Review Summary: "Every memory is more true than the present...in 1993, I was riding home..."
Patrick Carroll died young.
He was a creative soul and talented writer, if not necessarily a career musician. Upon the urging of his friends, apart of Kalamazoo's Earthworks music collective, he put to music his pieces of personal poetry. The result of their efforts is nothing short of remarkable; a powerful folk rock gem, buried by the tragic circumstances of its own creation.
People with terminal illnesses tend to share a common, unexpected phenomenon. They express that, upon knowing the time of their demise, they feel more alive than ever before. The liberating certainty of death, paired with the urgency of terminal illness, seems to prompt us to drink deep from the well of life, so as to slake our thirst for all this world has to offer.
Nothing will push a person to seize the day quite like the call of the void. Patrick Carroll's 2013 album, Glow In The Dark, replicates this sense of awe with painful familiarity. Truly, Carroll's songwriting is best characterized as L'appel Du Vide meets Carpe Diem:
"Death will come to me, when I'm good and ready"
"The words that you believe, before something hits you..."
The album is a reflection on the ways we choose to live our lives, the love we seek and cannot find, and just how precious the memories we make in the process truly are. Author and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez once wrote that "what matters in life is not what happens to you, but what you remember, and how your remember it." It is a sentiment that Carroll seemed to take to heart. A sentiment he expressed through a diverse and vivid aural canvas. Nostalgia for the recent past, fresh and clear, is regarded here with the reverence of decades old familial history; a consequence of the artist's unfortunate circumstances. This grants a weight and heft to the storytelling on display that you are unlike to find anywhere else.
Instrumentally the album is a joy; as comfortable as an old sweater, with the sharp, warm smells of cedar smoke and cinnamon billowing from the bonfire you share with friends and family. Rustic acoustic strings and tender keys slowly develop a richness and grandiosity as they are accented by humming horns, hand claps, and wobbling singing saws building and bursting apart in a quivering chorus of emotional self-actualization. All the while Pat operates as a philosophizing campfire crooner, questioning our assumptions on life and answering them in kind with his vulnerable, tastefully layered vocals.
It is tempting to draw comparisons to Neutral Milk Hotel's "In An Aeroplane Over The Sea" or Mount Eerie's "A Crow Looked At Me." While "Glow In The Dark" doesn't quite match the cohesion and consistency of those cult classic records - operating more as a personal musical pastiche - it's earnest and beautiful reflections on life at the cusp of death resonate every bit as deeply. This album is no whisper quiet acoustic dirge, subtly spoken in your ear like some guarded secret. The stripped-down guitars hum and flicker just as much as they wail and cry in celebratory, electrified passion.
Having never known Pat personally, I feel uniquely unqualified to critique this album, despite being personally acquainted with other musicians involved in its production. You don't need to have known Carroll to tell that the man had a tremendous heart and stunning imagination. So, I will keep my critique simple: if you are reading this, you owe it to yourself to give this album a listen. Dim the lights, tune in, and glow on, you weary and wonderful souls.
