“Could be heaven, but we blew it once again.”
“It’s richer than rich, poorer than poor. The children are fodder. That’s the story of war.”
“The world seems like a sewer, an insane, crazy place.”
“The world I see is not the world I want.” [spoken by Willem Dafoe, of all people]
Those are four lyrical moments from four separate songs on How It Ends (?), the latest record from long-distance supergroup Night Crickets. Which song best sums up the back half of 2024? Choose your favorite!
Night Crickets—David J (Bauhaus, Love & Rockets), Victor DeLorenzo (Violent Femmes, Nineteen Thirteen), multi-instrumentalist Darwin Meiners—first got together (virtually) during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, trading ideas and files to create 2022’s singular A Free Society. Go figure that their follow-up would be released…now.
“While we didn’t start with a specific theme, the album emerged as a contemplative exploration of endings” Meiners says in a press release. “It touches on the loss of individuals, the shifting of ideas, and the fragility of systems. Beneath this sense of darkness and finality, however, there are threads of beauty and glimpses of hope.”
First, the darkness and finality. There’s plenty of it to go around! Jazzy hep-cat opener “Red Mist White Knuckles” grapples with general malaise and unfocused, handed-down rage; “The Story Of War” is a mournful spoken-word dirge complete with a damning “Profit!” refrain; and closer “The World I See Is Not The World I Want” is less a song than a wounded prayer. “What in the world is the way of the world?” DeLorenzo intones on “World,” a callback to an earlier song. And yes, that’s forever-awesome actor Willem Dafoe contributing some spoken word. (DeLorenzo and Dafoe are old Theatre X pals, thus the latter’s appearance.)
Now for the beauty and glimpses of hope. The lilting “Don’t Be Afraid” acknowledges the darkness but offers its title like a mantra; “Sunflowers And Starlight” opens with a menacing and distorted message of doom before giving way to a shape-shifting plea for less noise; and the finger-snapping “Where’s The One?” features DeLorenzo crooning about love and a “big, bright, baby-blue moon.” Album highlight “Should Be Heaven,” meanwhile, offsets its doom-scrolling meditation on the death of idealism (“Would be heaven, but it’s too much me, me, me”) with a jangly acoustic backing that nonetheless feels heavenly.
“We are each free to discover musical connections that could only exist in an ideal creative setting” DeLorenzo says in a press release. “We are very lucky to have three musicians who write, sing and play various instruments in one trio…our egos seem to melt into one when we face musical decisions, so our expeditions are always filled with pure discovery, humor and drive.”
Maybe those are things to hold onto right now: pure discovery, humor, and drive. Despite the question posed by How It Ends (?), this isn’t the end. It ain’t heaven, either, but it still can be.
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