March 10, 2021 Filling Negative Spaces, part 1 and August 22 update

 

Just when I think, "This is the best Seether album, ever", I listen to the next one.  Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces is, again, the best Seether album ever.  There is so much pain in the lyrics and in Shaun's vocals that some of the songs are difficult to listen to.  That may be hindsight.  The album, dedicated to Shaun's brother Eugene, was completed before Eugene's death.  Like the music and lyrics on their most recent album, Si Vis Pacem Parabellum which seemed to have a foreshadowing of 2020 even though the recording was finished before we were all sent home, Negative Spaces seem to foreshadow his brother's death.  Although listening to the lyrics, it seems Shaun is talking about himself more often than not.  

1) Like Suicide.  The lyrics here are somewhat ambivalent, regret and frustration, anger and pain.  Is she really suicidal or just likes talking about it to torture her loved ones. Not many people are like that but there are some.  And they aren't necessarily not going to do it.  Even the boy who cried wolf got it in the end.  Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth. (Aesop).  Music and lyrics drive hard.  I especially like the note just before "You set me up" that lasts for-ev-er.   And the series of "You set me up to fucking fail this time" goes from two discordant voices to the type of screaming that it usually accompanied by fists making holes in drywall.  The music builds at the end until that last cymbal.

2) Fake It.  Shaun said in an interview that it was put on the album to lighten the mood of an album that was "pretty heavy and pretty dark".   Fake It may have started out as a joke but Seether doesn't do anything half-assed on an album and it's a pretty fantastic song.  Having lived in LA for a year, about as much as I could stand, this sarcastic sneer of a song is a tribute to those of us who would love to tell someone they're such a fucking hypocrite.  I'd like to be able to say, "Good God, you're coming up with reasons" with as much contempt as Shaun does.  That's Dale starting out with the bass line, nice and deep, with drums and guitars not coming in until after the end of the first verse.  I never get tired of listening to this one.   

Interesting that Like Suicide and Fake It are strangely companion songs.  Fake It for hypocrites in general and Like Suicide for individuals who may be hypocrites, particularly from the ancient derivation of an "actor on a stage" but you can't take the chance of thinking you know for sure.

3) Breakdown.  A quiet, intense song.  The music is gorgeous.  The feeling is love.  I love you, do what you need to do, I'm strong enough to take it.  This is coupled with FMLYHM which is another side to the relationship.

4)  FMLYHM.  O.K., full disclosure here.  Before I heard the song, I thought the acronym meant Family Home.  It's not.  It just goes to show you what different lives people have.  Although it could be talking about the Family Home.  The family just isn't all that functional.  This is also a love song.  Yes, I know how it sounds, but what it says to me is, "I still love you so I'll take what I can get".  There is something about the quality of the way he sings, "Fuck me like you hate me" that makes me think he is saying something else.  It's so melancholy.  "I should have been the one who died."  Is that the theme that's running through Like Suicide, Breakdown, Rise Above This and most of the rest of the songs on this album?  How are you strong enough to come back from that.

5) Fallen.  Hello LA.  Seedy, growly bass, John comes in with a very spare drum for a few beats and then full force until it dials back again to start the vocals.  Makeovers and plastic surgery.  The way Shaun sings "I'll keep my pride" rivals "Good God, you're coming up with reasons".  The music is controlled chaos the Seether way.  You guys rock.

6) Rise Above This.  This song means so much to so many people and they have intense feelings about it.  The band seems to have intense feelings about it.  I just can't write about this one. "I'll mend myself before it gets me."  Just make sure you are singing "mend".  Sometimes I think I hear "end".  August 22 I do hear "end" it's there in the lyrics.

Eugene Welgemoed should have turned forty in a month [April 17th].  He should have been here for all this.  I wish he was.