I’m sitting in the dark here as the last notes of Stained Glass have just faded.
I’ve had the CD for a week now, and I’ve been listening to the 20-minute piece a couple of times a day. I just now decided to shut everything off and _really_ listen to it.
Kayo Dot really has 2 categories of music for me: Blue Lambancy Downward, and everything else. I liked Blue Lambancy Downward, but I _really_ like everything else. I’d say this fits into the latter category.
The first few moments of Stained Glass have this feeling of teenage awkwardness. The lyrics don’t seem to fit the tone, and it sounds like Toby is channeling Death Cab. After this initial (and likely intentional) weird tentative period, the track hits its stride really hard.
Up until the ten minute mark, there are a bunch of different movements and buildups, and then the last half feels thematically similar and sort of drifts off into an airy conclusion.
Stained Glass sounds to me like Hell and Heaven decided to meet up for an evening stroll. Heaven is represented by the stunning variety of chime-y and bell-y sounds that form a rhythmic theme, while Hell is the spooky, raspy square wave sound of the synth. I swear there were parts in the last half that sounded like the synth was playing chunks of the Space Quest IV MIDI soundtrack. It weirded me out hardcore.
I think my favorite part of all of this is how the chimes and bells contribute a feeling of fragility and delicateness that one would associate with a stained glass window. But maybe I’m just projecting what is written on the album sleeve.
As for the lyrical content, well, I’d really like to know where Jason Byron comes up with this stuff. I’ll spend entire verses wrinkling my nose at how goofy it sounds, but the overall effect is really creepy, and every once in a while I stumble across a passage that hits me in the gut. In Stained Glass, I was particularly tweaked by the last couple of sentences:
Remember all ye that though the body falls among the years, it is as a discarded walking staff on the hedgerow beside the Path.
Anyhow, the high-level summary is that Stained Glass is a really interesting overlay of spooky and pretty, and you should try sitting in the dark and listening to it sometime.
It doesn’t look like there’s a digital download version of the album for sale yet, but you can buy the CD from kayodot.net or pre-order it from the Hydra Head store.