For the last century, the universe has been whispering to humanity to slow down, to dwell in stillness and take in pockets of quietude. Lately, it’s begun to scream and rage since no one seems to be listening. If you’re looking for something deep to help you process everything that’s gone on over the past few months, or if you’re simply looking for something to help you get through the damn day, I found the perfect album for meditative rumination.
A thirteen-song musical cycle that is as delicately-nuanced and shaded as its cover art ~ a corner room looking over what might be either the rise or fall of the sun on a body of water – ‘Welcome Home’ is written and performed by one of my brother’s friends, Karel Barnoski, whom I remember with much amusement from our childhood days of playing hide and seek. Hearing him in this realm makes me marvel at the wondrous possibilities that life lays out for each of us, and what we decide to make of them.
Opening with the jaunty ‘Interplay’ the mood is initially playful, which is fitting for the memories I have of Karel as a kid. By track two, however, things take a thoughtful turn: ‘Bath’ offers a balm to everything going on in the world right now ~ a contemplative, sparse soundscape that seems to encapsulate so much of the quiet and stillness that reveals Barnoski’s mastery of the space in-between the notes.
Title track and album centerpiece ‘Welcome Home’ is tailor-made for 2020. Home is many things to many people ~ not always a place, not always a happy frame of mind ~ but it’s what grounds us, it’s what centers us. We may not have grown up in a perfect household, but even the most nomadic among us carries around an essence of home ~ a place, whether physical or spiritual ~ that speaks to us in its own way. Finding that space, and keeping it sacred, is a big part of our journey in this world. The music here allows that place to exist.
‘2019’ is one of the first pieces I’d ever heard Barnoski play on one of his FaceBook live events. It arrived just as we were all hunkering down in our stay-at-home existence. Maybe that’s why it feels a little more powerful ~ the way a song melds to a moment that, as it’s happening, you somehow realize will be historical and resonant, that you are making a memory that will burn itself indelibly into who you are about to become. Here, it offers calm and beauty, refuge and consideration, a way of sorting out whatever ails your own little world. I’ve kept this one on repeat when writing, and it clears the mind and heart like a mini-meditation.
‘The Knife’ brings an underlying tension to the proceedings, darker shadings and a stormy turbulence that is only partially resolved in its dramatic continuation, ‘The Knife (Jam)’ – seven-plus minutes of musical excitement that is a journey unto itself. About halfway through the storm gives way to calm, and a sort of ambivalent resignation, then swirls back around for one final flourish before letting everything settle down again.
The dim mood conjured by ‘Isolation’ perfectly embodies so much of 2020 and reminds me that music and art still matter, that they still provide a haven and comfort for all people. A work of beauty is an invitation for everyone to appreciate, one of the last and perhaps only truly egalitarian systems we have as a civilization. Barnoski touches upon the events of the past few months in his titles, such as ‘Quarantine’ and ‘Stir Crazy’ and if a pandemic keeping us all home results in such glorious work, then it appears the universe is seeing us through these changes and ushering in a new normal framed with beauty, framed with an appreciation for something quieter, something that sounds like a piano being played for the sake of all of us ~ to keep us calm, to keep us together as much as we are apart, to keep us from going crazy.
Every once in a while a collection of music will come along that so deftly and magnificently captures a moment that it’s unclear whether it was the hands of the artist or the hands of the universe guiding us into such states of rapture and beauty. ‘Welcome Home’ stakes its claim of timelessness thanks to the artistry of Barnoski and the way he blankets a difficult world in swaddling clothes of musical consolation. He plays the hurt into the heart, allowing it to have its time and moment there, then plays it gently away, and we are better for having heard and felt it.
Final track ‘All Together Now’ brings back the theme from ‘Welcome Home’ ~ a happy and hopeful return to a time that may not come again, and that may or not have ever been. That’s the remarkable gift this song cycle ends up being ~ it gets us as close to the human experience as music ever can, carving out the space for us to confront demons, reconcile turmoil, and create a new reality. ‘Welcome Home’ is a session of sonic therapy we could all use right now.
{Karel Barnoski’s ‘Welcome Home’ is available on Apple Music here and on Spotify here.}
