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January 30, 2006
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Michael Lenzi was the singer for the Fire Show, a band whose work I've written about previously. To recap: "Saint the Fire Show", their last album, was one of three records I bought on a trip to Minneapolis in the summer of 2003 (the other two were Iron & Wine's "Creek Drank the Cradle", which I loved, and Daedelus' "Rethinking the Weather" which was the worst worst worst thing I ever put in my CD player)- I knew and had listened to a couple songs from StFS, specifically 'Magellan Was A Felon'- which I had fallen in love with. However, after hearing the whole album for the first time, I was disappointed about having bought (what I considered at the time) such a noisy, crazy, difficult album.
So I sold it to a record store when I got back home.
Recently I found some of Michael Lenzi's Resplendent work, and also dug earnestly (again) into the Fire Show's discography, and was surprsied, mirabile dictu, to find that I loved all of it- Lenzi's voice, the varied, wild, throw-it-all-in-a-pot instrumentation, the semi-elliptical lyrics, everything.
Point being, my opinion of the Fire Show and of Michael Lenzi has changed drastically- Lenzi took the name M. Resplendent while playing in the Fire Show, and he kept the last part of his pseudonym for his new project. Resplendent is similar to the Fire Show in form, but a bit different in sound, in the way the music seems calmer, less likely to strike out at the world, maybe. Resplendent songs are planned and patiently constructed, whereas I always got the feeling that Fire Show songs were composed of fits and muffs and accidents and band-aids and tantrums (that's a good thing though too). Recently (this past summer or so), Lenzi had remarked that he doesn't want to make music anymore, for many different reasons, primarily because he felt like he didn't have anything left to say- but just last month he put this up on his website:
I have been fantasizing about the songs I want to make...Removing myself from the process of making songs has been fruitful. When something is always there it is easy to take it for granted. I enjoy making songs in so many ways. Creating something from next to nothing. Following an idea or a feeling through to a finished thing. Listening to it afterwards and for years to come and imagining what it is all about for the second, third or fourth time.
So that's good news. Listen to 'Summer Breeze', cause it's great; I cannot resist the pull of this line in particular: "an ocean filled with roadside monuments/written in the palm of this land". Those heavy beats that end the song are perfectly placed, a little eroded too- all smooth corners.
'Summer Breeze' is taken from "Am I Free/I Am Free", which is available right here.
Posted by Kevin at January 30, 2006 12:12 AM