Sep 092024
 


(written by Islander)

On August 20, 2017, the day before a total solar eclipse I was about to witness in Wyoming, I wrote about a song I had heard the night before by a Canadian band named Hell Is Other People (it was the title track to their album Embrace, which came out about 10 days later). But over the course of many paragraphs before ever getting to the song I wrote about the band’s name, and about the alcohol-fueled discussion of it that took place among my friends and me under the stars that night.

I won’t put you through all those paragraphs again (they’re here if you want to read them), even though the discussion meant a lot to me then and still does. I’ll just mention that the band’s name is a famous statement from the play No Exit by Jean Paul Sartre, and it’s an assertion that’s subject to many interpretations, about the many ways in which other people can make life hell for us, or cause us to make our own lives into a hell.

Still grateful to this band for that night, today I’m going to get to their music a lot faster, because we’ve got a song to premiere from their new album Moirae, which comes a long seven years after Embrace. One thing that hasn’t changed over those many years is this band’s capacity to be thought-provoking — and to pierce through into the heart of where our emotions come from. Continue reading »

Aug 202017
 

 

I’m still in Wyoming with a bunch of good friends, now one day away from the total eclipse of the sun that we came here to witness together. Last night was another late session of stargazing, boozing, and the kind of unpredictable conversation that boozing under the shine of the Milky Way can produce.

Much earlier in the day NCS contributor Grant Skelton had sent me a link to a song that I had decided to include in today’s SHADES OF BLACK column (which I haven’t even started writing, but will write, I promise — though I might not post it until eclipse day tomorrow). And the name of the band reminded me of something I hadn’t thought about in years, and that provoked one of the most interesting conversations under the stars last night. Continue reading »