Sometimes we take music for granted. Even I am guilty; I listen to a lot , and things tend to blur together when you listen to as much music as I do. Every now and again though, there comes a piece that stops you in your tracks, challenges your perception of what matters in music, and edifies your soul. Though it just misses out on my top 100 records list, "Born Into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward" is one such album. The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band - Born Into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward || Post-Rock || Released 2001 A band that has undergone many variations on its name, most know them as simply "A Silver Mt. Zion" (the name they started with). ASMZ are an offshoot of the best and most influential post-rock outfit of all time, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, featuring many members of the band. While the stylings of GSY!BE bleed through in this band's work (how could they not ?), there is something entirely new and fresh i
Jamie McKendrick - Sky Nails That first day, to break me in, my hardened comrades sent me scampering like a marmoset from the topmost parapet to the foreman's hut for a bag of sky nails. The foreman wondered which precise shade of blue I had in mind. It's still sky nails I need today with their faint threads and unbreakable heads that will nail anything to nothing and make it stay. There are a few interpretations of Sky Nails that seem plausible. For me, it's the last three lines that really tell me what it is I find so compelling about it...nailing "anything to nothing and mak[ing] it stay" for me means that the sky nails the protagonist has fetched from the mysterious "foreman" (a deity of some kind?) are the tools needed to keep themselves together; they represent the psychological means for a desperately struggling person (perhaps, particularly, someone who has some sort of mental illness) to hold on. 1. Kate Bush - Running Up that Hill