“Rope and Ladder” – Rope and Ladder
Theatrical Rock
I’m not sure that I’ve ever been so excited to hear an album from a band I had never heard of before. When I stumbled across “Lost Cause” on BandCamp I immediately put this on the top of my radar and the various singles that came out have steadily increased my hopes. The release date was pushed back a week and it ended up being one of the longest weeks of my life. So the question is, does this album that was ten years in the making live up to the hype?
Rope and Ladder begins like many rock operas before it have, with an overture. The main purpose of this song is to introduce the lyrical and instrumental motifs while setting the atmosphere for everything to follow. While it might be a tad long, it absolutely accomplishes its goals with flying colors. Immediately after, the album kicks into one of my favorite tracks: the incredible “Lost Cause.” I wish this song was so much longer because it manages to balance the softer elements of the album perfectly with the grit and grime to follow. Its lyrics are scathing, the weight is biting, and it has a wonderful sense of climax for a two minute song. These two tracks combine to be the perfect opener to this rock opera.
It would be very easy to go into great detail on each song to talk about what I do and don’t like about each one, but instead I’d rather just highlight my personal favorite track. Rope and Ladder features a great mixing of musical styles, but no song exemplifies this talent quite as much as the twisted cabaret of “Corruption/Call to Arms.” Beginning with a light heart and a swell of vocals, the song spins through brilliant lyrics with a slow build that boils over into a fantastic chorus. The song then breaks into one of my favorite instrumentals of recent memory with a duel between guitar and organ for sonic superiority. It all climaxes into a treacherous march as the vocals come back for the “Call to Arms” that features the main motif in full glory. Everything I love about this album is on full force in this song and it is undoubtedly one of my favorites in the genre as a whole.
Now that I’ve raved for a bit, I would like to bring up a few concerns I have with the album. It suffers from being rather heavily front-loaded with the second half rarely reaching the heights of the first. There are also a few times where the band wears their influences on their sleeves and become almost too indebted to them. I also truly don’t like the song “Price” which comes at the middle of the album and may be the sole reason why there feels a slight shift in quality over the rest.
Now that I’ve brought up some concerns, I’d like to point out why I think Rope and Ladder more than assuages my fears and earns the highest marks. “Price” is the only song on the entire album that I dislike and it is only two minutes of the sixty the album provides. It also has extremely good lyrics—in spite of my distaste for the delivery of them—that add wonderful depth and character to the story being told. On the point of wearing their influences on their sleeves, most every band does this to some degree and I don’t think that I will ever use “they sound like The Dear Hunter” as anything other than a compliment, so I can hardly complain about it. Lastly, while I do think the album is front-loaded, that is more due to the extreme quality of the first half rather than any sort of lacking by the second. In fact, one of the other stand-out tracks of the album comes at the climax of the story, which is exactly where you need one to lie.
This track comes when the protagonist is surrounded and recognizes the betrayal that befell him, fittingly titled “The Confrontation.” I wasn’t sure about the specific audio distortion at the beginning of the song the first time I heard it, but it has grown on me dramatically as it does a great job of highlighting the claustrophobia of the situation and setting the song apart from the rest of the album. For the majority of the rest of the song it’s just a solid showing, but at the four minute mark the grand realization is made. The song then builds with a repetition of “don’t tell me it was you along” before a shattering with a crying of “don’t” at the emotional breaking point. This is the hammer of the album and the repetition does a wonderful job of driving the nail home. I’m generally not a huge fan of screaming in music, but the impact here is impossible to deny and it makes for a fantastic climax.
So to run it back, this album features some of the best songs in the theatrical rock genre and all the complaints I have can easily be turned into compliments or otherwise negated. Jay Clark and Ryan Dolen should be proud of the end result of this decade long project. To answer my question from the beginning, Rope and Ladder absolutely lives up to my expectations and hopes. Looking at the slate of releases coming out this year I can’t promise that it will be one of my top albums of the year, but I would be shocked if it isn’t.
Koda Music 