I’ve probably said this before, but it is worth repeating: the best music doesn’t fit neatly into one genre or another. Doesn’t it stand to reason that if something is easily tagged, if it can be precisely pigeonholed, then you must have heard it, or something similar, before? It’s an idea that comes quickly to mind with artists like Sean MacLeod, and especially his latest album, the wonderfully named That’s When the Earth Becomes a Star; not only a collection of songs that purposefully wander all over the musical map, but also songs that, as individuals, are too clever and slippery to stick a label on. I wish more artists were this elusive.
Opener, ‘Take Control (Don’t Let ‘Em)’ gets to the heart of such conformities, advocating making art for art’s sake, rejecting the confines and compromises of commerciality merely for financial gain, a message delivered via a slice of lush and layered indie meets poised power-pop. The recent single, ‘Inside Out,’ is a mercurial mix of dense rock drive and shimmering vocal arrays and the title track tips its hat to the sound of succulent,’ 70s-infused, proggy, psychedelic pop.
‘Illuminate,’ if I’m understanding it correctly, gets to the heart of one of the album’s recurring themes: the dehumanisation of the creative process and, more broadly, our disconnection as a society. Isn’t it technology’s job to make our lives easier, take all the hard, boring, repetitive work from us, and leave us with the fun and rewarding bits… why does the opposite seem to be happening?
‘Goodbye’ makes for a brilliant way for the album to sign off: a slow-paced, anthemic and apocalyptic song with many interpretations, saying goodbye to the listener, or an old friend, or a way of life, but perhaps also waving farewell to the world as we know it, to be replaced with…well, that remains to be seen, and possibly something dictated by our actions and decisions in the here and now.
This fifth album from the Dublin artist covers a lot of ground musically, but dig into the lyrics, and you will find some of the most poignant themes of our times being discussed. We are constantly looking for answers, but we won’t find anything satisfying in the rhetoric of popularists and politicians; we find them in albums like That’s When the Earth Becomes a Star. Or at least the questions that prompt the search for those answers within ourselves.
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