Review Summary: There is nothing you keep, there is only your reflection.
Music isn't supposed to hit this hard anymore. When you're in college and discovering the world, sure - everything sounds like a revelation. But when you're thirty-five, constantly racing around between your full-time job and a home under seige by a toddler and newborn, it loses its luster and becomes more about nostalgia. You'll recall how
The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me helped you grapple with your best friend's death and the ensuing loss of faith. You'll miss
Southern Air's warmth as you long to go back to the first summer you spent dating your eventual wife. But those memories, at least to me, are rooted in a feeling that has come and gone - they feel like old friends with whom I've lost touch. Few if any albums have evolved with me, save for
A Black Mile to the Surface - a record that dropped right as my wife and I lost our first child. I used to scream the lyrics to 'Lead, SD' on my long drive home from work, as if to expel all of the anger from my soul before twisting open that front door. For years, this whole album represented the darkest pockets of my mind; a bleak, dense vitriol against the entire world that I couldn't quite put into words.
As time wore on, it somehow managed to transform into something totally different. As a father to two, I'm no longer haunted by the clips of children's voices that Hull & co. left interspersed between tracks. Instead of representing the broken, indecipherable sounds of a son or daughter who I never got to meet, they sound familiar; full of vitality and hope. 'The Maze' - which was a breathtaking song to begin with - had its beauty multiplied the second I held my first son in my arms. That very same moment opened my eyes to the true meaning of 'The Silence', because I suddenly and immediately understood what Andy Hull meant when he sang, "I can not only see, but you stopped me from blinking." For me, the journey became the destination:
A Black Mile to the Surface.
There's inherent subjectivity to music, hence why we all perceive it differently. I'm not going to pretend that this record was written for me, although sometimes it feels that way. Who it
was written for is anyone enduring a seemingly hopeless time in their life. There's a literal narrative about a mining town and a man who opens-fire in a grocery store before attempting suicide, but I've never cared to unravel that storyline because the album's perceived implications are far greater.
Black Mile deals not only with fatherhood, but also with child abuse, bullying, divorce, faith, and death - not to mention countless other themes which collectively course through the album's veins. It's written in such a way that anyone who's suffering can immediately relate to its despair. Of course, the hope is that you'll emerge from that figuratively collapsing mineshaft to tell your story - and with any luck, it'll be a slightly more hopeful one.
A Black Mile to the Surface is best represented by the dichotomy between "there is nothing I've got when I die that I keep" and "there is nothing you keep, there is only your reflection." The former passage stems from 'The Maze' and offers the narrator's views prior to fatherhood, whereas the latter is taken from 'The Silence' and represents a newfound perspective. Although his material possessions will absolutely fade, his life will continue to be reflected through his daughter. With that tremendous responsibility also comes opportunity: in shaping how you'll be remembered, you essentially get to create your own afterlife. It may only be a sliver of light amid the certainty of death, but sometimes - deep down in that mineshaft - that's all you need.
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