Receiving End of Sirens - The Earth Sings Mi Fa Mi

I bought that Receiving End of Sirens album. Tee hee. I'm so addicted.

And although I have yet to really get to know this band, so far, it seems rather epic. Five songs are over five minutes long. One is nearly eight minutes long. Only one is below 3:30. And I know, this doesn't mean anything on it's own, but these songs are just jam-packed with sounds and lyrics - It almost seems messy and chaotic, there's always so much going on. Lots of reverb effects to make it sound huge, like it's being played in outer space, perhaps. My favorite genre of all time is guitar + emo boy, but number two has to be alternative rock with lots of synths. This is it, so far, only less fun and dance-y (like Hellogoodbye or Forever the Sickest Kids) and more serious and hard like Jimmy Eat World. The lyrics are highly metaphorical and symbolic, nice deep stuff you can sink your teeth into. Like I said, I've only made it into the first couple songs so far, but I listened to all the previews and read some lyrics, and I can tell this is gonna be good. I'll let you know when I'm finished.

EDIT -

Wow. This album is amazing. The rest of the songs are like their first couple, in style and depth.

I started really reading the lyrics on "Smoke and Mirrors," which seems to be about corporate America and advertising, and how the singer is not going to be fooled by it.

"Saturnus" is, I think, about someone consumed by lust, and the acts of lust (incredible line from this song: "I've cared so much for proving that I've lost all love for proof." Wow.)

"Wanderers" has strong religious allusions. It talks mainly about "this little light" (like in Matt 5) and how teacher always said to "let it shine / But I stood idly by / And watched that poor flame die."

"Stay Small" is addressed to a son and daughter, a plea for them to "stay small" and hold on to their innocence, and an apology for bringing them into this horrible world.

"The Heir of Empty Breath" is pretty much all metaphor, so it's kinda vague, but it seems to be about someone who is stuck in the past, who is "the king of what could have been," and a plea for someone to come release him. Or maybe it's a plea for his past to actually come back to him? I'm not sure.

"Pale Blue Dot" is pretty cool. The hook is "There's no place like home." Which, okay, seems pretty regular. But in the first verse, it goes:

I watched my guilt blossom before me
Like a tender shoot
With thirsty roots
O how my garden grows
The shameful seeds I've sown

I watched its stems sprawl above me
Its dark shadow cast its cloud around me
But I can live with it
I'll live in it

There's no place like home.

That casts a whole new light on it. Pretty cool.

And there's one instrumental song, "Music of the Spheres." This is referring to the same thing that named their album - "mi fa mi," apparently some kind of scientific finding (I explained this in the last post, I believe) or maybe not actually a finding, but... in any case, "mi fa mi" are the pitches the earth makes, somehow, and it stands for "misery, famine, misery." I expected this song, "Music of the Spheres," to be built on those two pitches, and perhaps it is, but it's not in a way I can tell. It might go up and down octaves, I'm not sure. The lyrics in the book just say "mi fa mi."

But anyway. This album is so incredible. These guys have things they're trying to say. And the whole thing has this unifying theme, lyrically and musically, of "the world is a horrible place." Not exactly happy, but it's very powerful. If this album is anything, it's powerful. You could just listen to it as background music. I mean, it's good music. But there's a lot to take from it, if you let it speak to you.