If you want a sad album, this is the one to go for.
This score very eloquently paints the picture of a fallen ideal. A strange, surreal, somewhat disjointed tale of innocence lost. It wallows inside a hidden world of corruption, greed, backstabbing and fear. What happens when a naïve, young, passionate person is soiled by this wretchedness?
This isn’t some far-off foreign land, or some mythological damnation. This disc laments our everyday lives. It strips off the thin layer of happiness that floats above the darkness lurking underneath every step we take. It’s a darkness that’s there. We can’t see it. Sometimes we can feel it. But it’s right in front of our noses. It’s hidden in plain sight. Behind velvet curtains, underneath the stones of inconsequential business we place on ourselves to distract us from the truth.
It drones. It weeps. It can be intensely frightening. Always intriguing in its somehow twisted beauty. At times you’ll be taken away with the definitive sadness of the whole thing.
It’s something pure, unadulterated that decays into darkness. It turns the ideal into the real.
It’s a score of surreal compositions that will take you far, far away. It will bring you through nightmares. And you’ll feel like you’re falling inside of it. Hypnotized. And somehow, when you arrive so far away from home—you’ll recognize it. You’ll see yourself, your surroundings, your world. Twisted inside out at the hands of an angry bout of warped déj* vu.
There is no sense of humor in this.
The percussive jitterbug dances with the youth. The main theme then takes over as one of the most sweeping, sad orchestrations I’ve ever heard. Brooding and dark, but compelling. Rita Walks through a contorted web of intensely low drones and swelling dynamics. We meet Mr. Roque—could he be the mastermind behind all this? His presence is ominous and uncaring, somehow ethereal in stature but undeniably present. We then get another glimpse into beauty. Betty’s theme is the dirge of lost innocence…it is grief in its most pure form. Beautiful, sprawling; yet suffocating in its sadness. We feel one minute we may be lifted upwards towards childish ideals…but alas, it is not to be. The ghostly call of the Dark Ones reminds us what we are up against. We float in sadness, through clouds stormy and dark. We hear motifs from the main theme—Betty is the central tale here. She’s divergent, but we understand that her innocence is crucial to this album, and we long to be with her.
The world has moved on in Dwarfland, and you’ll find yourself recognizing it but not understanding it, like a phantom of your life crashing down around you. We know it is too late to find our route back to coveted innocence. We feel separated from Betty in this world, like a schizophrenic who’s lost inside the disjointed discourse of his own sickness.
Silencio dares us to investigate Dwarfland. Its anthem is mocking. Let the horns blow, baby, we’re back in ’69. We discover why Dwarfland is such a dark place—but somehow we no longer want to know. We’ve stumbled upon something we can’t handle. And then, the hook: Llorando is a Spanish rendition of Roy Orbison’s “Crying.” With this ethereal cover, we feel connected to our old world of Real…but the connections are loosening every minute. We are hypnotized by this new world’s sirens of seduction. Llorando is a devastatingly poignant, gorgeous a capella piece sung with such desire and intensity that we now understand we can never go back—we were never really gone. It is the Pandora’s box we were afraid we might find.
We fall inside the paradox, shaking and crying. Why?! We see Diane and Camilla—we feel we recognize them, as we had recognized the fallen Betty. Has she returned to us as a ghost, begging us to heed to her own precedents of sadness? O! if only we could turn back now.
