Album Review: Anneke Van Giersbergen - The Darkest Skies Are The Brightest

Music can be therapy. I think we all know this on a cursory level, but perhaps we haven't stopped to give serious thought to how a creative outlet can aid us in our quest for understanding and/or growth. There is something comforting in the act of putting thoughts to paper (or screen, depending on how luddite you are) that can purge them from our minds. If not that, we can see when our thoughts are written down flaws in the internal logic that get lost as they swirl around in our heads, blurring into a hurricane of worry and anxiety. And then there is how art can express thoughts and feelings we otherwise wouldn't be able to share with other people. Things we were not consciously aware of come out in the subtext, and perhaps those are the things we always needed to say.

Perhaps it's saying a bit much that an album can save a marriage, but this record was made in the spirit of that purpose. Anneke saw a storm approaching, and turned to music to find what she wanted the next chapter to look like. So rather than the metallic sounds of Vuur, she strips everything down to mostly an acoustic guitar and her voice, so she can tell the story of her life, and in turn find where her future was pointed.

"Why in the world is it so diabolically hard," she asks in the opening "Agape". Is that not the question we have been asking since the beginning of time? We have been conditioned to think love should be easy, that once you find it there are never any problems. That's not the case, and a lifetime of being fed that fiction makes realizing the necessary work even more difficult. What that means is this record is Anneke's acceptance. It is painful, personal, and more important than anything I can say here.

How exactly am I supposed to critically assess a record that may have saved the life Anneke wants to have for herself? If I say a melody is boring, that will pale in comparison to the impact that same song has had in righting the wrongs in her relationship. In a way, the task at hand is a bit like critically reviewing someone's diary. While it's possible to dissect the language used, that would miss the entire point.

This album is successful before any of us hear it, simply because it did what it was supposed to do. Any relationship we have with the music is secondary to what it means for Anneke, and it feels rather insignificant to try to put my own thoughts in the same category as hers.

At the very least, this record gives us an album of Anneke's beautiful vocals put front-and-center for us to enjoy. Her voice is gorgeous in this setting, where every nuance of her performance is clear as a bell. When the vibrato kicks in on a louder note, you can feel it reverberate in your own chest, even if you can't entirely relate to the words she is using. A lot of her fans might not be able to embrace this record, since it is so quiet and subtle, but there is a lot of beauty to be found here. It's a heavy album, in the emotional sense, so it might not be the sort of thing you put on often, but it's far more daring than Vuur was.

Legend has it Stradivarius violins sound unique because the wood was treated with blood. These songs stand apart from everything else Anneke has ever done, perhaps because they wear the stains of her blood. I'm not sure what else I can say.