Glass, the Wall’s Ghost, the new project recently released by Buffalo writer, poet and musician Eric Beeny, is a meditation on fear, paralysis and melancholy that combines the vocal harmonies of The Beach Boys with the depression-pop sensibility of Elliott Smith and the musical sophistication and unpredictability of any number of more progressive acts.
Beeny, 32, played in a few bands in high school, but once those bands broke up, his focus shifted to writing. In the meantime, he got older, having a daughter (who is featured on the album cover) with his ex-girlfriend (who supplied the photo), settling into a day job as a Quality Assurance agent and recording Glass, the Wall’s Ghost in his spare time. Its twelve tracks, recorded over a year in his bedroom, are somewhat death-obsessed. This obsession takes not only mortality as its object, but the death of possibility.
“Glass, the Wall’s Ghost is maybe not being able to see what’s in front of you, being haunted by an obstacle you feel but don’t actually know is there, something you could touch if only you could reach out a little farther,” said Beeny in an email. “It’s all fleeting, because death exists, and if death exists then life ultimately does not exist… but if life does not exist then the wall of which glass is a ghost was never there, which means nothing dies and there is no ghost.”
He follows that up, sheepishly, with: “I’m not sure that makes sense.” But perhaps it shouldn’t- the problem of mortality that serves as the kernel for the album’s emotional journey is totally impervious to any kind of rational attack. It exists just beyond the horizon of comprehension, and that’s what drives the speaker of the album’s lyrics into such a melancholic despair. It’s an unsolvable problem that Beeny himself grapples with.
“I think a lot about death. It scares the shit out of me,” said Beeny. “I don’t believe in [g]od, so for me the end is nothingness. A pre-birth state of non-existence. I guess that ultimate loneliness is what I was trying to express, maybe half-consciously, half un-.”
“Ultimate loneliness” seems to be the default state of the album’s central character. He’s a man trapped: trapped in his own home, his own skin, in some barren world of black holes where the threat of total annihilation is always looming. It’s a world of two, containing our hero and the ever-present “you” to whom all of the songs seem to be pitched. Despite the fact that this pair seems to comprise the entirety of the population, they remain separate, alternately yearning and bitter. And it’s the speaker of the lyrics that separates them, paralyzed by the fear that seems to always be partner to his longing.
It’s no surprise that Beeny is a published poet: it’s the words that hold Glass, the Wall’s Ghost together as a coherent unit. His lyrics range from cryptic and grotesque (think Mars Volta) to plain and pleading. Writing lyrics like this is risky: if you don’t lose your audience for what might seem like purposeful obfuscation, then you might lose them for being too on-the-nose. But Beeny holds it together with a consistent tone of apocalyptic, frustrated longing.
The music is equally accomplished. Glass, the Wall’s Ghost is rich and complex both in arrangement and instrumentation. The vocals are multitracked and harmonized (Beeny lists Brian Wilson’s “SMiLE” as one of his favorite albums, and the Beach Boys influence definitely comes through), and Beeny’s clean, steady voice sometimes works against the sense of vulnerability he tries to convey, but mostly he succeeds in creating interesting melodies that draw from a variety of influences. Throughout, the album is packed with flourishes, like the barely-heard harmonies and guitar riffs that are designed to fill up all available empty space and prevent the listener from ever getting complacent or bored.
The result is impressive: fourteen tracks which combine guitars, ukuleles, acoustic and electric drums, basses, layers upon layers of vocal harmonies and Beeny’s dynamic lyricism into a coherent whole. The only drawback is that it’s perhaps too coherent, not leaving much room for the kind of excitement that only spontaneity can provide. But, then again, spontaneity wouldn’t really suit our protagonist, who by the end of the album is still trapped in his bedroom, alternately longing for and fearing the pure annihilation that might come at the hands of the black hole that has been looming over his home throughout the entirety of the album.
It’s worth noting that this speaker is not Beeny, at least not totally, at least not anymore. If anything, releasing Glass, the Wall’s Ghost was a way for Beeny to distance himself from this kind of melancholy.
0 comments
Post a Comment