I’ve always created albums conceptually so, The Weeping Candles, felt second nature to me. The sound has a concept: 80’s post punk. The lyrics all connect communicating the angst of the moment we’re in right now: An election year, George Floyd, BLM, Covid 19, quarantine, home school, the entire world looking like ninja clans in our masks, economic collapse, toilet paper hoarding, statues torn down, city blocks burned, riots, tear gas, people shot in the head with rubber bullets, federal agents being blinded by lasers...you can’t make this stuff up. It almost feels like the Mayans were just off by about 8 years.
My wife walked into the living room one day to find our 14 year-old reading news updates on her phone...weeping. Moments like that and the conversations that followed inspired the song, These Kids Have Fangs:
Anna I hear you crying
But I cannot stop this war
And I know you know
That life just isn’t fair
Good luck telling a teenager life isn’t fair. Most of them already know it and expect an adult to fix it, something none of us are qualified for. Then try following that up with this conundrum: What if it was never meant to be fair? Something inside a child can’t accept that. How do we adults accept it? We think we hide it well, but it’s there in plain sight, viz.: humans are just as low as the beasts of the field. Survival of the fittest continues to define us.
Burn it all
The wheat and the chaff
We shall never
Live by bread again
Cancel all
Who dare think different
This our mantra
Our hidden agenda
The final solution
-Tenebrae (Extinguish the Vigil Lights)
While much of the album deals with this angst of the moment there are reminders to stay calm such as when Danelle Dullum and I refrain, Breath it Out, in the song, This Middle Space. The album ends with the eternal love of Helios and Selene, celestial gods that remind us that the sun continues to rise as the moon continues to set, and the universe seems utterly oblivious to our struggles. As I wrote the final lines of the album I was thinking of my wife, but now I think it reflects my universal love for all mankind despite our problems and differences, I will love you ‘till the end of days.