In 2020, I wrote a whole thing
about these Dear Hunter kids
and how I discovered them, slowly
but surely, and how they became
one of my favorite new acts of the
first decades of the 21st century.
Now, five or six years later after
that discovery, I remain a superfan.
They are the only contemporary
band, for example, that I have seen
live three times over the last
few years. They are the only
contemporary band from which
I have acquired an entire musical
catalog, by my count, seven full-
length albums, all but one of which
are double records, and another slew
of downloaded EP’s, including the
9 EP collection called The Color Spectrum,
in such a short time, discovering
them, as I did, some fifteen
years after their first record.
They are the only contemporary
band I listen to who are squarely
and certainly within the prog rock
genre. Their music is huge, complex,
at times extremely heavy, at times
orchestral, classical adjacent, jazzy,
other times beautifully pop-oriented,
always expertly performed and
recorded, and their singer and lyricist,
Casey Crescenzo, has a voice like
an angel and at once like the
most acomplished of rock singers.
This is the first time in a long time
where I have attempted to listen
to all five albums (11 records of
The Acts, plus an album of instrumental
orchestrations), an astoundingly ambitious
concept sequence I was lucky enough
to score in a deluxe box set in 2020.
What kind of hutzpah is necessary
to make your debut album the first
in a sequence of concept albums
that stretch over an entire decade
or more? Act I came out in 2006,
Act V in 2016, and my box includes
an empty record cover and sleeve
for the yet unreleased (unrecorded?)
Act VI. I mean, this guy, Crescenzo,
for all of his rock credibility, is one
nerdy dude who’s ambition was to
outdo conceptually every prog rocker
that ever walked the planet. And
while I don’t own any, apparently
he’s authored comic books for the
whole damn series.
So I begin again.
What’s the concept, you might well
ask, of this five album narrative?
I’ve listened over the years a bunch
of times. I think one of the first
times through I even read all of
the lyrics. I’m not sure if this is a
criticism or not, and maybe it says
more about my limitations than
it says about Crescenzo’s vision,
but for the life of me,
I couldn’t tell you what
this story is about. I have some
vague impressions of certain
characters and situations,
like for example, I know that
historically the sequence takes
us through a significant passage
of time, part of which, I think,
is the early 20th century, during
World War I. I know there are
themes related to religious
practice and the hypocrisy
therein, and I know there is
a motif of the relationships
between mothers and sons,
sons and fathers. But much
is obscure. For example, from
Act II: The Meaning of and All
Things Regarding Ms. Leeding,
I couldn’t begin to tell you
anything about Ms. Leeding,
even though the title tells
us that by the end we will
know the meaning of and all
things regarding said personage.
And yet, despite all of this
befuddlement, they remain one
of my favorite bands. Ultimately,
whether I understand the narrative
and all its implications or not,
this is exceedingly good songwriting
and this band is exceptionally great.
And while Act I is a pretty stellar
single album and Act II is a little
bit of a mess, albeit a good mess, from
Act III, IV, and V, and in the non-related
non-concept oriented Migrant,
the immensely ambitious Color Spectrum
and their most recent concept album
Antimai, The Dear Hunter is a band
that kept getting better and better
with every record.
As I spin Act III, I realize, after all,
that nothing is obscure anymore,
any answer to any question can be
found quickly through a google
search. I could not resist: I asked
the google, what is the general plot
line of The Acts by The Dear Hunter.
Part of me is a little ashamed, and
another part of me is not. I am, in
few short minutes, edified. I’ll reveal
just a couple of things, for fun.
Ms. Leeding is a prostitute, BTW.
And another goofy pun, and the
origin of the band name, is revealed:
Hunter is the name of the protagonist
in this epic sequence, not
one who hunts, and certainly, not
one who hunts “deer,” but rather,
our “dear” Hunter, the son of another
prostitute (Oedipal much?), a traumatized WWI
veteran, a man who apparently
has it in for his half brother and his
father (Oedipal much?) and who,
against all his better judgment
and desire to avoid his awful past,
becomes voraciously hungry for power,
achieves it, but is ultimately foiled
by a Pimp and a Priest.
Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe I would
have been more satisfied having
done the work on my own over
repeated listenings and copious
review of the lyrics, but life is short,
this song sequence is really long,
and there are other albums by
The Dear Hunter to listen to, not
to mention 22 more letters in the
alphabet.
I am happy with becoming
dangerous with the little knowledge
I have acquired about the plot
and themes of this most massive
concept album. Last night I listened
to Acts I and II, and this morning,
between 9 and 10 a.m., Act III,
inching my way toward the best
music of the collection, hoping
to get through Act IV and V by
the end of the day, in between
band practice, walking the dogs,
doing some household chores,
enjoying some January sunshine,
trying not to obsess about the news,
with tremendous admiration and oodles
of gratitude for this unusual, ambitious,
and monumentally talented band
of musicians and their deep, rich catalog.
Notes on the vinyl edition: The Acts, Cave and Canary Goods, 2019, 12 record box set, each record on colored vinyl, from clear to various multi-colored and splattered pressings. Box contains a full lyric book with art and an orchestral album of instrumental renderings of the major musical themes throughout The Acts, The Fox and the Hunt. Box also includes an empty album cover for the unwritten(?), unrecorded(?), unreleased final record of the sequence, Act VI: The Hanged Man.
FYI: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response for each artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic.
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michael jarmer 