When you count the years by how old your nieces are then or who had an accident that year, that's when events start taking on the weight of those years, that's when time feels long. 2011 feels like a long time when I first saw them. I would see them again at Empy Bottle for their next album Wash the Sins Not Only the Face. Their music is stirring. Lights the fire in the blood. It helped in holding myself together, and stronger. Have you seen the video for Marching Song? Its fucking rage inducing! Rachel Davies is a troubadour that induces you into steeling yourself for the fight. Both those shows were so intense and I barely had enough for their CDs. Time passes. I don't see them a third time. I don't know if they toured Chicago again but I did not see them. The music I got from them take on roots.....Despair, Yellow Wood, Deathwaltz. Different fucking roller coasters, all of them. When I look them up again it was two songs that hooked me all over again, The Jungle, and No Dog. While Marching Song simmers and burns to it's climax, No Dog rages from the very beginning. When it slows down, only then calmly at first but that calm is brief and a spark in a cloud of kindling leads to a full blown guitar, bass and drum rage and it is fabulous! And they can hold you by a tense thread when they slow down. I overindulged and bought from them online on white fucking vinyl Live At Roadburn. 
The Jungle is over 13 minutes long. It was a fucking wonder I listened at all. Normally, I'll give up 13 minutes easy if it's Nooran Sisters, or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, sure.....yes I actually do listen to them. So, even as you are capable of a long listen, do you even want to. Will your attention trail off in 3 minutes with 10 more to go? They retain a a razor sharp
tension at all times like a trapeze wire. It keeps you in the moment hanging on to her words. I was hooked on The Jungle and then I read the lyrics....wow a second time! It has a beginning, middle and final boss....just like in the fucking video games. It's like an overture in classical music for me. It has that kind of storied impact. It has that structure for me. Overtures tell you what's to come, like dramatic trailers. It reaches a peak and the descent downwards is fast and that has pulses and steps in this descending sprint. It's like you're in a car with no brakes going downhill. This is why this song can hold your attention for all that time. There are pulses of speed within the ascending first and descending second hmm movement. Dividing this into two parts, the jungle is both ravaged pristine innocent wilderness and merciless, living, collective eating machine that just about eats you alive until the savage in you fights and chops a way out. There are many levels to see this. In the beginning I could not help but to see this as a metaphorical colonizer chopping a path through this sweet innocent forest....."....cleave I will split the tender stems of virgin trees"....then the jungle starts fighting back nearly devouring the one in the jungle....that person fights and chops it's way out! So the jungle in this song is ravaged yes but not without it's teeth. And only when the jungle within the girl fighting back, roaring back, does she get out. The jungle can be a metaphor for the world in general....and not the New World. Any way....The Jungle....wow what a fucking awesome track! All 13 minutes!
So just like that, I am a fan all over again. Some of their song are long, but give them that time and you will come out feeling empowered, perhaps.
Zig
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