“ Listen .”
I Am Trying Hard to Follow the Sound : Meditations on Accepting Typhoon ’ s Offerings
It is the first word , the first command , the first plea that Kyle Morton and Typhoon offer us on their latest album , Offerings . And it is an intriguing one . Of course , every album begins with the command , Listen ; every book with the command , Read . This is the force of the medium beneath the message : the book in all of its bookness asking you to pick it up , the song by its very essence asking you to hear it . Just as every sleep commands , Dream , and every life commands , Live . And so we listen .
Offerings is the fourth album from Portland , Oregon-based Typhoon , and one could call this the band ’ s most mature album , though to do so runs the risk of prizing maturity over youth , perpetuating a mistaken belief that living more necessarily means knowing more . But Offerings is mature . And one could call this album Typhoon ’ s darkest as well , though again the risk is that we give in to the false promise of the Enlightenment and think that darkness is somehow bad .
“ List , list , O , list !” says Hamlet ’ s father ’ s ghost to his son . Hamlet heeds the command , listening , becoming the living audience to the dead , baring witness , and remembering . And unable to forget what he hears , Hamlet loses his mind . If we think that truth is the uncovering of everything , a shining of light into every dark corner , exposing what is hidden once and for all , we misunderstand the nature of truth . This is the Enlightenment conception of truth that Morton battles . The sort of truth that dreams of the lights always being on , forgetting that it is difficult to sleep without any darkness . This is the sort of truth that causes perpetual insomnia�which inevitably leads to madness . The command that Offerings ’ protagonist�let us call him Morton ’ s Ghost�gives us at the start of this album threatens to do to us the same . This is a
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