Review Summary: A befitting second half to the series that punctuates Thrice’s most inventive and ambitious phase.
From the greenest hills blows a foul wind, whispering treason:
Woke up to a brand new skyline, we licked our wounds and mourn the dead / Swallow the story hook and sinker / Is that what we meant when we said that we never would forget? Are we fools and cowards all, to let them cover up their lies? Cause we all watched the buildings fall, watched the scales fall from our eyes. As I walked up the unreasonably steep hills of my university, just a couple minutes late to my 8am class as always, that line absolutely leveled me. Thrice never struck me as an overtly political band prior to 2008; philosophical in ways that could be construed as socio-political commentary? Sure. But to come out and basically state with no bones about it that 9/11 was an inside job gave me some pause. I got a chill and then felt a little nauseous. Maybe it was just the damp April morning air, but suddenly, there was a whole lot of weight to this little
Air EP.
I picked up
The Alchemy Index: Vols. III&IV the previous afternoon. Mind you, this was quite the feat for a middle-of-nowhere college kid with zero savings who had to walk approximately five miles round-trip just to get to the nearest record store (oh yes, it’s a
back in my day story), only to rip the CD to my computer and drag the files to my mp3 (!) player. Needless to say, I had to work a little bit harder for my music twelve years ago, and truth be told, I miss that a lot…but I digress. Anyway, I was
very excited to listen to the next two installments of
The Alchemy Index series – I all but worshipped
Fire and
Water, and after seeing Thrice bring the house down alongside Brand New and mewithoutYou the previous autumn, I was jittery at the prospect of pressing that play button. As with most highly anticipated releases, however, it was nearly impossible for
Vols. III&IV to live up to expectations. Aside from the aforementioned passage from ‘Broken Lungs’ off the
Air disc, and the stripped-down ‘Come All You Weary’ from the
Earth disc, I found the two acts to be largely indistinguishable. I remember asking myself while listening to the very
un-airy guitars and drums from ‘The Sky Is Falling’, almost aloud,
what the hell makes this an air song!?. The frustration was real as I glanced down at my portable mp3 player and figured that they threw it on the
Air EP because the title has the word “sky” in it. I was expecting something ghostly, ethereal, and entirely ambient; instead I got
Water minus the immersive beats and resplendent choruses. The entire concept began to feel precarious, as if perhaps the initial two volumes were a fluke. Still, I was curious as to how Thrice would pull off
Earth, so I pressed on. I wasn’t even entirely sure what that would sound like – tribal drums? Nature sounds? Again, Thrice’s vision was very different from my own. I came away from
Earth indifferent to its exceedingly simple folk tunes. Both EPs lacked the immediate punch of
Fire or the exquisite electronics of
Water, so I chalked
Vols. III&IV up to a failed experiment and took comfort in the fact that ‘Broken Lungs’ was on par with the very best from
Vols. I&II. I went on my merry way for about a year thinking that Thrice had underachieved.
The ensuing year (Spring 2009), my university flooded and I was forced out of my dorm room for two weeks. In the interim, I crashed on the couch of an off-campus friend who lived about an hour away. Her house was in an area far more remote than my urban upbringing, so I’m not sure whether it was the natural context of my new surroundings (lots of pine trees, rivers, mountains, et al), or the exposure to the brutal forces of nature that forced me out of my residence in the first place, but I suddenly began to notice things that I never had before about each EP. The nuances, which are much subtler and finer than those of
Fire and
Water, came alive. I began to notice how much lighter – almost weightless – the guitars sound on
Air, and how the drums pitter-pat like a bird rustling through tree branches. The way that the gradually increasing winds in the background of ‘A Song for Milly Michaelson’ surge from a chiming breeze to the sound of an ominous storm somehow evaded me on my first few listens. ‘Silver Wings’, which is curated into a fine glaze, made me feel like I was either gliding through the clouds or skating on ice. Even tracks like ‘As the Crow Flies’, which have very little going on instrumentally, nail the designed aesthetic because Kensrue’s vocals in an empty setting sound like a man sitting alone on a mountain top, singing echoed verses into his panoramic surrounding view. I think the problem on my first few go-arounds with
Air is that I was expecting Thrice to lay down a heavy-handed aura that was immediately perceptible. When I wasn’t so actively trying to dissect
Air’s themes, instead allowing the experience to wash over me as a passive listener, it (no pun intended)
blew me away.
Strangely enough,
Earth “clicked” at the exact same time. The cynic in me says that I had to lower my expectations (i.e. becoming a “passive listener”), but I’ll still never forget how these two EPs came together at the same time and combined forces to become nearly as good as
Fire and
Water. Rather than invoking the most obvious of Earth-tones (thank god they didn’t aspire for what I now realize were very cliched expectations), Thrice employs a variety of physical instruments to drive home a folk/Americana/singer-songwriter vibe that feels starkly vulnerable and
human, thus working appropriately on the level of representing Earth. From classical pianos and acoustic guitars to beautiful woodwinds, Thrice nails an “earthy” aesthetic perhaps even better than they do the “airy” one. The
Earth disc evokes a lot of imagery related to death – from titles like ‘Digging My Own Grave’ to the lyrical motif of “returning to the Earth”, which comes to its natural conclusion on ‘Child of Dust’: “Uprooted flowers and filled their holes with blood, ask not for whom they toll, the solemn bells / A child of dust, to mother now return, for every seed must die before it grows.” The dark, pseudo-nursery-rhyme “The Lion and The Wolf” sees Kensrue pen some of his most unsettling imagery: “The lion's outside of your door, the wolf's in your bed / The lion's claws are sharpened for war, the wolf's teeth are red / And what a monstrous sight he makes, mocking man's best friend / When both the wolf and lion crave the same thing in the end….The wolf, he howls, the lion does roar / The wolf lets him in / The lion runs in through the door, the real fun begins / As they both rush upon you and rip open your flesh / The lion eats his fill and then the wolf cleans up the mess.” Even here, the conclusion to be drawn is similar to other themes of demise that are sprinkled throughout
Earth – we’re but mere inhabitants of this planet, while mother nature is all-powerful. It’s actually the same message that Kensrue brings forth on
Water’s ‘Kings Upon the Main’, where he laments the pride and arrogance of mankind and particularly likens the rich/conceited to foolish sailors who would confront a restless sea. If there’s common ground among all four EPs, it’s that regardless of the sonic atmosphere that Thrice aims to achieve, they’re wary of mankind’s blustering arrogance and keenly aware that a higher purpose – be it God, nature, or both – will ensure that poetic justice is served.
Air and
Earth are all about subtlety. Nothing is in-your-face, and it’s understandable how they could come off as underwhelming on the heels of the preceding elements.
The Alchemy Index: Vols. III&IV gently beckon you to wander into your remote surroundings and breathe them in. These EPs propose a spacious canvas for Kensrue’s vocals and lyrics to take center stage, which is both a blessing and a curse. Dustin has much less to contend with here than he did on the first two volumes, which makes each direct hit sound transcendent and every misstep thud resoundingly. This lends his voice and words – for better or worse – more weight and power. It’s not always put to the best of use (see
Beggars for Dustin’s best lyrics), but it’s exactly why certain
moments – such as those verses about 9/11 that hit me so hard during the morning of my first-ever listen – sound so monumental.
Air and
Earth represent the gentler forces within
The Alchemy Index, and although the concept isn’t executed to utter perfection, it is far better than I initially surmised. It’s a befitting second half to the series that punctuates Thrice’s most inventive and ambitious phase.
