I remember buying MCIS back in 1996 from a Blockbuster. They used to have these little racks where they'd sell popular CDs. They had that thick, double-CD set for something like $30(?) I took it home and devoured it. My first exposure to the band, however, was "Soothe" on Pisces Iscariot.
All these years later I've wore this album out. It's gotten to the point where I rarely listen to it anymore. But in the past week or so I've been listening to it and it's almost as if I'd never heard it. I love that this happens with music you love.
I also bought the deluxe edition a few years back but I haven't listened to everything (because of reasons stated above). I randomly heard BT's CdL mix the other day via shuffle and was blown away. I almost wish this was the album version. It's so lush and dreamy.
I get annoyed with Billy's antics a lot (more so lately than back in the day), but I have to say it really is fucking amazing that he/they put out an album like this. It'd take a lot of lifetimes to really appreciate everything on this album. There are so many soundscapes, such deep lyrical content, so many dimensions. They really went into outer space on this album and it's so touching that art like this can exist. I'll never forget the effect this album had on me as a young teenager - going from lilting lullabies like Galapagos, Cupid de Locke -- all the way down to the chipped black nail polished hell of ZERO. Then you have these amazing closers like James' beautiful Take Me Down to Farewell & Goodnight. I didn't know a music group could have so many dimensions. It really opened my mind artistically a lot at such a young age.
Just yesterday I read an article written in 1996 a few months after Jimmy had been fired and their MSG dates had been canceled/rescheduled due to Jonathan Melvoin's death. Jonathan's passing was traumatic and really derailed the band in major ways. As Billy was writing MCIS he was going through a divorce and not that long after Jimmy would get fired, his mother would die, James would check out, followed not long after by D'Arcy going Hollywood (trying to, anyway) and leaving them behind. On top of all of that, this album came out on the back of Kurt Cobain's death, and in my mind (and I'm sure many others' at the time & now) it kind of symbolized the last hurrah of a great era in music/art.
There seems to be a loss of innocence with this album. As Billy stated in the re-release's liner notes re: Galapagos:
Cue up my admitting here that one of us was about to be abandoned, never realizing that the desertion would flow both ways. ‘Galapogos’ stands up over time as a remnant of grace that I lost as I wrote it.
The band itself was never the same after it released, and neither were the '90s. It's really bittersweet to hear and think about. But it's nice that we have this portrait back to that era in time.
Submitted August 22, 2019 at 11:02AM by Osceana https://ift.tt/2L1JCwA
No comments:
Post a Comment