Okay Bear With Me While I Try To Organize All Of These Thoughts.

okay bear with me while i try to organize all of these thoughts.

even in arcadia is such an interesting album to me because it seems to simultaneously be the most AND the least lore-heavy album compared to all their other work. i've always been of the mind that very few, if any, of their songs are actually about sleep. vessel sings about his own personal struggles, a lot of those having to do with what was an obviously very toxic and potentially abusive past relationship, but i've never really thought he was singing about sleep for a good 99% of their discography. the songs themselves are the offerings. "here's all of my pain. i offer if to you" (in penance??? 👀). however, at the same time, the kind of metaphors and language he uses puts all of that pain behind a certain kind of... barrier, i suppose? that makes it seem like "maybe it could all just be a story". and then he comes into this album with songs like past self, caramel, provider, damocles, and gethsemane where it feels like he's being even more brutally honest and vulnerable than he's ever been before (which is saying something because dear god does vessel spill his guts and bare his heart through the project). he's talking directly to the audience in a way that's unfamiliar and new and gut-wrenching on a whole new level. it's like he's testing the waters of stepping out from behind the smoke screen he's been singing through in the past.

and yet. you get songs like look to windward, emergence, dangerous (this one to a slightly less degree than the others) even in arcadia, and infinite baths. he's saying things that almost don't seem like they'd be said to or about an actual person. they have these incredibly fantasy-battle-esque sounds and lyrics to them. and there are a million and one theories about what sleep is, but this album in particular has me feeling like sleep is a personification of vessel's demons and in this album he's fighting them like he hasn't ever before. he's not bowing down, he's actively out for blood. that's who/what he's talking to this time, as opposed to the person(s) he's usually addressing in his songs.

so that brings me to the house divide. "the house must endure" / "the cycle must end". house veridian and feathered host. and then you get the line "you know i live by the feather and die by the sword". like obviously this is the house divide, but the more i think about that line (especially with feathered host potentially being a nod to feathered quills and that suggesting the houses are actually the pen vs the sword) the more i keep thinking that like... this album is the inner battle between the poet who loves music and chose this project as the outlet vs the man behind the mask dying at the sword of that project. realizing he's gotten himself into this corner of constantly replaying his darkest moments ("i play discordant days on repeat") so he can make this music ("until they look like harmony") and realizing it's hurting him more than it's serving as catharsis anymore. and it all comes together in an album where he's both allowing himself to be what is potentially the most vulnerable he's ever been--ditching some of the metaphors to say things more point blank, addressing the audience directly, getting to be goofy and vulnerable in a lighter way through "provider"--while also giving us songs that are direct conflicts with this deity he's made himself vessel to and also building on that story in a way that has previously been incredibly vague and sparse in terms of actual canon.

it's an incredible dichotomy and i think this separation of the houses was a really clever way to do it. but it also makes me think that the album isn't as cut down the middle in the divide as i think a lot of us initially thought. it's also interesting to catch the lyrics in this album that reference each other across the aisle. (the one coming to mind rn is "war of attrition" being in both look to windward and caramel when they both have different themes to them).

all this to say, vessel is a genius and continues to achieve incredible and mind-boggling things in his music, and this album has really (in my opinion) been a gift.