I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: KINGS’S X: Faith Hope Love (1990).

When Faith Hope Love came out, I was once again blown away by King’s X.  This album actually diverts quite a bit from the heaviness of the previous two albums.  This is their most prog rock sounding release, introducing all kinds of new instrumentation, including Doug’s by now standard 12 string bass guitar (I got to try one of these at Sam Ash a few years back and it sounds amazing).

Overall this album plays with the softer side of King’s X (although this is contrasted by “Moanjam” a six- minute, guitar-wailing freakout, and the great shouting sing along “We Are Finding Who We Are” showing that the band hasn’t lost their hard edge even if they ware willing to play with different textures).  But the diversity of sounds on the record is what really impresses.  You get a song like “The Fine Art of Friendship” which has so many layers of things going on, it’s hard to absorb on the first listen.

I’ve been reading some different reviews of this album, and it’s amazing how people single out songs as being particularly religious.  “Six Broken Soldiers” is mentioned as being Christian.  Now here’s the lyrics, I personally don’t even know what they mean, much less whether they are Christian

i don’t care if you’re sick
what can i possibly do with an American library
and a contract on you
I’ve got six broken soldiers in the trunk of my car
two of them speak; four go to bars
rods in the closet a six shooter in hand
a caged up gorilla and three local bands
fluently the parrot speaks
six languages not known to men
a sixpence and a quarter
as the audience he scan.

But aside from that, the album isn’t preachy about its beliefs, and frankly, it’s easy enough to forget what the songs are about, since the melodies are so infectious.  And, I didn’t even mention one of the greatest alt-rock singles of the 1990s: “It’s Love.”  It’s an amazingly catchy and infectiously happy song.  The harmonies are just stellar.

This is the last King’s X album to dabble in these prog-stylings.  The next bunch are really heavy affairs, quite a departure from this one.

[READ: September 07, 2008] “The Dinner Party”

I enjoyed this story very much.  It felt like a contemporary update of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with a twist.

As the story opens Amy and her husband are having an argument.  The story is told from her husband’s point of view, although his name is never given.  They are having a dinner party for Lauren and Ben, friends of Amy’s whom her husband dislikes.  Their argument isn’t an argument between each other necessarily it’s more about her husband telling her how much he dislikes her friends, but the subtext is quite clear.

Lauren and Ben are going to announce to them that they are going to have a baby, and her husband is anticipating the dreaded moment for all of its tedium.  When Amy reaches her breaking point she says,

“When that happens, why don’t you suggest they have an abortion?”
He chewed his ice and nodded. “That would shake things up,” he said, “wouldn’t it?”

As you can tell from this little snippet, the tone of their argument is abrasive and rude, and its hard to tell who they are trying to hurt more.  It’s like Virginia Woolf, yet it goes further.

The twist occurs when Lauren and Ben do not show up for the party.  Amy is convinced that something terrible has happened and calls all of the area hospitals.  After several hours of watching their dinner go bad on the kitchen counter, her husband agrees to go over their house and see if all is okay.

In a scene that reminded me of Eyes Wide Shut (without the sex, which admittedly, what is left?, but it’s more the overall tone) when he arrives at the house, Lauren and Ben are in the midst of their own party.  He wanders around blindly, darkly, more or less feeling his way until Lauren finally confronts him.

The final twist comes when Lauren actually reacts to Amy’s husband’s hostilities, bluntly telling him that she never liked him.  It comes as a slap in the face to him and to us, to see this nasty character taken down a notch, especially since we see it from his point of view.  A really great story.  Very compelling with wonderful twists.  It’s available here.