Review Summary: Of Rose, and Sarah, and who knows how many more like them.
When I’m in the reading mood, but not sure what exactly I want to read, I often go for a Stephen King novel. Last week, I did the same, randomly opening one of his books on my Kindle and starting to read. The very first pages made me realize that it’s going to be a challenging read, so I’ve decided to turn on some music as I go. Some people can’t read and listen at the same time, but I can. And of course I turned on this Wolverine album, since I wanted to review it anyway. This was not my first listen, but the first time when I paid close attention to the lyrics. That happened not because I am a super meticulous reviewer who wants to analyze everything (sometimes I don’t pay attention to the lyrics at all). But because the lyrics of the album I was listening to eerily echoed the introduction to the book that I was reading.
Rose Madder by Stephen King starts with Rose, the titular character, sitting on the floor, bleeding profusely, and having a miscarriage because of a savage beating inflicted by her husband Norman. You see, Norman had a bad day at work and needed to vent out on someone who wouldn’t fight back. In turn, “Cold Light of Monday” by Wolverine starts with the following lyrics, related to Sarah, the main heroine of
this story:
Upon a cold floor in a filthy room
In a river of blood she cries... she cries
And artwork of pain
And the brushstrokes are red
Fighting the emptiness
That is slowly consuming her soul
Sarah has also been through a lot in her life. Not only gender violence, but also bullying in school, betrayal of friends, and hopes that turned out to be empty. So, there’ll be more callbacks between the album and the book as we go along. For now, it’s enough to know that the story is especially important for the band this time around. Stefan Zell’s lyrics are all constructed to reflect what Sarah thought, said, or did, and the music is structured accordingly. Even the instrumental interludes are there to serve the narrative, creating an impression that you are listening to an audiobook or a radio play, rather than a regular album. The same goes for the most experimental track “Tightrope,” which starts with rumbling bass and electronic melody set against the backdrop of abrasive noise and develops into a musique concrete collage with traffic noise, human speech, and other noises entwined into the song.
Which is not to say that the music takes the backseat completely. It’s rather that the band has reasonably decided not to throw everything they have into the blender this time and focus on the atmosphere and the story. Naturally, that brought significant changes to the sound. The growls only make a token appearance, but the guitars are still there alright. They’re just different. On “The Window Purpose” the punchy riffs felt like a professional boxer jumping around his opponent and delivering series of seemingly random, but actually calculated blows. On “Cold Light of Monday” the riffs sound more like a procession of elephants, moving along in an unhurried and dignified fashion. They are also here to tell the story, and they will not treat it with undue haste. Most of the time, however, the guitars are not there to riff, but to provide mournful and bitter-sweet melodies that reflect overall hopelessness of Sarah’s tribulations.
The keyboards have also settled on one particular task this time. On the previous album, they jumped from one style to another on a whim, but here their presence is even more prominent and they stick to this specific ghostly and eerie sound almost always. In fact, if I just listened to an instrumental version of the album, knowing that it tells some story, but unaware of any details, I would have been sure that it must be a ghost story. Only in the ballad “Trust” the piano takes a more hopeful tone, but that sinister undercurrent still creeps in around the second half of the song.
As such, do not expect the album to win you over immediately. You’d probably need some time and more than one listen to wrap your head around it and put all the pieces together. Thankfully, the heavy songs are still here to provide some sense of familiarity and keep the album grounded. That is true for “New Best Friends,” a song that manages to sound both desperate and hopeful, “Carousel” with its uplifting chorus, and rich and multi-layered “Pantomime.” At the same time, the closer “The Final Redemption” reaches for a similar goal, but doesn’t have the same impact. The preceding “Tied with Sin” is a much stronger song, but, of course, it does not close the story.
Like I said, the story remains the main focus throughout the album. And I can’t help but see multiple parallels between this story and the one Stephen King tells in
Rose Madder. Loss of a child is one of the recurring themes in both the album and the book, and some lyrics of the album seem to echo King’s description of Rose’s husband chronic inability to control his temper:
Over and over again
He unleashes his fire upon her
But the anger he feeds
It just craves for more.
There are significant differences, of course. Stephen King does not shy away from detailed description of what exactly happens to a woman having a miscarriage or physical consequences of prolonged and regular abuse. At the same time, Wolverine chose to focus on the emotional side of the story. The band opts for a more comprehensive approach, not focusing specifically on gender violence issue, but choosing to show how a kind-hearted girl with “porcelain eyes” may recede deep inside herself under constant pressure from outside. There’s one aspect of King’s storytelling that appeals to me though. His Rose is scared stiff of the murderous, trigger-happy monster that is her husband, but once she decided to get away from him, she is ready to fight for a better life with everything she’s got. In contrast, Wolverine’s Sarah seems to be more of a passive recipient of everything that life throws at her, which makes the story way more one-dimensional than the band probably intended. Believe it or not, a lot of women can actually stand up for themselves.
My own mother dealt with the issue in a very gangsta style. After surviving through several years of abuse and suffering a micro-stroke in the process, she decided it was time to act. She paid a couple of cops and gave them the keys to our apartment, so that they could come in and give my dear daddy a taste of his own medicine. Following that, he was presented with a choice: either he dutifully fills and signs all the necessary divorce papers or a second helping of the same meal will be served. Naturally, one lesson was enough.
Still, how many women never gathered up the courage to stand up for themselves? How many of them never even had a chance to do it, because the bastard miscalculated his force and impact and turned a “little quarrel” into a murder? How many of them took what they perceived as the only way out, swallowing a handful of pills or jumping headfirst from a window? We’ll never know. Most of the time, what happens in the family stays in the family.
Come over here, sweetheart – I want to talk to you up close…
