This is my first solitary album review, and since this is one of my personal favorites, I figured it good enough to start with. Though Passage came out in 2012, I didn't discover it until 2015 (thank you, Spotify). I was already familiar with front woman Aleksa Palladino, who I'd seen on TV shows like Boardwalk Empire and Rogue. Little did I know, she fronted a band in an underrated genre of music. Exitmusic fit in nicely with other genre favorites Beach House, Daughter, and Lanterns On the Lake.
There was a particular point in my life when Sigur Ros and Denali were favorites of mine. Exitmusic's Passage does the job of encapsulating the best sounds of both. Palladino and her husband, guitar player Devon Church, spearhead the effort to create layers of mournful moans, delayed guitars, and somber piano licks. Palladino waxes poet with her lyrics, crooning, "If the stars can align all of man with night sky, then why can't my heart mend the break/but I'll love you same because it's only a dream and the dreamer is bound to awake." It's comparable to something straight off the pages of some obscure, forgotten Keats poem on the complexities of dreaming and unrequited love.
The album begins with the best track, the ultra somber "Passage." It begins with a pensive piano, popping fireworks, and Palladino's layered vocal stylings, stamping a mood of spectral angst. Not to be cliche, but her voice is truly incomparable. She comes off a bit like a damaged, wounded widow. Her voice is not perfect or dainty. It's all about raw emotion, and sometimes, that doesn't come off perfect or dainty. Her voice is grounded and gritty and unpretentious - the new, cryptic soul at an AA meeting with an extraordinary story to tell. Her voice is unassuming, painting the soundscapes with sorrowful cries, lyrics likened to short stories laden with metaphors and ethereal delight. "Passage" is riddled with feral cries and highly emotive melodies that dare you to feel something.
The second track, "The Night," is the second best on the album. While "Passage" takes you for a ride amidst a dismal forest of specters, "The Night" is slightly more optimistic in tone, and Palladino's voice, while still emotive, is quite beautiful. Devon Church works his guitar minimalistically enough, though the chords work expertly for the melody Palladino has crafted with her voice. The quote from my first paragraph comes from this song, as does the hopeful chorus, "My aim is slightly high/in the silent night."
"The City," switches it up from somber and optimistic to a more aggressive effort, especially in the chorus. The band seems to take us on an visceral roller coaster ride, displaying every aspect of every emotion possible. The song remains calm and collected, though slightly volatile throughout the verse, only to explode in the chorus with pounding drums and guitar string lashings. The dark tune was actually used for the short-lived TV drama, Dracula, starring Irish actor Jonathan Rhys-Myers.
The 4th song on the record is another personal favorite. Much like Jeff Buckley's "Grace," Exitmusic often paint pictures and tell short stories with their lyrics. Palladino does just that with "White Noise," a sorrowful track that conjures the image of some departed soul pining for a return to their lover through the conduit of white noise. "I'm in the flesh of the lumbering few, I'm on the call trying to get back to you." The melodies are sweet and sad and evocative. In the chorus, Palladino wails, "I'm in charge of the coal and the fire." It comes off like a short story about a woman who's died, is put to work in the depths of hell, but often attempts to reunite with her lover, who's either still living, or who is already residing in some proverbial afterlife.
"Storms" is another tearful track with heartfelt melodies and guttural cries to supplement the album's theme of isolation. This theme seems to run throughout the entirety of the 10 tracks, though it varies enough to give each song it's own unique flavor. "The Wanting" is next, probably the most akin to Sigur Ros with its predominant falsetto wails throughout the chorus. It carries a Sigur Ros-like ambiance with it, which is really what glues each song to the next.
"Stars" is extremely ethereal, and much like "Storms," it carries a deeply emotional chorus with it. I can't begin to fit myself into the mind of Aleksa Palladino, but these songs seem to be penned by someone who has experienced a lot of sorrow and grief, wearing them like a badge throughout the album. "The Modern Age" is one of the band's more popular tunes, while "The Cold" reminds you that "you are alone/I read it in the paper." The delicate melody and the agonizing whines are enough to incite chills. The finale, "Sparks of Light," is the most similar to the songs featured on their 2007 debut, The Decline of the West.
Passage is a remarkable album from start to finish. I only wish that Palladino would place as much emphasis on Exitmusic as she did her acting career, though I understand that we live in a world where artists who want to keep their musical integrity are rendered starving. During a rough patch in my life, Sigur Ros' Agaetis Byrjun and Denali's self-titled album were there to comfort me. Exitmusic's Passage is a perfect culmination of the two, which is why I'm such a fan (that, and because of Palladino's soulful, poetic lyrics). Passage is entirely understated in the greater scope of indie music, so I'm glad a few of the songs featured on it have gotten enough attention to appear on shows such as Dracula and Showtime's Shameless. The band has a debut album, an EP, which was actually more like a preview of the songs on Passage, and then Passage itself. They collaborated with labelmates Mister Lies for the electronic track "Hounded," and composed a cover Bowie's "Space Oddity," which I personally think is better than the original (Oh yes, I said it). The material on Passage is dark in more ways than one, but it's the wistful kind that makes you appreciate the beauty in sadness.
Valhalla Rising is a movie that's really unlike any other. Directed by the man who helmed Drive, a personal favorite of mine, Nicholas Winding Renf directs a film that comes off at time more like a anxiety-ridden, old world music video, laden heavily with metaphors and glimpses into what hell of earth could possibly look like. It comes off a little like a Viking sword-fest, though it is unmistakably not. It's more of a trippy, blood-drenched journey from dismal to degradation - less in the Roman sense, and more in the Dante's Inferno sense. It certainly takes patience, and a willingness to watch something different, in every sense of the word.
The film stars Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, who's in another one of my personal favorites, Charlie Countryman. He plays a mute slave in Scandinavian Scotland. In the 8th century, Vikings colonized parts of the UK, Ireland, and Scotland. The movie begins in Sutherland in Northern Scotland, descendants of Vikings trading coin to the utter brutality of their slaves. The film is dark, grimy, and gritty in every sense of the word, with lots of Scandinavian and Scottish actors staring pensively into the mountainous landscape that surrounds them.
Mikkelsen plays One-Eye, named by a Viking youth because he only has one eye, and because he simply can't tell anyone his name, as he's a mute. He's a thrall, or a slave, forced to fight in the highlands of Scandinavian Scotland by the Viking chieftain who's holding him hostage. He's apparently not such a great guy, making wagers on his muddy brawlers and muttering cryptic messages of One-Eye's more vengeful tendencies.
One fateful day when One-Eye is bathing in a mountain brook, he ducks under the water and comes, rather ironically, across an arrowhead. This particular finding plays a part a later in his personal travails, but at the moment of his initial discovery, it helps him find his freedom. He kills the chieftain and his soldiers, one in a pretty sadistic fashion. The chieftain tells us earlier that One-Eye is a man driven by hate, and it certainly appears this way as he takes out all his pent up frustrations on the Viking men. He then mounts the chieftain's severed head on a pike before grabbing the nearest ax and literally heading for the hills.
Alongside One-Eye is a blond boy who is never really named, presumably the son of one of the slain, or perhaps a slave himself. In any case, he fed and tended to One-Eye when he was a captive, and therefore, in the aftermath of the silent warrior's murder-fest, he allows the boy to live. The boy then follows at a safe distance to find their next adventure together. When they come across a band of newly-converted Christian Vikings about to set sail for Jerusalem (for the Crusades), the boy does the talking for his new comrade, and indirectly accepts the invitation to head for the holy war.
This seems to be when group descend into a hellish world of fog and pestilence, a few of the holy warriors blaming One-Eye and boy for delivering to them a curse. This is when One-Eye shows his loyalty to his pint-sized compadre, killing a guy on board the ship who conspired to kill the boy as he slept.
With the voyage along troubled waters, writer and director Refn seems to be inspired by Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge's long-verse poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," about an ill-fated sailor who kills an innocent albatross and damns his entire crew with a slew of bad omens. Valhalla Rising will give us calm enough scenes, but then instantly shift to visions of One-Eye drenched in red, hinting toward his pent up hate that he unleashes whenever someone tries to harm him or the boy.
The film is not riddled with one fight scene after the other, though the few it does have are unpredictable and extremely violent. It's a cold, dismal outing, as our lost troupe ventures off course somehow and ends up on the shores of some strange, heavily-wooded new world, either the east coast of Canada or the Northeast of America. They encounter arrow wounds with unseen sources, eluding to the fact that the Viking crew is in the midst of some hostile natives. The message we're supposed to be getting is that the men are essentially in Hell, and all try to come to terms with this in their own way. While some of the other men pray to God, One-Eye erects a pile of rocks on the shoreline, eluding to his own pagan worship practices.
This is a strange, artsy movie, with Refn probably inspired by Terrence Malick (The New World) and his own country's rich Norse history. I don't think you'll see many films like Valhalla Rising, but it makes you think. It's sort of like a really good open-ended question that you have to devote some time to. You know you're probably going to have a different answer than the next person, and I think that's how Refn intended it to be. Valhalla Rising is at least worth checking out if you're into Viking history and sordid allegories about the afterlife.
This is my first solitary album review, and since this is one of my personal favorites, I figured it good enough to start with. Though Passage came out in 2012, I didn't discover it until 2015 (thank you, Spotify). I was already familiar with front woman Aleksa Palladino, who I'd seen on TV shows like Boardwalk Empire and Rogue. Little did I know, she fronted a band in an underrated genre of music. Exitmusic fit in nicely with other genre favorites Beach House, Daughter, and Lanterns On the Lake. 
-large-picture.jpg)
