Review Summary: Much like our own relationships that have died, this love has burned out; but the memory, and experience, are forever frozen in time. The Midnight Organ Fight is this dynamic brought to aural life.
Little did I know when I met you, that you would someday be a faded two-year memory. I remember making you a mix and included "My Backwards Walk", because I loved Frightened Rabbit; yet it was the only song I knew. You probably loved it, but I never remembered to ask. I was too busy living you. It's funny that, once I felt like I could face my loss, I asked for this album for Christmas. That track drew me in; December of 2013 came, and I was requesting a random album from 2008. This speaks volumes of the pain and stories I innately knew I would find waiting in The Midnight Organ Fight.
"The Modern Leper" and "Head Rolls Off" are two of the best songs I've ever heard, but they contain an optimism that can be hard to realize. That's how I WANT to feel. I wish you were here, so that I could stand on my last leg for you. I wish I still felt I had the power to change the world. I'm reminded of what it truly meant to feel desire "hurricane through me". To hear "Old Old Fashioned" is a subtle treat, waltzing "1-2-3-2-2-3" reminding me more of the spatial position of our stumbling more than anything else. We didn't know what we were doing, but I only needed to know you.
Tracks like "The Twist" and "Keep Yourself Warm" remind me of the perpetual futility in finding other company. These moments provide but a glimmer when the old love provided a shine. Much like a single track about one night's flame, the moment fades into a meaningless black of night. If Scott Hutchison cannot find the equivalent of a metaphorical "album", THIS album, a lengthy, complex, beautiful, high-and-low relationship, what is the point? "Twist" and "Warm" are blazing reminders. As much of the album relates to me in similar or "wish-it-were" experiences, some of them tell our story exactly.
"Poke" reminds me that our meeting truly had "a lot to do with magnets and the waning of the moon". I told you "If you don't want to be with me, just say and I will go." And that was the end. A lot of relation between music and experience tenuously equates those experiences with lyrics; yet I have never had specific phrases narrate my life story. The connection is impossibly deep. 'Why can I not share this with you?', I would ask, but this album is clearly aims to remember rather than to regain.
"Floating in the Forth" continues to showcase Hutchison's uncanny ability to relate. My life was buttressed around you, and losing you left me with nothing. All facets of life come crashing down, because some endings tear a person down to their foundation. Much like this album was built around her, was built around YOU, it is remarkably disquieting and emptying to watch a love fall from the bridge. "Floating" captures this feeling. I was able to "save suicide for another year", perhaps one of the most dichotomous lines in music. The infinite pain of current experience coexists with the hesitant hope for the future, and the will to carry on. It is no accident that as I reached that point, I found this album. And so the cycle began again; a cycle I now have the appreciation and desire to relive over again.
The Midnight Organ Fight feels like a treasure I hold, as the sole possessor of its existence. Its connection to me, for these past five months, has remained a personal affair. Part of me wishes I could send it to you to express my love, or my anger, or my flippancy, or my depression, or my optimism. This speaks to the album's ability, not to be plastered onto whatever emotion or discussion may arise but, to boldly traverse the broad emotional range of love's end. For it is hard, and it is long.
If the day arrives, when you return, I will have a story to share and an artistic masterpiece that states in 45 minutes, what I need 10 hours to describe. And if we never see each other again, I have a palette for a journey back in time, where our love is paused for observation and I can appreciate it from afar. Either way, I feel like a winner; I'm not ill, and I'm not dead.
