Contextual Note 1 (for readers who aren’t Isaiah).
In the week and a half since I put up the post on “BE” , I have become a massive Pain of Salvation fan. I’ve always (ever since Zaya played me selections from Road Salt and lent me his copy of “BE”, a decade back) respected them, admiring them lightly, safe from a distance. I would come back to them every now and then, spending time with some album from “BE” onwards, checking to see if Isaiah’s favorite band in the whole world would grow on me or not, and wanting that to be the case, but generally it wasn't. Then In the Passing Light of Day came out, becoming my instant favorite in the catalogue. But I didn’t listen to it a great deal. It still featured a lot of the things I didn’t care for, such as Daniel’s dramatic monologues, or the bland-sounding rocked-out heavier bits. But still, every now and then, I’d go back... sometimes I’d discover that I loved a certain song, maybe No Way, or Silent Gold, or Mortar Grind, or Meaningless... by and by, a decade rolled away from the world, and the advance singles for Panther started coming out. I loved Accelerator. I loved everything except one structural/lyrical detail in Restless Boy. And I fell hard for the title track. I think that’s when everything shifted. Something in me decided that if loved the songs Accelerator and Panther so much, and so unequivocally, there was probably something wonderful about the years and years of lead-up to Panther that I just hadn’t noticed yet. Last month, I finally gave Panther the careful listens it deserved, and soon loved everything about it. So I started listening to interviews with the band’s frontman/songwriter Daniel, and started talking with Zaya about the band again, and Zaya (for I had always assumed Pain of Salvation was merely Daniel & Hirelings, and paid no attention to the often-changing line-up) told me about Ragnar Zolberg, and I fell in love with Ragnar’s solo work, which in turn got me scouring In the Passing Light of Day for his contributions, and then playing lots of Falling Home (first the title track, a hundred plus times, then the whole album). Around the same time, I started on the Prog Stories... and my love for Pain of Salvation’s post-“BE” work just keeps on deepening. I think Road Salt, Falling Home, In the Passing Light of Day, and Panther are all magnificent, on so many levels. I can’t wait to properly get to know Scarsick. And I’m curious about the early albums that document how they went from being just another bunch of Swedish kids in a metal band to one of the finest rock groups in the world.
Contextual Note 2.
Isaiah and I exchanged a lot of messages about how much we hate a certain piano part in Inside Out, the song that closes this album. I won’t quote them all, but here’s a fun selection, one which I wouldn’t like to stay buried in a phone chat record:
April 30th, Isaiah: “...my least favorite [Pain of Salvation] final track is on One Hour by the Concrete Lake which I think is what lowers an amazing album. There’s a specific piano part in it that annoys me lol”
May 2nd, me: “Is Concrete Lake ranked low [in a Pain of Salvation discography ranking that Zay sent] mostly due to the production issues you mentioned?”
Isaiah: “Yup. Still love the songs. Just think the album has the weakest production. Plus I don’t love the closer.”
Then on May 5th, a long talk on the topic:
Me [upon first listen] : “I think I know exactly what piano part you’re talking about in Inside Out :P ”
Isaiah: “Lol! Do you agree? I find it so annoying. Maybe my least favorite thing in all of Pain of Salvation. And it gets stuck in my head.”
Me: “Hahaha! Yep, the word that comes to mind to describe that part is ‘stupid.’”
Isaiah: “I guess it’s supposed to create tension? But it’s the wrong kind of tension.”
Me: “That kind of ‘I wish it would stop’ tension, right?”
Some minutes later, me: “I did notice that the strong impression that piano part in Inside Out leaves on a listener is in direct contrast to how many seconds it’s actually played. But then it’s kind of like a threat hovering over the proceedings... I kept thinking, ‘They’re not gonna go for that stupid piano part again, are they...?’”
Isaiah: “Exactly!! It creates a sense of dread that you’re going to have to hear it again.”
Several hours later, Isaiah: “So listening to Inside Out I’m also not a fan of the initial main chorus in that song, ‘inside trying to get outside,’ but I love the reimagined version at about the three-minute mark.”
May 6th, me: “Damn it! Just around 4:45 in Inside Out... they’d shifted back to that fast part and held off, making me begin to hope they maybe wouldn’t play it this time, and then FUCK! There it was! Literally made me shout out ‘fuck!’ and groan, in the middle of the street. [But] yeah, the middle section is strong!”
Isaiah: “I even dread Inside Out while I’m halfway through the album.”
1st Listen.
Hardly absorbed a thing. I remember noticing some statistics being read, ala “BE”. I remember thinking that the album sounds like Pain of Salvation’s 1980s moment and that Pilgrim (I think it was Pilgrim) was a badly written ballad, and then registering that a whole album’s worth of ballad-writing practice separates One Hour by the Concrete Lake from even the ballads of Remedy Lane, which are hardly shining examples of the form... speaking of the not-ideal, I remember that piano part in Inside Out; how could one forget? Finally, I remember two songs sounding straight-up amazing. I think they are both in the approximate middle of the album somewhere. I look forward to hearing them again.
2nd Listen.
Intrigued by the invitations (“stay with me”) and confrontations (“who the hell do you think you are?”) in the back half of Inside.
I like the choral singing in the, would I call it a, refrain of The Big Machine. The production reminds me of late-’80s/early-’90s gothic-era Swans.
A thought that came to me during New Year’s Eve: “This sounds like a band learning to be good.” Which must be an incorrect insight, or else how to account for Entropia?
I want a Daniel Gildenlöw rap solo album. Even his proto-rapping on Handful of Nothing sounds good. Maybe after the dark country album...
Was Water one of the two songs I liked on first listen? I hope not. There’s some good guitar work in it, to be sure. But if Water was one of the two, then its power has diminished substantially with a re-listen.
Home was definitely one of the two. I love the guitars and the chords in the verses. Maybe this was the first song I loved, and Serenity Shore the second? But now I’m discovering that I’m only really a fan of Home’s verses. The rest (refrains, solo) sounds (for now) like standard (pleasant) Concrete Lake fare.
Damn, I guess Water really was the other first-listen favorite. Shore Serenity is cool and sounds ripe to grow on me, but it made no impression last listen. Water really was a quick fade... not that it can’t bounce back. The Big Machine and Home are my two provisional favorites now.
Ugh, they OPEN Inside Out with that piano part! Instant flinch!
3rd Listen.
I’m liking Inside. The back half has a “final night before an epic journey begins” feeling. It helps that the vocal melody section in that section is simply great.
Water has a good refrain.
Neat guitar figure in Pilgrim’s verses.
Looking at the album as a whole, I would have liked a lot more of the choral vocals we hear in The Big Machine and for a moment in Shore Serenity.
4th Listen.
Still nothing standing out much, but I’m noticing more enjoyment overall.
5th Listen.
I feel about this album right now the way I felt about Remedy Lane after the second listen. Is that because Concrete Lake is less immediate, or because it suits my tastes less?
The second and third tracks are strong.
I never registered anything about Black Hills before, but this time I really enjoyed the breakdown.
If not for the gruesome piano, Inside Out would be my favorite song on the album.
Twenty minutes after the listen, my head is cycling mercilessly between two things I can’t stand: the refrain of Pilgrim, and the nefarious piano in Inside Out. The piano goes tinkling away, dee-ra-dee-ra-din dee-ra-dee-ra-din dee-da. So I will it to stop. Five seconds later, “piiiiiil-griiiim, where aaaare you going.” No! Get it out! I force myself to force it out. And next thing I know, dee-ra-dee-ra-din dee-ra-dee-ra-din dee-da. Agggh!
6th Listen.
I enjoy the first three tracks. Water has grown (back) on me a lot; I like the heavy verses as well as the acoustic ones, and I love the “we flush! we flush!” section. Black Hills stands as my current favorite. I could still happily do without the refrain of Pilgrim, but I like the way it and Shore Serenity seem to blend into one acoustic-based suite.
I think all I need now, to cross over into actually liking the album, is to put it on in the background some fifteen or twenty times as I level up my Final Fantasy VI characters.
7th Listen.
Wrong! I like the album already. The whole album. The FF6 leveling approach would probably just serve to push me over into “really like” territory. (This whole seventh listen happened while leveling up on the Floating Continent. So fitting! So good!)
I was thinking of doing a lyric readthrough at this point, but reading the lyrics for The Perfect Element made my fledgling appreciation for that album take a big hit, and Concrete Lake predates The Perfect Element, so I’d rather hold back. I always like what I hear of the Concrete Lake words as I catch snippets here and there. Better let things stay that way.
This must be the Pain of Salvation album that I have the least natural affinity for (with the possible exception of Entropia, but only because I haven’t heard Entropia yet), but it has grown on me immensely. You might not guess it from this bare-bones write-up, but it’s true! I’ve gone from finding it extremely bland, and needing to spend several days listening to other things between listens, to ensure I could come back to Concrete Lake with patience and an open mind—all the way to a constant steady enjoyment of what I’m hearing, from Spirit of the Land through Inside Out, the only two hiccups being the refrain in Pilgrim and, of course, what else, the Inside Out piano.
That said, I do think I would need those aforementioned fifteen or twenty more listens to get to the point I got with Remedy Lane after just six or seven listens. That doesn’t necessarily mean I like Concrete Lake less... if anything, I might like it more, because whereas Remedy Lane has a lot of songs I like much more or much less than others, Concrete Lake feels consistently solid. I think I prefer a lower-level solidity over an album in which, as I listen through a song, I’m actually just waiting all the while for the next song to start, because I like the next one so much better.
That said, it’s been a while since I last listened to Remedy Lane...
Anyway, I won’t venture to do a ranking. For this album, it would be too soon.
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