An email that I recently received from a fan. I asked them if they would be ok with me posting it here, and they were graciously cool with it. Listen to the album here.
I would like to express how much I absolutely adore your Moby Dick album.
I finished reading the novel itself a couple months ago, and was deeply moved by how sudden it ended, without giving any real closure to the tragedy witnessed. After that, I started looking for adaptations or transformative works that could give me the same feeling I had while reading the story. On a stroke of luck, I came across your album on a Wikipedia article, and was intrigued by the beautiful album cover art, so I figured I’d give it a shot.
The next 54 minutes of listening blew me away. Your brilliant composition of instrumentals, striking vocals, fascinating lyrics, and overarching motifs of the album were ensnaring to say the least. I really cannot overstate how much I appreciate the thought you clearly put into every song on this. Your notes on your website provided even more fascinating insight, and I truthfully can’t call this album anything else but a masterpiece. I have so many thoughts on every song on the album, but I’m trying (and likely failing) to avoid coming off as too excitable, so I’ll save that rambling for now.
What I will say is that I’ve been listening to it on endless repeat. And while it’s practically impossible for me to choose a favorite song, for the sake of this email, I do want to express how much I absolutely adore The Chase. The competing time signatures, the triple build mirroring the three days of the chase in the novel, the rowing lyrics, the instruments, Ahab’s last words closing out the song?? Absolutely masterful. I would also like to share that the lyric “choice is just a fable for the weak” from the intro was so good, I genuinely thought it was taken directly from Moby Dick up until the other day.
One more note before I stop myself, but I also have to sing the praises of Whaleman’s Hymn. That song is an utterly haunting, gorgeous work of art. The final lyric of the album, “I must be out to sea”, sung by Ishmael entirely, utterly alone and hollowly echoing the merry lyrics of Sea Fever, genuinely gave me shivers. Fully froze me up with the sublime realization that the album was a cyclical narrative, and, just like in the novel, Ishmael’s trauma brings him right back out to sea for further voyages, over and over endlessly. You did a fantastic job of capturing the empty, desperately tragic yet inexplicably gorgeous feeling that the original novel left me with. Incredible song. Incredible album. I cannot get over how brilliant it all is.