An incredible collection of evocative literature-based music
author: Walker Hicks
I love this album and have enjoyed exploring its multiple layers! Eternal Summer is a fascinating collection of literature-based music. The lyrics artfully evoke the themes and characters of some great lit, such as The Great Gatsby and Wuthering Heights, in subtle and intriguing ways that brought me to see the characters in a new light, and, more significantly, feel (through the music) some essential quality of the work that I hadn't noticed before. For example, "Not the Loneliest Place" (based on the Greek play "Antigone") breathes vitality and relevance into Antigone's sacrifice that we often miss in reading the character's lines. Through the song, she becomes real: a mournful, heartbroken, proud, determined, resolute teenage girl, like one you might meet any day. Gillespie has a real talent for getting to the heart of the emotion involved and tying a melody to it that captures that feeling. The songs, because of their subtlety, act as puzzles, and they draw you in to figure out what they're about, what they're referring, and what new angle they're going to offer on Shakespeare or Fitzgerald.
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