Comments From The End
5
By bigmikeberg
I can't say enough to thank Andy Hull for first of all thinking up and then following through with this exceptionally unique project. Not only a concept album but a concept band that follows a man's most fragile of moments: jealousy, despair, arrogance, hate, solipsism, and love.
The album itself is unique. Probably the most stripped down of any of the RAGC albums, and the story benefits from the choice. The voice is the story on this album and it will take a finely attuned attention to hear the internal struggle going on in the sailor throughout this album. The music is simple yet original, catchy enough to stick in your head, but also each song with lyrics powerfully and painstakingly honest and empathetic enough to make you never want to forget it. You won't want to forget any of it. You'll want to begin and end again. What Andy Hull has done here is create music that connects on a new level. The story and the character and everything is just so plainly real sounding: nothing fancy, everything simple: purely good. An honest man's representation of an all too often cliched experience.
This review does none of RAGC justice, especially the final chapter's haunting, lovingly eerie aloneness that paints us a movie before our ears and direct links all of senses to feel another's horrid pain. This is the story of a man both hating and loving himself too much to eventual death. This is not something that we're given everyday. Music being as specific as it is, I can't make you like this album, but understand if you listen to it, and then to all of it, then back again, you'll feel something. All the doubt, pain, hatred, love, and limits you feel, just know, you are not alone. This is what RAGC means to me.
