Ranges - Sin

A Closer Listen

What’s in the box?  Not, as one might reasonably expect from the concept, Gwyneth Paltrow’s head. Instead, a lucky 77 will receive 7 7″ records and 37 will also receive 7 pieces of ephemera: a shot glass, cigar, matches, poker deck, pair of dice, poster and shirt.  On the flip side of the 7″ records, listeners will discover 7 songs that are available only in this form; no digital copies exist.  Each record tackles one of the 7 deadly sins, each in the color associated with the sin. Appropriately, the album is released on 7/7 and the special edition costs $177.  If one doesn’t have $177 there are also 7 12″ vinyl variants available, and of course one may go digital for an equally fitting $7.

All these 7s are preferable to the triple 6, and indicate that Sin is meant “not to glorify sin, but to confront it.” 7 is a holy number (7 days of the week, 7 blessings, 7 churches, 7 seals, 7 trumpets, and okay, yes, 7 dwarves), and the Catholic Church also advertises 7 virtues, although they are far less popular and have to our knowledge never inspired a movie.  Each enticing 7″ b-side (not submitted for review) “acts as a quiet counterweight—a reflection, response, or remedy.”

Pride goeth before a fall, and in this set, pride precedes everything.  “The Falcon Cannot Hear the Falconer” is both the first track and the first single, a form of violet, representing the imagination run amok, in which one imagines one’s self to be more than one is.  There is a huge difference between taking pride in one’s accomplishments and being prideful. The set starts in a rare segment of quietude before the drums kick in and the soul is dragged down. The slow build demonstrates the insidious nature of sin. Then a huge surge in the middle – a surge of pride! – and another toward the end.  While the music sounds victorious, the challenge is internal.

In Dante’s Purgatorio, the punishment for envy is to have one’s eyes sewn shut.  Most people know the hue: green with envy, but the vinyl color diverges, using yellow (traditionally greed, while greed is orange here, which is typically gluttony, and gluttony is green).  “Their Eyes Sewn Shut” is mildly melancholic, reflecting what seems to be an excessive and sorrowful fate.  The drums roll, stop, roll again.  The tempo is slow, like blind people stumbling around, unable to get their bearings.  “If your right eye offend thee,” counseled Jesus (metaphorically, we believe), “pluck it out.”  We see only one blue 7″ here, and it’s not lust, perhaps because few recall the association of blue with pornography; the lighter magenta of “Bound to the Black Wind” seems more appropriate, although Ranges might have just as easily chosen black.  Ironically, the track seems to flirt with love at first, staying on the right path until an explosion when love turns to lust, serenade to savagery, empathy dissolved in a cloud of guitars.  The ending is an aftermath, a tendril, the wind alone without a partner.

“Three Throats” tackles the sin of gluttony, which is more than just food, but includes the devouring of resources, materials, lives.  At what point does one have enough?  Again there is a slow build, as if the table has been set, the attendees presented with a wide array of options.  Some eat daintily, others with gusto; and some don’t stop.  The tipping point again arrives at nearly the halfway point; yet even through cacophony, there is still time to turn back.  Intimations of brass set this track apart from the others; reflecting its theme, “Three Throats” reflects the temptation of excess.  The high point of the album is also the low point of the soul, the point at which the most is desired and claimed.  The final moments, borne on ivory keys, beg for reflection.

“Prodigal” is an outlier, an underlying sweetness conjured by the story of the Prodigal Son, who after greedily demanding his inheritance and subsequently squandering it, returned home to beg for forgiveness and was met by his father, arms wide open, saying, “My son was dead, and now he is alive; he was lost, and now he is found.”  At this point, the listener remembers the seven virtues, or at least their existence; chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, kindness, patience and humility each pair up with one of the deadly sins like a b-side with an a-side.  Sin‘s most triumphant track, “Prodigal,” presents the flip side of the story; we all sin, but we can also be redeemed.  In contrast, “The Red Mist” starts with distortion and aggression, suitably red, reminding modern listeners of Game of Thrones‘ “Red Wedding.”  When we are angry, we see red, while wrath is even worse.  In this track there is no relenting, no apology, no change of heart.

Finally the album arrives at “Idle Hands,” representing sloth, a light blue that suggests one is staring at the sky, putting off until tomorrow what one could do today.  Idle hands are the devil’s workshop (Proverbs 16:27).  But sloth once meant another thing: “joylessness, sadness and apathy.”  The punishment on the fourth level from the bottom: excessive busyness.  The music shifts from sedate to active and back, vacillating between poles.  Throughout the album, Ranges has presented alternatives: sin and virtue, temptation and resistance.  One need not be a Catholic, a philosopher or an admirer of Dante to appreciate this album, which in digital and 7″ form can be played in any order.  But the music and its background prompt one to think about sin and morality, choice and consequence, and the responsibility one accepts – or doesn’t – to the rest of humanity.  The main cover itself is red, which connotes wrath; but it can also mean love.  (Richard Allen)