Today I decided to present an album, exceptional by its quality and virtuosity, it's the album "Thirteenth Step" from the alternative rock band "A Perfect Circle". There are some albums sometimes regularly remind you how much music can touch you by its genius, its perfect composition, that it transcends your mind and soul... Thirteenth Step is one of those discs. The universe deployed here is undoubtedly less aggressive than the first songs of the band, but it's much more intense. There are several influences, including Tool for the dark and brutal aspect or Pink Floyd for the experimental rock side that marks each track. The band, composed with Maynard James Keenan of Tool, Billy Howerdel (worked with NIN, Smashing Pumpkins, Faith No More, David Bowie) which is the brain of the band, Josh Freese (ex NIN, Guns' n Roses), Danny Lohner (also ex NIN), James Iha (ex Smashing Pumpkins) and Jeordie White (aka Twiggy Ramirez, bass guitar player for Marilyn Manson), have succeeded to create an album that touch perfection.
The first thing about this album is the cover, a strange mixture of pure beauty through the face of a girl, of disgust with a slug which has a hidden meaning and of mystery with the famous "perfect circles". Regarding to the title of the album, he seems to be a link with the 12 steps from the alcoholics program and it's especially around this concept of dependencies that turns the album.
And it's precisely by the spectacular The Package that the album begins. A minimalist melody hit by a guitar and a voice almost plaintive and a rising power along the way until a selfish rage vibrates, through the tone of Maynard. The general atmosphere is deliberately heavy (not the guitar) in the felt, in the diction of singing, before slowly remain silent in a redemptive whisper.
Weak and Powerless speak about alcohol addiction and this song is embroidered with a sublime musical arrangement drowned in the guitar and bass creating melodies sound that literaly print the music in your head. And what to say about these clever suspensions arranged in the song, the global beauty of the track. It's perfect, pure, carrying emotions as ever.
The noose, or perhaps one of the most beautiful song ever written in the world. The noose start with a distant melody, which is slowly absorbed in the minds of the listener, and reveal its charms where arrangements of piano, distant guitars, the battery, touching the heart just right where it's good until this sudden rise of power, fabulous and really awesome
Blue speak about the addiction of a person that refuses to let go the loved being and continues to keep him "blue" (so death) near her. The track has an atmosphere almost "Lateralus" of Tool and its hallucinatory projections.
Vanishing is based on a melody in the background played by a ghostly guitar and drums playing something very light and sending you dancing in the depths of a quiet ocean.
A Stranger, creation accoustique a guitar and flying effects, almost ambient, prolongs the Thirteenth Step experience in multiplying the voice of Maynard in a zen ambience with an enveloping sound almost mystical.
After this very vaporous track, we go back to something more direct, more heavy, The Outsider remain Tool with the striking guitars and their arrogant sound precision. The video clip of this song is really very funny.
Crimes track quite atypical of the album and even of the band is based almost completely on a battery mono rhythmic and essential. Behind it, far away, stand strange guitars and sounds emerging from the darkness with a taste of weird stuff. Short but truly mesmerizing.
The Nurse Who Loved Me is one of these songs very calm and beautiful but not so interesting. The live version, which is much more rock, restores the power of this song which is then, devastating.
Pet with its oppressive rhythmic, and his freaky words "Counting bodies like sheeps to the rhythm of the war drums" denounces the war and the USA's dependance about it. This track is also a model of perfect sound heard all along the album, everything sounds great in this title. The breaks, voices, guitars, experiments, to be short, a unique piece, one more.
Lullaby or after having a gentle nurse, brings us back to a dark ligh, trying to bewitch us to better control us. It's a strange interlude, but not devoid of curious sensation.
And finally, a fantastic song, Gravity brings the entire album in these few minutes with dementia, sometimes flying, sometimes desperate and reflecting the general atmosphere of these thirteen step, the thirteenth is perhaps a personal approach still to be done.
With a beautiful musical dimension, through perfect sounds and thanks to a production having the good sense to implement a lot of small things that make each song totally unique, Thirteenth Step let's us, for a few moments, to forget everything, just to be projected in this world sometimes in melancholy, sometimes in a desperate rage, sometimes in a total immersion of the senses as isolated from the outside world.
The speeches are not enough to reflect the piece of art that this album represents .. only one listening can reveal the edge… many will be needed to see forms.Twelve steps are done, but the thirteenth need to be crossed, perhaps by ourselves. One thing seems acquired: if musical awesomeness has a representation, that would certainly be a perfect circle…
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