Review Summary: “With each convalescence, I am reborn, I cease to exist.”
The toughest days were when I was injured.
When I couldn’t do the thing that could make me forget, stop thinking and just… be. I couldn’t be there, in the goal, attentive and consumed and enough.
In 2018, Doug Moore, guitarist and vocalist of Weeping Sores, had a shoulder injury that left him unable to play guitar for a year. But, thankfully…
And then, at some point, my body had healed and I could go back in there and forget and feel the flow. But, inevitably…
Doug recovered and, along with Steve, created The Convalescence Agonies. It’s raw, emotional and just… beautiful in it’s portrayal of the recovery.
I would get injured again and I would lose it again. the cycle would start over. It was again and again and just… sisyphosian in the experience of recovery.
An atypical production in the genre. Not deep and gloomy, but clear, fragile and thin - painful, like the snailing of time and the endless repetitions and the miniscule improvements or large setbacks of recovery.
It was just me and the physical therapist and rehab work on the side, while my teammates sprinted and jumped and - to my envy - forgot.
For most of the record, it’s the drums, the guitar, probably a bass somewhere far away and Doug’s voice but, occasionally, you’ll also find strings and other symphonic elements used to build up tension and reach emotional climaxes.
I’ve screamed into my pillow late and night, not because of my aching knee, but because I couldn’t do what I loved it to do, needed to do.
Doug Moore screams with something that I, despite all the years since my injury, can recognize, know, feel.
I hope we all heal.
