https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4beFLU7f1qc

Our main character wanders around Colorado, hopeful but not that hopeful, in “Satori In Denver.”

Track: “Satori In Denver”
Album: Moon Colony Bloodbath (2009)

I really love Moon Colony Bloodbath. The full album is less than twenty minutes long and it’s not really an essential piece of the catalog, but it really had a huge impact on me. John Vanderslice and John Darnielle are similar, but different enough that their collaboration here creates a complex album even though it’s so short. You have enough detail to get the story but not enough to not wonder about everything else.

The album is the story of people who are sent to the Moon for sinister, corporate purposes and how they come back. “Satori In Denver” sees our spaceman wandering around Colorado, not really following the rules. “Anklet buzzing on my leg,” tells a little bit about how the world tracks these employees and “thinking up lies to tell” tells us more about how the employees rebel in small ways. We’re let in, but not all the way in, and this is as close as Moon Colony Bloodbath gets to hope.

Satori is a Japanese term for understanding, in the sense of coming into an idea through contemplation. Our character is changing by contending with their world. They have performed dark tasks, possibly uninterrogated, but now they wonder what it all means. This isn’t a hero or a villain, necessarily, but it is someone who has done things we’ll learn about later in the album and they want to know how they should react. We get some of that through the delivery, as well. Darnielle hits high notes when it’s all about introspection, but by the end it’s about driving towards what happens next and it’s all low and grim, telling us what’s really in store.