Its been a while since I really listened to music. I love music, and its always on. But, like most folks, I don't really sit and try to experience it. I just let it play in the background, the OST of my life. However, Linken Park's last album, Minutes to Midnight, was a thoughtful, amazing cd, and I wanted to see what they'd say with this one.
I downloaded A Thousand Suns, and let it play behind WoW as I played. I was torn on whether or not I liked it. It seemed to jump tracks like a derailing train, moving swiftly from driving bass to quiet, melancholy-laced ballads. I discussed it with a friend, and found myself defending it, but I'm pretty sure that was from a sense of loyalty to the band. I've been a fan of Linken Park since the beginning. But, as it turns out, I was simply listening to it wrong.
Yes, you can listen to a cd wrong....okay, maybe not Kanye, or Ke$ha, or Katy Perry, etc.
This CD is meant to move from song 1 to song 15 in order. Each song is like a note in an ever rising crescendo. And its meant to be paid attention to. I sat today, sound up in my headphones, and just listened. The thing brought me to tears. The chilling snippet of an interview with J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, was seen as filler by a critic. In reality, it set the tone for a dark series of songs that mirrored our violent nuclear past. The impassioned 'filler' pieces later on, by Mario Savio and Martin Luther King Jr., played like the desperate attempts of a man to stop a tidal wave. There are, in some songs, thumping beats that in the silence, sound like a terrified heartbeat. This is not a quiet, subtle attempt to comment on our society. Its a blatant condemnation of what we've done to each other; how we've corrupted science for our selfish, violent ends.
By the time I reached the song, Wisdom, Justice, and Love , I'd been rubbed raw by the emotion of the previous songs. King's words struck me, and brought tears to my eyes, as relevant now as they were then:
"A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love."
The quiet song that follows this excerpt mirrors its sadness, and feels like the hopelessness that would follow war, famine, or the mass devastation of a nuclear attack.
The cd wraps itself with an enraged, betrayed tone, coming full circle. Its a beautiful piece of work, and I'm not sure if anything short of classical music has moved me more.
As I said, I understand why some people hate it. Its not old school Linken Park. Its not a carefree album, that can be enjoyed at leisure, and its not an upbeat cd to throw in at a party. It has a way of bringing a dark feeling to the room, even if you aren't listening closely. The emotion is written right into the notes.
I love this album because its the work of artists. Not simply musicians and performers, but conscious artists, who see an album as a painting, or a story to be told. It goes against the grain of popular rock music today, but the band are unapologetic in their presentation. Even if I hadn't enjoyed the music so much, I'd have had to respect them for the vision. But, in the end, it made me cry. And, with the exception of songs that remind me of lost loved ones, music hasn't made me cry since I was a five year old girl watching Fantasia for the first time.
Bravo, guys.
I'm Out.
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