If you would’ve told me some ten odd years ago that one of my all-time favorite records will be a record that isn’t metal, or rock, or jazz, I would’ve laughed you out of the room with the force of a thousand suns and slammed the door behind you. Never even mind, if you told me, it had a lot of country music elements in it (I have a precarious, to say the least, relationship with that genre), I would have imploded with laughter, causing a supernova of ridiculousness. Yet, here we are. Casualties of Cool’s eponymous album is one of my all time favorite albums ever, easily, by a landslide.
Casualties of Cool isn’t just another Devin Townsend album. If you ask me, it’s the Devin Townsend album. It’s so Devin Townsend that when this record is playing, he and the rest of his band are basically in the room with you/besides you. Then he and his band grab you by the collar of your shirt and take you on a surreal and epic adventure around the universe, because, you know, Devin Townsend.
There are few musicians I hold in such high regard as I hold Townsend. I won’t go on a rant (against every instinct telling me otherwise), but his level of composition (especially), production, performance, and overall musical vision is more or less unparalleled in the world of prog, but arguably overall as well. He talked a fair amount about the record and how it was made, so I’ll skip all that as well and focus entirely on how I see things.
Although, most people see Casualties of Cool as a normal-sized record, presently, I refer to Casualties of Cool as the fifteen-track record with an entire thirteen-track bonus disc, plus a few extras. While I don’t think all the extra material makes the journey that much better, I do feel like it adds some extra nuance and fleshes out the story a little more. At this point though, as I see it, all the extras are somehow an indispensable part of the album’s identity. Granted, I do prefer the first disc of the record more than the extras.
One of the most fascinating things to me, is still the stylistic diversity of the record. I mean, look, it’s sure as hell not the first time someone brings together disparate musical ends for an eclectic effect, but I’ve seen few instances of this thing done better. On paper, it sounds plain wrong at a glance. A body consisting of country, blues, ambient, and chamber pop, with a healthy dash of experimental, rock, and anthemic orchestrations topped off with all sorts of various artifices here and there. It’s honestly unbelievable how well it’s all pulled off. It sounds like it couldn’t have been done any other way and that’s just amazing.
I never really cared much for the lyrical layer of the album to be honest. Indeed, it aptly and neatly ties together the concept of the record, telling the story in words alongside music. It’s just that, by the time I dug into the lyrics, my fantasy of the album’s adventure was already fully crystallized and laid out, so due to that little cognitive and emotional dissonance, I renounced said written accompaniment. I do think that Ché Aimee Dorval’s voice is an ineffable element of beauty and wonder across the record and I’m sure thankful that she had words to carry with that voice.
I’m not entirely sure how I’d describe the adventure of Casualties of Cool, but it definitely starts somewhere in a bayou/swamp. At least that’s how I always envisioned the setting of “Daddy” and “Mountaintop”. A long trek through some marshy kind of maze, which eventually reaches a clearing point near hills, at night, with a clear sky rolling off of them upwards, revealing shimmering stars scattered around. That’s when “Flight” kicks off.
“Flight” is just something else entirely. It really conveys perfectly the effortlessness of gliding through the sky, immersing me in a fantastical display of radiant colors lighting up the night sky, dancing, shifting, and blooming throughout, carrying my being into another dimension. It’s as much beautiful and simple as it is complex and mystical. To this day it’s one of my all time favorite songs and it will be for the remainder of time.
As it all pops and coalesces into a magnificent conclusion, afterwards, we are brought down back to earth to the marshy maze over the duration of “The Code”. Only to then reach another clearing like before and be lifted through another bewildering spectacle across “Moon”. “Pier” acting like an odd, cryptic, liminal bridge between realms, feels rather dark, creeping around with odd clicks and clacks with little else on top. However, as I wade through the shadows in a new world.
As “Ether” carries on, things feel oddly similar, yet markedly different. There’s an ethereal (pun intended) air swirling throughout and it’s just unshakable. It’s hard to pin down particularly, but it feels like it’s heralding something more than it leads on with its easygoing demeanor. With heavy pounding drums and a lone flute on top, “Hejda” further amplifies the surreal factor, expanding the horizon of this new world more and more, making it ever clearer. It sets the tone for what feels like some kind of cosmic pilgrimage into the unknown. “Forgive Me” hearkens somewhat nostalgically to the beginning of the journey, relenting from this new path just ever so slightly, only for “Broken” to shift back and keep things on course for the otherworldly stuff that’s about to go down. Again, “Bones” hearkens back, softly, with a bitter-sweet sensation that’s difficult to nail down, only to be, again, derailed by “Deathscope” and its uncanny vibe. It’s all a beautiful kind of larger scale call and response kind of dynamic, which at times can even feel like two different narrative threads unfolding simultaneously.
“The Field” leads us to the final bridge we have to cross on this fantastical trip, like the calm before the storm, with little to nothing offered in the way of suspecting what’s next. Still lingering with the wistful and saccharine echo with which it left me behind, I attempt to cross the bridge. “The Bridge” is the apotheotic climax of this journey, unfurling before my eyes an entire universe. I’m not even sure there’s a better way to describe it. As I let it consume me with its grandeur, I emerge on the other side in a different form, which has nothing in common with the physical world. You could say that I’ve become a casualty of cool (pun 150% intended). So, there’s nothing left in the end, but pure feeling. As such, “Pure” concludes the adventure, gently and simply.
It’s a wild and amazing ride. So is the rest of the extra material, although it’s not quite as poignantly tied together from a narrative standpoint, however, emotionally and musically speaking it bares enough resemblances to feel like an expansion. Although, it couldn’t stand separately, on its own, as its own adventure.
There’s nothing left to add, yet at the same time, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’m aware that might not make sense to some, but I’m sure it will once you ride on the sonic waves of this outstanding adventure.
