The controversial German philosopher Oswald Spengler spent the better part of his life popularizing his theory that cultures are organic in their existence. In a nutshell, his philosophy proposed that civilizations parallel life’s periods: gestation, birth, youth, maturity, and decline. At first, this seems like a pretty simple and accepted concept. The rise and fall of Greece and Rome, or the great burst of life embodied by the Aztec empire, ultimately followed by an unprecedented decimation, akin to cancer of the lung, breast, or bone. But the significance of this realization is infinite; Breathing beings aren’t the only things that live and die. Spin yourself up and away, miles from Earth’s surface, and take a gander at the shifting life below. Everything is thriving, pulsing with exuberance. And everything will eventually collapse into death and disappear. Macrocosmically riveting. The flip side of the coin is just mystifying: the microcosmic vitality of an ant hill or bee hive, syncing itself to the rhythm of nature. Or the inspiriting force and eventual cessation of music shrunk to fit on a compact disc. And there enters Caspian and its full-length debut, The Four Trees.
After an extraordinarily well-received debut EP in 2005 and a 3-song Tour EP in 2006 that whet the appetite of starving post-rock fans everywhere, the anticipation and expectations for this release were nothing less than life-size. The result? Expectations smashed.
The album unfolds with “Moksha,” a 9 minute call to life that, ironically enough, shares its name with the Hindu term for liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth, the dissolution of ego and self. A quiet prenatal hum rolls like underground thunder before being eclipsed by the mellow rise of a vibraphone. As the sound swells back and forth, cautiously growing into an amoebic glow, the guitar sweeps in, washing over the vibrations with a ubiquitous whisper before being punctuated with the roar of percussion. Before three minutes run, the song explodes, signs its own birth certificate, and leaves any trace of stillness buried six feet under. The 5 minutes that follow inebriate the listener and become the equivalent of strapping your ear to the sun.
Alive and on its feet, the disc toys with childhood amenities, building crescendos like sandcastles and laughing as the tide washes them away. “Some are White Light” is loud with a serious, clumsy joy that fills every inch of listenable space with a youthful lust. Its counterpart, “Sea Lawn” is the result of that prior exhaustion. Lazy, August notes slide down the guitar like a tired blade of grass slinking in the sun, comfortable in its own vulnerability. At this point an identity begins to emerge. Prior offshoots into a few quiet/loud interludes balance themselves out with underlying thick, heavy guitar rock. The child, now focused, is determined to stick his stamp on the world.
“Crawlspace” acts as an anchor for the album, a conglomeration of stylistic explorations and refined habits. Comfortable and strong, the crisp energy invoked on this track is reminiscent of You Are the Conductor. The precise builds and encircling rhythm of percussion are finely balanced as the music manages to completely overwhelm the listener with its power, but keeps awareness assailable with fluid and enigmatic breaks. This fluidity carries over effortlessly into “Book IX,” a similar piece that relies more on percussive, military drumming, and heart-to-stomach guitar slides. Keeping in the evolutionary framework, this is another track that is capable of touching the world around it with its fingertips and understands its connection to everything else out there. Musically speaking, it’s simply jaw-dropping.
Depending on your perspective, life can either be seen as a plateau, where one grows to adulthood and maintains a consistent level of existence before slowly descending towards death, or, as a peak, where life involves continual growth until the very last moment possible, when the summit is reached and a rapid landslide towards the bottom/end ensues. Caspian seems to position itself oddly in both camps with The Four Trees, as the latter part of the album takes a few twists and turns, teasing us with bits of finite dwelling as well as a lust for reincarnation. Accordingly, “Dropsonde” is a clear departure from the early album structure. A two minute interlude showing off Caspian’s ability to incorporate quiet, ambient passages into its work, the track represents the final ascent of the mountain, and the gentle, peaceful recollection of just how far things have come while standing at the top and looking back down. The song title itself belongs to an atmospheric device that is dropped into the eye of a hurricane to collect data. Things here are calm, quiet, and perplexingly idle. A brief moment to ponder the inertia of life, before shit hits the fan.
“Brombie” is that shit. Or the fan. Whichever you please. A split-personality piece, the song initially continues the path set before it and takes a few steps down the mountain. However, halfway through, there’s some blatant resistance to a quiet descent. Call it memories, or a mid-life crisis -- something more than a placid exit is in the cards, and the song ignites itself like a suicidal comet racing back up the peak. Of course, as captivating as that effort is to regain what once was (complete with crashing guitars and percussion that will make ears bleed), it ends in futility. Life seems to be a one-way street, and as the foothold shakes loose, and we tumble down the mountainside, the exit is clearly lit.
The unearthly illumination behind that exit sign is whispered forth in “Our Breath in Winter” and “The Dove.” Here, futility is embraced and transforms into acceptance, while bathed in tender, effusing guitar lines and ambient loops, whose presence might surprise most Caspian fans. However, these tracks are part of the story, and their place on the album is as meaningful as the tales that are passed down from generation to generation by those who feel their time on Earth is nearing its closure.
But it’s impossible to say that’s the way it all ends: futility, acceptance, coffin. There is so much more to life than that: the peak or plateau, the stages of life that are present on every level of existence as Spengler believed. But what? To say it’s personal, or up to each individual to discover, is a cop out, but honestly, this is pretty near the truth. Caspian’s take on the purpose of existence, the meaning of the ascent and descent of life, is bundled into the last two songs on The Four Trees, “ASA” and “Reprise." Both nearly classical in their structure, the former flows like a eulogy, an open-casket ceremony to celebrate every minute explored, experienced, and touched during the life of the disc. Everything comes together one last time, guitar and bass melting into one oscillating harmony, while the percussion thumps and rolls, the epitome of man-made thunder. And while listeners sit in wonder at the sounds imploding here, exploding there -- all right before them -- the casket closes and “Reprise” takes hold. Stoic loops trickle out of the speakers, pacifying any urge for a final burst of life. This appears to be the end. Of course, it’s not. And that’s the catch. As good of a job as the quietude of “Reprise” does to mollify and calm, we have to remember, after all, this is Caspian. Two minutes before we’re about to turn our backs and bury the sound, all hell breaks loose. Floors shake. The Earth grumbles. And we all smile as the coffin rattles loose and post-rock ghosts filter into the atmosphere. Here we’re reminded that as finite as this all is, whether it’s a body, a civilization, or a compact disc, the end is simply a new beginning.
Moksha.
-Jonathan Brooks