Stephen Hemstritch-Johnston's greatest success on his album, Motorway (released under his alias, Fearofdark), is a breathtaking ability to make happy music that is profound. Very often, I think our go-to emotional or descriptive pairings for aesthetic depth lean toward the problematic, the furrowed brow, the shattered pane of glass; and while these reflexes and expressions are fine and admirable, it seems that types of luminous joy are underrepresented. In the most powerful of Motorway's pieces and moments, joy is made more joyful by a melancholic silver lining -- there is a narrative of transience (and what better medium for that than the most transient one of all?), and an understanding of the strange, unexpected joy that can develop out of one's understanding of what is temporary. Melodies at once sing out enthusiasm for their ability to simply be alive and also contemplate, welcome, as if with hot tears, their own tender, fading substances. And even with all that the music invents, it yearns for an expression, a state of unnamed happiness that's extra-unknown. Motorway is an album of sensucht.
Motorway has become one of my favorite albums -- all categories be damned -- since its November, 2012 release, and has allowed me to develop a brand of relationship with it that I'm realizing is all too rare -- yet, all the more wonderful for it. If you haven't, check it out.
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