"Pop the champagne, come celebrate my independence from everything
it's been some time since I've been on my own
feels alright in this broken home
just my chair and my tv
my cigarettes, my stereo, and my DVDs
So, lend me your ears, I feel like grandstanding
'cause everyone I know is growing up...
me, I'm growing old"
-"The New Normal"
"The Long Evening" is a stunning achievement. I always have high hopes before putting on new music by Keith Monacchio and he never fails to succeed expectations. With his first record since the end of his long-time band, The Commons, Keith has raised the bar once again with a brilliant collection of songs about falling in love -- the excitement, the nervousness, the hopes and dreams, and the unknown -- from someone who is not looking at love for the first time, but from the eyes of one who has had his share of pitfalls and bad relationships.
The songs are wonderful from the opening track, "Novocain," where Keith boldly states, "can't stop me now, I'm already too far gone, I'm in over my head" to the closing tune, "Dust and Sand," which ends on a truly optimistic note. In between, Keith reveals nearly every step of an emerging relationship through singer-songwriter acoustic tunes, jaunty pop/rock numbers, and even a country-based song or two. The line in the song, "Altogether Happy" where Keith sings, "I never thought it'd be like this, I only wished it," could sum up the record's general theme. It's a tremendously optimistic record from a songwriter who has written his share of pessimistic numbers.
It was sometime back in 2003 when I first came across the music of Keith Monacchio and The Commons. The record was "Come On Get Gone" and it simply blew me away with its brutal honesty and lyrics founded in painful memories. I still consider it one of the best records ever to deal with the end of a once promising relationship. As one might suspect, the lyrics were based on Keith's own life at the time, which was in a pretty bad place. After that record, Keith's songwriting generally steered away from his life to tales of characters he had created. With his latest effort, it appears as though the diary has been opened once again and we are seeing not just the opposite of "Come On Get Gone" but perhaps its sequel.
The experience of revisiting those personal lyrics nearly ten years later reminds me of the way the great American author, John Updike, revisited the life of his character, Rabbit, over and over again. If you ever wondered what happened to the guy that once cried out, "treat me like China because baby I'll break"... well, you get the answer with this new disc. Making his way through all of the pain and hardship endured since that record in 2003, the character has grown up. "The Long Evening" shows him older, wiser, gives you the feeling he has been beaten around a few more times; yet, for all you might think he would give up on love, he hasn't. Keith Monacchio is a romantic at heart and some of his most romantic songs are on this record. Songs like "She Stumbles Gracefully", "I'll Know", "Altogether Happy", and "Under The Streetlight" instantly come to mind.
Keith may or may not agree with the idea of this record being a sequel, but just as Updike revisited his Rabbit character, I think we're seeing the return of Keith's earlier character (or alter-ego) here. Updike put out a new Rabbit book roughly every ten years, each which told a new tale of Rabbit's life because his life was always changing. The books were interesting not just because the characters were older, but because Updike himself was older and saw the world in a different light than he did years before. Keith too sees the world differently now than he did when he wrote the songs for "Come On Get Gone" and this record shows that. If you believe in the lyrics, Keith's life is in a much better place right now than it was then. He's happy, he's in a healthy relationship; he's comfortable with growing old and is optimistic once again. And, as with all great albums, those feelings transcend to the listener as well.
What I find interesting about looking back every ten years is that we sometimes forget just how much our lives can truly be broken down in ten-year segments. Ten years is an awfully long time when you think about it. In ten years, there are many people we meet; friends that are made and lost; people we fall in and out of love with; and fights that cause wounds that will never heal. In some ways, I believe we live our lives in ten-year blocks. Few artists ever release such personal records as Keith Monacchio has with "Come On Get Gone" and "The Long Evening". In my opinion, this latest record ranks up there with John Lennon's "Double Fantasy" and Bruce Springsteen's "Tunnel Of Love" as far as records that tear down the defenses that artists normally try to hide.
The production of this record is brilliant -- one of the best I've heard in a while, in fact. But what really impressed me was the sequencing of the songs. "The Long Evening" is one of the few records I've received in recent years where the artist must have spent time painstakingly choosing the sequence of the songs, and it pays off. I believe that good sequencing can actually make songs sound better. One example here is that of "Indiana Jones", a song I received months ago for the radio station. While I liked the song on its own, I absolutely love it when I hear the horns blare immediately following the acoustic, "Novocain." All throughout the record, the sequencing just seems to mix highs and lows with great effect.
There are very few records that I've ever reviewed where I thought the record was near flawless. This is one of them. Pick up a copy today. Thank me tomorrow.
