The Last Candle

The twelve days of Christmas are still on, and that means, besides maids a-milkin’ and all that, one can still play the ingenious Merry Gear Solid and enjoy a lasting round of holiday cheer. Well, the game might still be cheery come July, but the holiday feel will be less green and more white and blue.

Ah, but what’s Merry Gear Solid, you might ask? For fans of the Metal Gear Solid games, one screenshot should sound a thousand exclamation points:

If that doesn’t convince a Metal Gear Solid fan to grab the game POST-HASTE, feast on this grand feature list pulled from the game’s web site:

- Full featured AI with sight and hearing.
- 4 different tools to use
- Full voice acting and original music
- A GRIPPING PLOT THAT WILL MAKE YOU SWEAT TEARS.
- A ranking system that keeps track of statistics throughout the game.

Everything about this game is awesome. It only lasts about a half-hour, but that’s just long enough, and the numerous homages to the Metal Gear Solid games are perfectly meshed into a Christmas context. I mean, who would have known Santa Claus has a rough, grumbly voice not unlike the famous Solid Snake? And who could’ve guessed that this little game would have such a great plot for its scope and size?

Not me, who happily played the game through on Christmas Eve. For everyone else, the season is still ripe for sneaking under the mistletoe.

Two tidbits of information regarding two of my favorite franchises have been released (or at least, made known to me) in the past couple of days. Let’s begin!

“Silent Hill 5 is on the way!,” producer and musician Akira Yamaoka more or less decrees in a recent interview, confirming what many believed but few actually knew.

To a Silent Hill fanboy like myself, this is long-awaited news. Get rid of this PSP Silent Hill: 0rigins malarky — I want a fully fleshed-out (no pun intended — ick), new adventure of squishy psychological horror on the big screen. If the next game comes to the PS3 only, then that and the next Sony-only game by Fumito Ueda, designer of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, would make the system look much more favorable (as would a price drop, natch).

Says Yamaoka about the game’s development,

I cannot say much about the development of the game but i can say we are working on a new unique idea of fear in daylight and the game will play like Silent Hill 2’s psychological roots.

“Fear in daylight”? I guess the flashlight is out. Maybe the new game will have a…blacklight.

That hint about the new game following Silent Hill 2 in terms of the narration is the best bit, as SH2 had far and away the best pace and plot of any of the games. Maybe even the mighty Pyramid Head will finally be usurped as the most terrifying game monster of all time by a new, extra-gooey next-gen fiend!

I await futher bits of news with great anticipation (and more than a little anxiety for the forthcoming frights). Hopefully we’ll hear more about the game soon, especially in the sad light (cough) of Resident Evil 5’s super-tentative release date — that is, no RE-style survival horror before 2008. Boo.

The other bit of entertainment fun was passed to me by my sister Beck: the web site for The Golden Compass, the first film for Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials fiction trilogy due out for Christmas…next year.

As my sister noted in her e-mail that she’s really excited for the film, I am as well. His Dark Materials is the greatest youngster-oriented series I’ve ever read, and one of my favorite series, period. The world is less goofy and ornate than that of Harry Potter, the easy comparison, but the narration and detail to the characters is much more mature, thoughtful, and much more satisfying than Harry and Friends.

The series also dips a toe into some serious topics — theology, the work of ideology, and others — which hopefully the movies will at least touch, even if I don’t expect Pullman’s concepts to be full-fledged on the silver screen. Most of the deep stuff is in the third book/movie anyway, so the crew and cast has a few years to get the chops ready for the philosophizin’. Hopefully they’ll leave out a bit of the third book’s extraneous talky fluff, too.

If you visit the movie’s page, be sure to check out the alethiometer’s corner. Even if you can’t read an alethiometer (can you? CAN YOU?), the golden device looks and moves just beautifully. And there are the books, of course, to check out as well.

For more information on these fine upcoming productions, check out BridgeToTheStars.Net for up-to-date His Dark Materials. As for Silent Hill, check out — actually, forget that. In all my years of Silent Hill-oriented web sleuthing, my only conclusion is that there aren’t any good Silent Hill web pages. The best bet for now is to keep an eye on SH5’s Wikipedia page.

Last post, I talked about Trans-Siberian Orchestra, the kings of soulless metal Christmas-winter pomp. The post was suffixed with a hopeful note that I’d get to the beaming Sufjan Stevens Songs For Christmas review within a week, but you know the problem with weeks, especially this time of year. (Answer: they’re only seven days long.) But hopes these days — especially hopes anchored to a time reference — are easily dashed due to a volatile work schedule, one that has this blog’s host working a few extra hours a night with little warning. That puts a damper on the ole’ blog-post steam engine, y’know?

Well, that’s my excuse. The second excuse is that I like to play guitar, even if I just keep playing G-D-A over and over. (Hey, it’s a nice-sounding chord sequence. And as I discovered yesterday, it fits in nicely to certain parts of Paradise By the Dashboard Light, which also happily rocks out with lengthy strains of the blues shuffle.)

But, Sufjan and his Christmas music. Right.

It’s a little late in the season to plug a Christmas album, even in light for my forthcoming ample and highly positive testimony to Stevens’ Songs for Christmas , because people are going to be stashing away the Jingle Cats and Cool Yule (ugh) in a couple of weeks. I’ll likewise be stuffing away Christmas Day in the Morning, but the drawer I’ll be hiding it away in will be accompanied by my new favorite holiday collection. Yes, it: Stevens’ Songs for Christmas.

The traditional songs on the album are pretty darn good, far more enjoyable and genuine than anything else I’ve heard from contemporary groups attempting modern day renditions of the classics such as Silent Night, or Joy to the World. There’s more than a little banjo on the album — actually, there’s quite a lot — as well as electric guitar, keyboard, clapping and off-key singing and honky-tonk composition, but the overall tone is very comfortable and heartening.

Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella is sung and played into a telephone as the mic, which has a sound quality about like you’d expect, but also with an unexpected haunting and distance. Holy, Holy, Holy is closely akin to Illinois’ John Wayne Gacy, Jr. in its timbre, but is completely on the opposite side of the scale for feeling: Holy, Holy, Holy wraps around the listener like a blanket due to Sufjan and his exquisite co-singer voices backed up with a simple piano and guitar accompianment. (John Wayne Gacy, Jr. is also very good, but it’s about a serial killer. Yeah.) I Saw Three Ships is given an uptempo groove. Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming (the vocal version — Songs For Christmas also features a piano-only rendition) is humble and involving, even with the inclusion of that durned banjo and a vocal presense that lacks presense, but has emotion in bales. All good stuff.

Of course, the original recordings are the truly terrific tracks. Put the Lights on the Tree (which can be see — and heard! — on YouTube) is jolly, silly, and hints at Sufjan’s appreciation for the harmonic and vaguely mad. That Was the Worst Christmas Ever! (available at the offical Songs for Christmas page — see the “stuff” sidebar) features Sufjan recalling (implicitly) yet another memory from a dysfunctional childhood. Did I Make You Cry on Christmas Day? (Well, You Deserved It!) is classic cold-warm Sufjan, with a story about a relationship sunk by seasonal depression. Sister Winter is the best of the whole bunch, with a somber and touching beginning and an emphatic, glorious finish.

But my personal favorite is Star of Wonder, a 7-minute trip that features a space-cold electric introduction, a lyric section that features illustrative and ice-blue (and traditionally obtuse) Sufjan storytelling, and a breathtaking “denoument,” which actually takes up a third of the song as a fairly repetitive finish (the lyric book shows a the closing lyric stanza, and underneath notes, “Repeat 10X”). Sister Winter sings about a wintery feeling, but Star of Wonder feels wintery. I love it.

All that, and I didn’t even heap laudations on the additions you get with Songs for Christmas: stickers, a fold-out Christmas comic with a Sufjan family photo on the back, and massive songbook that includes three essays, lots of artwork, lyrics and — get this — chord charts for all songs that include vocals. With such a generous bounty, it’s no wonder they call him Santa Sufjan!

I love Songs for Christmas. I’m going to be a little upset about stowing it away for ten months, but I’ll be looking forward to the album next year, now having something other than Christmas Day in the Morning to enjoy during the holidays. (As for my TSO albums: for sale, cheap!)

Sigh: the year ends, and I can count the nails from the last six months that have been driven in the coffin that contains my once-great love for all things metal. Movin’ on, I guess, and I blame the gradual switchover on Sufjan Stevens more than anyone else.

Links to That Was the Worst Christmas Ever! and Put the Lights on the Tree can be heard through Asthmatic Kitty and YouTube, respectively, as mentioned in the above post.

Sister Winter is also available in its entirety for free from the Asthmatic Kitty website (again, see the “stuff” sidebar).

But best of all, the five EPs of Songs For Christmas can be streamed in their entirety from an interior Asthmatic Kitty page. What generous and giving folks!

Finally, here are some iTunes links for the goofy hipsters in the audience:

• Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella
• Holy, Holy, Holy
• I Saw Three Ships
• Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming [vocal version]
• Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming [piano version]
• Did I Make You Cry on Christmas Day? (Well, You Deserved It!)
• Star of Wonder

While the impending tax season has kept me by and large away from my regular blogging post, it hasn’t stopped me from induldging in a little Christmas spirit. Indulging in music, that is, not egg nog and chestnuts and cookies with little sprinkles, except I wouldn’t necessarily refuse any of those if offered. Well, I might refuse the chestnuts.

I’ve said in the past that my favorite album to listen to during the end of the year was Christmas Day in the Morning by the Revels, a folksy performing-arts troupe from New England. Christmas Day in the Morning couldn’t have a more fittingly-titled artisted to compose the record: the cuts are mostly composed of cheery and boistrous revelry, including choirs of children, men and women, panpipes and fiddles and small brass ensembles to exhalt traditional Christmas tunes, enthusiast calls for evening wassails and holiday feasts, and traditional English cold-weather folk-spun yarns about characters who chop wood and dance jigs in the firelight and so on. Good hearty stuff for the season.

The only drawback about the Christmas Day album is the sorry occasional inclusion of Mannheim Steamroller-style synth accompianment to the otherwise warm instruments and vocals. Despite Mannheim Steamroller’s annual fame during the Christmas season, due to their array of holiday-themed albums, that bleepy signature 80’s-brand synth in every friggin’ song drives me nuts. Chestnuts, maybe. Keep it cozy, kill the keyboard.

This year I decided to branch out from the Revels a bit into more contemporary productions. The two Christmas-celebrating artists I picked up, Sufjan Stevens and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, the former an indie-weirdo folk-rock artist and the latter a pomp metal band, are similiar only in that they attempt to grab ahold of some of the holiday cheer through their creations.

Both are very different from the Revels, which is a success in its own, seeing as how I wanted something different this year. But after listening to the respective works, I have to say that I only really like one of them, and that one I like, I really like.

And the other? Don’t like it at all.

Now that I’ve got a little anticipation mounted with the previous two statements, I’d like to dissipate it quickly with an additional statement.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas albums are awful. Mystery over! Clarification follows.

I thought Trans-Siberian Orchestra would be a perfect match into my listening for Christmas. Being a big power metal fan, I’d much like to meet a band that has its roots in power metal-ish composition, and Trans-Siberian Orchestra fits that bill, right down to the three-album concept and thick story that includes reocurring themes, motifs, characters a’ plenty, ladies and gents with soaring, angelic vocals, full orchestral and choral cuts…and, of course, keyboarding and distorted guitar riffs a-plenty.

I even like the potential for the concepts, which are range from small vignettes about various people on Christmas Eve to popular ideals about the season. Heck, you want to talk about potential, check out the main character: God’s youngest angel, who is sent down to Earth from Heaven to find one great goodness in man, or something similarly prententious.

All that is fine and well. Many power metals albums I’ve listened to include similar amounts of composition overload, and are plenty successful as individual compositions.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra tries to do the same thing your usual power metal album does, but it’s missing one very large thing — well, maybe two: genuine inspiration, and perhaps, if you want to get pretentious, a soul.

Listening to any of the tracks from the two albums I bought, The Lost Christmas Eve and Christmas Eve and Other Stories, rare is the spark among the tracks, the that signals a signficant composition. The pop favorite Wizards of Winter from Lost Christmas Eve (made most popular a couple of years ago by this crazy happy lights show) is one such track, with good hooks, well-distributed instrumentals, and a careful but constant acceleration to the tune’s climatic finish. It feels wintery (or wintery enough), mostly thanks to the jingle bells and a couple of quoted Christmas carols.

A second rare memorable track is An Angel Came Down from Christmas Eve and Other Stories, a simple but solid ballad that smartly lets the narration take the front of the mix, and excluding any attempts of showboating in the other instruments.

But that’s it. A Mad Russian’s Christmas, TSO’s take on Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, is exactly as you might imagine a Christmas song done with a metal mentality: the string section takes a back seat, and is are replaced by a screamy guitars full of effects; the piano and keys trade solos with the axes every couple of minutes; lots of changes in dynamics, orchestra hits, and so on. Boring.

Same goes for the absurdly-named Christmas Eve: Sarajevo 12-24, which somehow melds Sarajevo with the traditional Carol of the Bells. Again, zero surprises, zero soul: guitar plays the melody, orchestra backs ‘em up. Licks, slides, and a couple of quotes. No surprises, no sensuality. So who cares?

The actual concept and lyrics are just as bad. Get this part in the narration that precedes a song called “The Wisdom of Snow,” a title worthy of a sad chuckle itself.

And as the snow comes gently down
Its soul intent to reach the ground
To cover scars the world still feels
Perhaps to give them time to heal

For as men invest in money
And professors in what they know
God invests in mercy
Like winter invests in snow

If a black metal band got ahold of that first stanza, the song would conclude with the sun coming out and burning away all the snow, opening fresh the scars that were set to heal by a meager bit of snow. Bow out before the giant burning ball of gas in the sky, humans!

Look, I don’t really mind lyrics that much, a side-effect of listening to too much power metal. But this business about God investing in mercy and winter investing in snow is one, an awkward juxtaposition, even besides the complete lack of romance in the word invests; and two, it’s just completely absent in terms of interesting illustration. I would almost bet a pound of pfeffernusse that the lyricist just cranked these stanzas out, one by one, grabbing any words that roughly intersected the realms of narrative sense and rhyme. The method is just as inspired as the result.

Here’s another bit of poetry from the song Christmas Nights in Blue.

Just another night in New York City
Snow comes down, looks real pretty
Don’t know how but suddenly there you are
With Jelly Roll Morton playin’ for the bar

Not much of an explication, is it? But you gotta love that snow!

There’s little doubt that the creators of TSO tried really, really hard to make something loving and lovable out of the holiday spirit. They plugged everything about the season into the albums: toys, giving, strangers in the night, reconciling old ills in the name of good spirits, angels, GOD HIMSELF, cookies, ales, strange and familiar climate conditions, and so on. If you want a comprehensive reference for the contemporary commerical Christmas holidays, TSO’s Christmas concept trilogy has your interests covered.

But if you want interesting, well-composed, inspired music that captures the soul of the season, look elsewhere.

Elsewhere like Sufjan Stevens’ just-released Songs for Christmas (of course). More on the great Steven’s latest composition later — within a week, hopefully, depending on the ole’ work schedule.

In the meantime, enjoy Jolly Old Hawk, a short song from the Christmas Day in the Morning album.

I now present: the video for Psycho le Cemu’s Gekiai Merry Go Round as done through my own brand of goofy filter.

Should I bow, or watch out for the cane? Let the viewers of YouTube decide!