Album Review: Auditorium’s “The First Music” Is Music To Grow Up
Auditorium’s new album The First Music is set to be released January 27, and it is an album to grow up. That sounds like a weird declaration “an album to grow up”, but in 15 tracks Auditorium analyzes the moments that made him become a better, stronger, and sentimental person. In hearing music dedicated to growth, you find that you grow, as well.
The First Music is al about instances that change us into new persons. I am convinced that every few years, if you actually absorb your life’s experiences, you will find that you are not only growing as a person but becoming one, as well. Who we are at age 9 can be vastly different from who we are at age 13 of which can be mentally distant from we become at ages 17, 21, 27, 33, 41, etc. Age is not simply a marker of time but also a standing point in our personalities and how we choose to behave. From being a kid admiring his grandfather’s charm, “My Grandfather Could Make The World Dance”, or recalling “The Night Before I Turned 13”, when he remembers the excitement/weight of feeling like 13 was the number when you stopped being a child and became a teen. His lyrical walk down memory lane reminds you of the innocence that we carry in life by turning simple moments into grand definers of our spirits or “life-changers”. Yet, the album’s whimsical arrangements can take you away to Heaven, but also leave you grounded in the difficulties of early life.
At the album’s core lurks a theme that Spencer Berger, i.e. Auditorium, admits terrified him: “I wanted to confront the reality of my eventual death.” Thus, to confront the end you have to go to the beginning, which is why I warn that Berger’s walk down “memory lane” can be both heartwarming and heart-wrenching. Songs like “Fire Fire Ocean Liner” and “Nearsighted War Cry” go straight for
Berger’s personal “hunt for answers to unanswerable questions”, which is why his first song on the album, “Mt. Moriah”, and last one, “The Singer”, feel like all-encompassing tracks that elevate the wideness of life. For however fast life goes, it is a wide journey to and from, but Berger’s The First Music is about understanding how with such a given time on this earth we can still leave it feeling like we did not learn as many lessons as life had offered us. Hence, tension builds sporadically as Berger tries to find enlightenment from seemingly unconquerable darkness or unanswerable challenges. Lyrically, Berger drew on a mix of personal tragedy (the death of a close friend), family history (many of his relatives were either imprisoned or killed during the Holocaust), vivid childhood memories, and current worldwide events. This explains why certain songs like “Did Your Heart Shake Like This Song”, “I’m Home”, and “I Came Prepared” have words and arrangements that are so emotionally felt.
At times, messages are more felt than thought, which is why Auditorium shines as a vocalist/ instrumentalist whom uses the art if sound to connect with people’s being rather than their constructs. Sonically, The First Music surpasses all your labels on what is a “genre” or how music should be made. Auditorium plays every instrument and did every vocal annotation, riff, backing, and harmony to build a choir of himself. For 200 days he locked himself in his LA apartment trying to face the stream of consciousness that flows through everyone’s mind, but is rarely confronted in terms of how we are swimming it. We all have intense thoughts that we flick away like mosquitoes, but Auditorium has decided to observe them with a determination to see how he works through life. By “work” I mean the behaviors and tricks we use to either feel alive or survive grim situations. Vocally, Auditorium is all over the place, but in the best way. He can have s quaking, yelping vocal as he tries to “figure” out his pain/ visions “Nor’easter” or a firm, announcing voice as he declares his need for love’s power “It’s Only God, I Swear”. Either way, whether it be through instrumentals or vocals, he wants to show the paradox of earthly life being a moral journey when morality feels like a travel to beyond.
Whether there are truths or morals that are universal/ spiritual is heavily debated amongst humanity, but The First Music shows that we are having this debate for a reason. Whether you agree or disagree with the idea that humanity it interconnected for a greater purpose, the struggle with being an individual human being stems from that argument. How we live or perceive our life comes from how we measure the scope of humanity and our degree within that range. These are hard questions that form perspectives in people’s mind, but to Auditorium they formed his musical career and newest album The First Music. Click Here To Buy The First Album On January 27.
on January 27 called The First Music, and it feels like a soft, rapid delve into the hidden corners of your mindd,
