint Saturn: So Far From Home (2000)

 
As a band, Brave Saint Saturn had an interesting life.  It was the moody, atmospheric rock off-shoot of Christian rock/ska giant Five Iron Frenzy, and its three studio albums are unusual in that they have an overarching plot.  They don’t constitute a rock opera, like Tommy or American Idiot, and many of the songs themselves only hint at the story.  In the liner notes of each album, however, the band members become astronauts aboard the USS Gloria, on their way to Saturn.  They’re photographed in uniform, and spoken interludes in the music offer glimpses of the crew as they make their long journey.  Each album tells part of the story and centers around a different theme, so I figured I ought to talk about all three in succession.  (Disclaimer:  if there’s such a thing as spoilers for a CD, be advised that I’ll be mentioning important events from the story of the album.)
 
So Far From Home, the band’s debut, deals with the theme of loneliness, the pressing isolation of space during a years-long voyage to Saturn.  Of the albums in the trilogy, it has the least amount of “plot” woven into the songs.  The only spoken segments are archival – a transmission from the Apollo 8, the countdown from the Challenger, and a clip of Dylan Thomas reading “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” – but liner-note story ends with the grim revelation that Mission Control has lost contact with the USS Gloria and the fate of the astronauts is unknown.
 
As for the music itself, the theme of loneliness is explored in numerous ways.  Front man and songwriter Reese Roper was dealing with a broken engagement at the time the album was written, and the loss of his fiancée is apparent.  It is addressed most clearly in “Independence Day,” which speaks directly to the fiancée about the day she broke things off.  “Two-Twenty-Nine” is about another kind of loss, the death of Roper’s grandmother.
 
The space motif threads through several numbers, including “Space Robot Five” and “Moon Burns Bright.”  In particular, “Space Robot Five” is excellent, an emotional number about a robot sent up because “the deep of space is no place for a fragile human soul.”  Despite his allegedly cold interior, though, he still pines for a woman back on earth.  “Moon Burns Bright” is also about a woman, in a manner of speaking.  It’s sung by an astronaut as a sort of love song to the moon.  Others tell him the journey isn’t worth the danger and resources, but she’s “the reason every astronaut would fly,” and he’s not about to listen to them because “none of them see the heavens” from his vantage point.
 
Another important theme doesn’t really fit the astronaut storyline, but it’s very apropos for these particular musicians.  Just as Five Iron Frenzy frequently wrote about the “least of these,” so Brave Saint Saturn continues this idea with “Under Bridges,” a quiet song that looks for Jesus in the faces of the poor and suffering.  A cover of Michael W. Smith’s “Rocketown” elaborates on the same theme, although not as bitingly.
 
My favorite song on the album isn’t about loss or space or charity.  “Resistor” gorgeously reaches out a hand to an unnamed Little Sister wrestling with issues of self-worth.  Though “Dad says that she could be could be anything she wants to be, / She only sees what she is not,” and she seeks solitude while she rages at this condition.  Gently, the song invites the “broken-heart resistor” to come back to where she is safe and loved.

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