What do you do when you stare into your soul and find that there is nothing left to draw on? When you feel as if you are in free fall, totally exposed, vulnerable, and emotionally detached. Most people would despair and find a crutch, a friend, a substance to help support them through their hour of need. But then Tombstones in Their Eyes aren’t like you and I, and their response is to take those feelings and turn them into a bleak and beautiful anthem!
This final offering, this long, dark recording session of the soul and indeed the ultimate track from the Asylum Harbour album is not only the sound of the band pushing their trippy, psychedelic sound into scuzzy sonic peaks, turning their shoegaze-infusions into grinding rhythms and building raw platforms of melodic noise, it is the sound of hope being drawn out of the depths of hopelessness, the act of fears and emptiness being faced down by creativity.
Of course, that is what music does best; it is not just entertainment and communication, on a purely personal level, it can provide therapy and, given time, healing, sonic purgation, and eventually catharsis.
And a remarkable song requires an equally remarkable video, and here, Italian multi-arts visionary Francesca Bonci, (known for her work with Federale (BJM’s Collin Hegna), British bard Philip Parfitt, The Dandy Warhols’ Peter G. Holmström a.k.a. Pete International Airport and Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, amongst others) has created a suitable psychedelic vista that perfectly matches the brooding and Byronic music it channels.
The perfect footnote to what has been a great album, the perfect summation of the Tombstone sound, well, one of their many sounds, and the perfect reminder that we all carry burdens, we all struggle with emotional baggage, we are all, after all, only human but that even those dark thoughts and unresolved feelings can sometimes be the most creative of musical wellsprings.
It’s all about looking for the light in the dark, its all about finding the silver linings.
Bandcamp
Gimme Some Pain video
Asylum Harbour album order
By My Side’ video
Bandcamp
Spotify
