act IV: rebirth in reprise | Every Moment Has A Song

The Dear Hunter: Act IV: Rebirth in Reprise (2015)

The Dear Hunter are rather like the Suave Shampoo of rock bands.

You’ve seen Suave in your supermarket hair care aisle, in myriad varieties packaged to mimic more expensive brands. It accomplishes the same goal–squeaky-clean hair–without the extra cost.

Providence, Rhode Island progressive rock band The Dear Hunter display great ambition, masterful songwriting, engaging melodies, stellar vocal performances adorned with rich harmonies and compelling orchestration, all in a wide variety of styles.

In other words, they’re a great band–but without the recognition factor of the “name brands”, none of the love-’em/hate ’em preconceived notions of those legends in the Rock Hall or on the cover of Rolling Stone. (They do still put rock bands on the cover of Rolling Stone, right?)

The band known as The Dear Hunter originated in 2006 as a side project of Casey Crescenzo, whose day job had involved another group called The Receiving End of Sirens, with whom he’d come to a parting of the ways. Crescenzo soon after released the first volume of a planned six-album concept project telling the story of the life of a boy (known as “The Dear Hunter”) born at the dawn of the 20th century. Yes, this guy is telling a story that will be six albums long. Take that, Ian Anderson.

To literally make a long story short, installment IV, Rebirth in Reprise, was released in 2015 and was unequivocally one of the best rock albums released that year.

Crescenzo is a confident composer who possesses a deft hand at complex orchestral arrangement à la Brian Wilson, whose Beach Boys harmonies seem to echo here and there on the album as well. At other times you may hear a touch of ELO as backing vocal wallpaper, or the quirky pop smarts of 10cc, or the over-the-top theatricality of Queen, or the genre-flouting intrepidity of Swedish prog band A.C.T. This album veers and careens stylistically in dizzying, spectacular fashion.

It’s a heady mix, but requires a bit more patience than the average rock record. Rebirth in Reprise is a 74-minute musical bounce castle of an album that probably won’t reward the typical listener fully before at least half a dozen plays. (Twice that if you have kids in the car.)

But as with all great records, the time investment yields a substantial payoff–at least, if you consider unrelenting earworms to be a desirable thing.

The elegiac ballad “The Line”, one of the album’s quieter and most sublime moments, is not to be missed. With its moody, acoustic guitar-driven arrangement, plaintive vocal and theme of denouement, it’s reminiscent of the perennial Kansas concert encore and Bic-magnet “Dust in the Wind”. Majestic, sad and elegant.

With other projects, such as the multi-volume Color Spectrum collection, continually pulling his attention away, it remains to be seen whether Crescenzo ever completes the intended 6-part saga.

But even if you only hear this portion of the story, or disregard the story altogether, the great musical moments here make for an impressive melodic progressive rock record.

Listen to: “The Old Haunt“