“I feel so alive tonight,” Shaun Morgan sings in one of the happiest Seether songs to date, “Tonight.” And feel alive, the listener will—and sorrowful, betrayed, and uplifted—all in the course of twelve songs and five bonus tracks.
The album starts with one of the heaviest of its tunes, “Fur Cue.” The pounding guitar is no example of the lyrics within, however. While the verses are filled with lines of bitter deception and defiance (“You must know I won’t play your game”), one of the sweetest lyrics included on the album is thrown into the thick of the distortion (“Stay ‘cause you make me smile”).
Track two, “No Resolution,” offers a glimpse of frontman Shaun Morgan’s plaguing former drug addiction with lines like, “I’m still getting high” and “I love the way it feeds me.” “Forsaken”—the last track—speaks of the same idea (“If I feed, I’m stronger/I don’t feel no longer”), but with a finalizing closure (“I’ll never forsake myself again”), which really showcases the journey one takes when listening to the record.
It’s personal, and it radiates.
From the darkness of “Master of Disaster” to the helplessness of “Country Song” (“You keep on thinking you can save me”), it’s a heartrending voyage, but one that’s interspersed with elevating gems like “Tonight” and “Here and Now” (“You’re my savior after all”).
“Pass Slowly,” written about the suicide of Morgan’s brother Eugene, is a tearjerker like no other song on the album. The arrangement—complete with strings and a chorus-like backing vocal—is haunting, but merely the poignant lyrics (“Courage takes too much”) could easily bring many to tears. Especially yours truly, who cried during Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
The bonus tracks—“Dead Seeds,” “Yeah,” “Nobody,” and “Effigy”—are perhaps the catchiest of the track list, despite their status as afterthoughts. And “Here and Now (Deconstructed)”—the iTunes pre-order special—has a lingering feeling of tenderness not quite displayed to its full potential in the original track.
“There’s no comfort in song,” Morgan croons in “Yeah.” But that is perhaps the one untruth told in the path of the disc, because Holding onto Strings Better Left to Fray exudes comfort in the fact the music industry hasn’t quite crashed yet, since the record debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 in the United States.
“Keep on coming on.”
Please do, Seether.
