Nevermore, The Obsidian Conspiracy (2010)
— Reviewed in the style of Ernest Hemingway —
The hotel was loud and there were already a lot of people there. The man pulled out a chair and sat down at the hotel bar. He found the barman and ordered a pink gin. Like the sailors used to drink, he thought. A band was playing already when he sat down. Most of the tables in the lounge were full. Couples talking, lots of men clapping each other on the back. The man thought he didn’t need any of that. There would be time for that.
He thought about “This Godless Endeavor.” He looked out the window. A train pulled slowly out of the station, and a table of well-dressed young people across the bar from the man talked loudly about skiing. Five years is a long time, the man thought, and maybe those fond memories were all wrong anyway.
“Turn to the left, turn to the right.” The man did not listen. The band played a chorus, almost like it was played from another room. It played major, dipped minor. The man thought he heard something. Then it was gone. He ordered another drink. “Is this soliloquy or psychosis, or self-hypnosis?” The barman must have left the radio tuned to a motivational program. The man finished his drink, and watched the ice slowly become water in the glass. He breathed out.
The band at the bar only wanted to play some crowd-pleasers. The musicians kept pushing the lounge singer out of the way, so he pushed back. He seemed a little tight, the pusher. Squinted his eyes to look serious. Too many damned words, the man thought. As if each additional syllable made the sloganeering more effective. The man glanced out the window. The train was gone, and a listless breeze swept across the plain.
He listened to the band play “The Termination Proclamation.” He listened, and then remembered her:
“He picked up the two heavy bags and carried them around the station to the other tracks. He looked up the tracks but could not see the train. Coming back, he walked through the barroom, where people waiting for the train were drinking. He drank an Anis at the bar and looked at the people. They were all waiting reasonably for the train. He went out through the bead curtain. She was sitting at the table and smiled at him.
‘Do you feel better?’ he asked.
‘I feel fine,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.’”***
How do you ‘abandon someone with scorn’, the man thought? It’s all damned worthless anyway. The barman dropped his mixing glass, and set his rag down to clean up the mess. The lounge singer had recovered his poise, and was singing a slow song. The man asked the bartender to turn down the radio. The barman didn’t hear.
Most everyone had left the bar by now. Empty tables weighed down with half-spilled glasses and uneaten food. An older woman in evening-wear sat staring at the band. She seemed to project a sense of feeling the music deeply, deeply. The band’s set was only forty-five minutes, but they had lost some of their sheet music. One of the players ran through some fast solos while the band sat back. Maybe it was a saxophone? The man was not interested. The sparse crowd listened. The man sat at the bar, thinking about lousy conversationalists who always steer a polite topic into ornate, self-serving directions.
The band played an encore, ‘Temptation.’ No one had requested it. The man put down his drink. It had soured. The lounge singer bounced his voice around. Even the well-dressed woman looked uncomfortable. The rest of the band would not meet the others’ eyes.
The barman came back and tried to get the man another drink. The man started to order another gin but then ordered a scotch. “Say, this is some band,” said the barman. “Yes, some band,” the man replied. He balled a napkin in his hand. “Don’t you like the music?” asked the barman, drying off some glasses with lime peels still stuck on them. “Yes,” the man said. He took another drink of the scotch. It tasted like smoke and honey. “No,” he added. “It’s very nice music, but I don’t give a damn. I just don’t like it at all.” He paid the barman and pushed back his chair and walked out of the hotel and toward the train station. He looked back. The band inside was just finishing and those people still at the tables were still talking and laughing. Maybe they were talking about snow and ski lifts and hot cider and good times but the man stopped looking back and put up his collar and his shoes echoed loudly on the ground.
There would be plenty of time to catch the next train at the station so the man thought about “This Godless Endeavor” again and shook his head and couldn’t remember what he meant to do. The man hoped the band found the music they had lost. He put his hands in his pockets and turned the corner and whistled a song he didn’t like. He saw another train far in the hills and he closed his eyes and he kept walking and the train off in the distance went behind another hill and was gone. He kept walking.
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*** Just in case the jarring contrast from my piss-poor imitation didn’t make it obvious enough, this passage in full quotation is taken directly from Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants.” This quote taken from my copy of The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, The Finca Vigia Edition, 1987, New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., p. 214. Let’s just say, shall we, that the Hemingway story likely shares its subject matter with Nevermore’s “The Termination Proclamation.” You tell me which source deals with its theme more deftly, yeah?
I’m actually in the middle of re-reading “The Sun Also Rises, ” so this definitely hits home. Excellent piece of work on your part, and also reflects my thoughts on the new Nevermore. I used to be quite a fan, but I definitely lost the passion, or tolerance, for this music. I’ve seen them live 5 times, and only once was Mr. Dane’s voice in a passable state. I just can’t muster up the interest anymore.
That’s probably my favorite book of Hemingway’s. Actually, maybe it’s about time I gave it another go as well. Anyway, I’m glad the style came across somewhat. I’d just been really down on this album for a while, and wanting to write a review to work out my mixed feelings, but the thought of just writing something straightforward depressed me.
On Nevermore specifically, it probably should have been a bit of a red flag that the only thing of theirs I’ve ever liked is “This Godless Endeavor.” I loved the shit out of that record when it came out, but now that this new one affects me much like a wet piece of cardboard, it’s making me wonder if I overlooked something equally obnoxious or off-putting in the previous record. It’s all a bit odd, really.
(By the way, it took nearly all my self-control to refrain from working the line “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” into this somewhere. It was touch and go for a while.)
I haven’t heard the album, so I can’t really comment, but this is nonetheless a great review. I’m always pleased to see people doing something unconventional with reviewing and this is a great example of that. I think you did a damn fine job of paying homage to Mr. Hemingway and letting your thoughts/feelings on the album shine through in spite of the non-traditional approach. Nice work!
Very cleverly done, kudos. Hemingway is my favorite writer of all time by far, and I think you imitated his style pretty well. I like this album a fair deal more than you do (I think) but a lot of your general criticisms are well-founded. They just don’t bother me as much.
And you’re right about This Godless Endeavor being their best work. It’s overcompressed and claustrophobic and highly technical and every song is about outdoing the song before it with more guitar pyrotechnics and craziness, but it totally works. I think some of the highlights of The Obsidian Conspiracy are more restrained and subtle. The Blue Marble and the New Soul, for example, is a “ballad” that doesn’t storm in the door and announce that it’s going to be beautiful. The bends in the solo are elegant and understated, and there’s one or two truly gorgeous vocal lines that leave you wanting more but don’t give it to you. There’s stuff to like on this album, for sure.
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