Review Summary: Music for listening.
Music first existed for very spiritual purposes, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. It was something that kept a human being in tact with their self. Over the course of these hundreds and hundreds of years, music has evolved to serve many purposes; the most prominent of which being entertainment. There are so many songs, albums, and artists that you can discover today and very easily play for your friend in the car. This works only because when the music is meant to entertain, it does just that. But even through these hundreds and hundreds of years of evolution, we still have the rare album that seems to serve music’s original purpose; to keep a human being in tact with their self.
Love’s Crushing Diamond is not an album to share with your friend in the car. It would be next to impossible for that friend to get the true experience that this music offers. It’s an album to listen to. It’s an album to keep your mind at a calm state. “Strong River” begins
Love’s Crushing Diamond, and it immediately brings the mind to this calm state with two minutes of lush, beautiful, and chilling sounds. When Jordan Lee (the voice of Mutual Benefit) begins singing during the last minute of this opening track, the lyrics reminds us that life moves at a pace we cannot physically alter (“river doesn’t know tomorrow / it rolls along with such simplicity”, “the river only knows to carry on”), but it allows us to clear our minds of this hardship. It allows us to alter the pace of life within ourselves; bringing our bodies to our mind in a uniform time and place.
For the entire length of the record, this effect remains true. While the listener’s body remains inside their mind, the river is flowing elsewhere; outside of the mind. And whether the tracks after the introduction are more rhythmically active, such as the subsequent “Golden Wake”, or more free and liberated like “C. L. Rosarian”, it’s incredibly easy to stop thinking about those things in your life that have otherwise been impossible to forget. Those things that only exist through the consequences of what or who you love; those things that only crush you because of how much love you do have for the great things in your life; those devastating and difficult things that make you love these great and wonderful things even more.
And that’s where you end up at the end of
Love’s Crushing Diamond. You come out a stronger swimmer; a new name; a person who can now swim at the fixed pace of life and appreciate every step along the way.
“It was such a long winter when the ice had thawed. There wasn't much that survived it. It takes more than a strong swimmer to stay above water with a body divided. And that current took you away, and it made you pay and pay. When I saw you, I didn't know your name. When I see you, they'll give us different names.”
