Will Loving:Singer/Guitarist The Greening
I’ve listened to The Greening for the past 5 years. The band is a combination of Progressive Rock, Pop, Psychedelic Rock and other innovative musical styles. One thing that I’ve come to expect from the band is musical satisfaction. It doesn’t matter if you are at one of their live shows at Grant and Green in San Francisco, or if you are listening to one of their albums. The Greening delivers. And their latest album, The Last Tibetan Midnight is available for purchase of hard copy or in digital format from Amazon.com. This album is 44 Minutes and 25 seconds of sheer audio deliciousness. I put The Last Tibetan midnight in my car’s CD Player and the song “Black Lotus” came on and within 1 minute and 30 seconds I was having a time warping psychedelic experience. I thought I had listened to several tracks of music. I was engrossed in the song so much that it felt like the song was taking me on a sonic adventure. Fortunately I wasn’t distracted from my driving so I stayed safe while dropping books off at the library. But I hadn’t felt such a pleasurable time altering experience while listening to music since I heard “Cinema” by Yes. That first song made me excited for the rest of the album and it truly sounded fresh and exciting.
The next song, “Belong With Me” sung by Karl Meischen, was quite different from “Black Lotus” it had an almost 50’s love song feel to it and it was quite beautiful. Listening to, “Belong With Me” made me realize that there was going to be a lot of variety in The Last Tibetan Midnight. The production value in “Belong With Me” is superb. It sounds very intimate and yet full at the same time. The song captures an old song feel with high fidelity sound quality. This is the kind of song you can listen to while slow dancing with a cherished love of your life. Also the drumming done by Nick Tatro is excellent and keeps the tempo sensitive yet upbeat and fun to listen to.
Buy The Last Tibetan Midnight at Amazon.com
The album takes a turn into the more Psychedelic part of town with the song, “Sleeping Grandpa Tacoma.” The song starts out with a weird intro that sounds like the guitar is trying to have a conversation with a disgruntled termite. But then at 20 seconds the song opens up into a Hi-Fi track with a rocking guitar line done by Will Loving and Karl laying down the law with his solid organ tones. The middle part of the song is chill Pop with some interesting rock in the mix. But then at 3 minutes 14 seconds the track gets Psychedelic with strange morphing tones that sound like cybernetic bubbles trying to reprogram a piano made out of aluminum foil. There are also cool sounds flowing through the speakers including harpsichords and even some horns. The song ends with an inhuman drum solo.
Since I like being happy, I really like music that puts me in a good mood. And the song, “Winter Sunshine” truly does just that. It starts out with warm ooooh’s and then kicks into a peppy drum beat. The singing on this song is great. Karl is singing about being joyful and smiling and passing moments and I love it. This would make a great song to wake up to and make a protein shake in the morning. I can just see myself scooping powder into the blender while listening to the “Ba Ba Bah Bah Ba!” parts of the song. “Winter Sunshine” has a great full sound for its ending with peaceful and beautiful polyphony.
Right now if you haven’t heard any of The Greening’s music before I recommend that you take a moment and check out The Greening on MySpace by clicking this link. Now when you go to their MySpace page scroll down to the song, “Don’t Have the Time” this song owns. It has pumped up distorted rock guitars that open the song. Then when the chorus kicks in with Karl on the mic it sounds aggressive and filled with charismatic vocal tenacity. My favorite part of the song is at 1 minute and 45 seconds. Here the song mutates into this totally Psychedelic vocal polyphony of what sound like twisted samples that remind me of “Here is the News” by Electric Light Orchestra (ELO). FUN FACT: Did you know that “Here is the News” is on the album – Time by ELO? And the song I was just talking about by The Greening is called “Don’t have the Time” ! Both the song and the ELO album have the word “TIME.” Is this a coincidence? Or is this a subliminal message for only the adept listener. I for one believe it to be the latter.
The next song, “Sunday Afternoon” not only rocks musically, but it has an excellent and colorful music video by Danny Ochoa. If you scroll to the bottom of this article you can see the video for yourself. “Sunday Afternoon” has an excellent narrative behind it and you get sucked into the lyrics. There really is a story being told here.
“She’s So Electric” was from The Greening’s EP. The track is burning hot and is definitely Rock and Roll. The song is fast paced and the stops and starts are punchy and great for dancing and head banging. At 2 minutes 25 seconds Karl says “C’mon!” and it is epic. It has the same feel of the excitement the band Trace has during their songs. At 3 mintues 22 seconds the song’s instrumental part gets really freaky and the keyboards that jump in the mix are to die for. It sounds like a funky keyboard solo happening while a bunch of planets are being sucked into a technicolor black hole.
The Last Tibetan Midnight is concluded by my favorite song on the album, “Thought I Told You.” This song is an 11 minute progressive rock epic that is a joy to listen to. The vocals are distant and thought provoking. But the parts that really stand out are the instrumental interludes and the finale. The seeping guitar pulls make me reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s album Meddle. Nick’s drumming is great on this song too, he really keeps a down tempo relaxed beat that lets the amazing guitar lines transcend to the surface. Today I found myself chilling in my car with the seat down and letting “Thought I Told You” wash over me till the very end with the windows down. I felt like a huge chunk of stress had been lifted from my body and mind. It truly was the perfect ending to a very diverse album. Listening to The Last Tibetan Midnight was a good decision.
As promised here is the music video directed and animated by Danny Ochoa. The song is “Sunday Afternoon” from The Greening. You can find this song on the album, The Last Tibetan Midnight.
-Tyler