Characteristic to Brendan Perry's Dead Can Dance work, this song deftly walks the balance between using narrative to enhance the music and using music to enhance the narrative by doing both at once. I often bemoan the undue emphasis lyrics receive in music and how good lyrics - which are products of good writing - are mistakenly viewed as musical quality. But this song manages to capture a vocalist and musician's ability to give narrative force to a conceptual abstraction. While I'm not willing to deem that a distinctly musical quality, I'd gladly concede that it's an impressive artistic one.
At its pith, Black Sun is as eloquent and three dimensional a reflection of death as you'll find. At once accusatory and resigned, despairing and triumphant; it manages to capture the essence of the subject with a subtlety and exactitude that's both stunning and evocative. But what brings the song its quality isn't the strength of its writing, it's the inseparability of the elements. The mood of the song and the starkness of its imagery doesn't exist without the lyrics. The lyrics have no life and resonance with the vocals. The narrative depicted by the lyrics and the vocals have lesser force without the instruments. The instruments have no purpose without the vocals/lyrics acting in concert. It's a song crafted to perfectly play to its advantages and it's fully self-aware of the expressive qualities inherent to song and word. Excellent work from an excellent group. You would be remiss to ignore it.
At its pith, Black Sun is as eloquent and three dimensional a reflection of death as you'll find. At once accusatory and resigned, despairing and triumphant; it manages to capture the essence of the subject with a subtlety and exactitude that's both stunning and evocative. But what brings the song its quality isn't the strength of its writing, it's the inseparability of the elements. The mood of the song and the starkness of its imagery doesn't exist without the lyrics. The lyrics have no life and resonance with the vocals. The narrative depicted by the lyrics and the vocals have lesser force without the instruments. The instruments have no purpose without the vocals/lyrics acting in concert. It's a song crafted to perfectly play to its advantages and it's fully self-aware of the expressive qualities inherent to song and word. Excellent work from an excellent group. You would be remiss to ignore it.
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