Review Summary: courage, dear heart
It’s probably a dangerous game to involve the scourge brandished against Whipped Peter as a point of reference but the image of Gordon’s traumatized back is seared into my retinas and refuses to make leave. His keloid scars and upstanding posture were a glowing, mangled testimony to his steadfast will.
There is a Presence Here at the very least indicates society has progressed in bounds since then but the spirit behind it, to me at least, doesn’t feel so distant. The man who conquered a system remorselessly predicated on keeping him bound always seemed so mute in image, even after breaking captivity. His eyes don’t shine like those of a free man. A mottled, crosshatch maze of blood and friction seemed like
just enough padding to hold him prisoner. I don’t get the idea that Brianna Hunt’s musings are an escape from her captors. If anything, she speaks here with an understanding that you never really go free in the end, anyway.
I don’t know. The light at the end of the tunnel always seems to be an oncoming train with this record. When “Which is to Say, Everything” does manage to cast aside chains of longing for death, it concludes on a bit of a moot point;
When I find you in the flowers
Calling on the spring
I will rest my head beside your feet
And wait for morning
, and while the ocean-deep swells of ethereal guitars and decaying percussion do arc up towards the stars, wings are tarred by an emotional anticlimax. It feels difficult to call it a release as much as it is an acknowledgement of life sometimes feeling maybe even a little bit worth the while. And that’s about it. Hunt doesn’t try placating her demons, nor does she explicitly subscribe to religious doctrine as a crutch. There is a presence here, and it isn’t welcome, and that’s the way it’s been, and that’s the way it is.
Even her fingers on the strings sound somewhat apathetic to her efforts. “This Place is Haunted” is a lazy few notes plucked (even that seems too harsh a word) ad nauseam while she croons on about this ghost that she’s sick of but she’s crooning and it’s frustrating and I hate it because I just want her to erupt and I know she won’t.
I know she won’t.
It’s a bit unfair to make comment about the light in Whipped Peter’s eyes not shining so brightly because reclaiming that spark probably takes longer than most people have time for. I’d be curious to know if he held hatred in his heart towards his abusers, and even more so, if he held any ill will towards himself. “Danielle” and “Hollow Body” feel like two sides of a double-edged sword. That, out of her own insufficiencies or doubts, she will suffer, and so will you. The former’s inclusion of a verse from Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” felt jarring out of execution more than concept but it felt so right hearing her sing
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
and I didn’t want that to be the big release. I never want Johnny Cash to be the climax of anything not written by Johnny Cash. But it just made so much sense.
You can have it all,
My empire of dirt
I’d be curious to know whose sins weighed down heavier in Gordon’s heart; his own, or those of his abusers.
There is a Presence is essentially Brianna Hunt putting down her guitar right after picking it up because she has a few words to say and maybe they’ll be said. “When I find You in the Flowers” is essentially Brianna Hunt putting down her guitar right after picking it up because she has a few words to say and maybe they won’t be said. Maybe this won’t even make it onto the album. It probably won’t. If it does, cool, I guess. Maybe someone out there will be affected by it in the same way I hope I might be affected by
something one day. Maybe that’s what she is thinking. When her grainy vocals aren’t purely guiding her through simple daily struggles, maybe she’s hoping this album might be worth more than too much reverb and phone-recorded street cred.
I’m trying to be more honest but
courage, courage, courage,
courage, courage, courage,
dear heart
