A Blessed Unrest-ful Bandcamp Friday

Once upon a time, over a decade ago, I listened to a brand new album for the very first time, pressed on luscious blood red vinyl, that sounded — that felt — like it couldn’t possibly be new. It felt at once impossibly old and timeless. That album was A Blessed Unrest by The Parlour Trick.

A Blessed Unrest

If I myself am a haunted house, those 11 tracks crept into my heart and found a mouldering corridor insufficiently lit by flickering wall sconces, where cracked and peeling damask wallpaper was pulled away to expose a secret door that opened at the protest of long neglected hinges to reveal a steep, narrow, heavily cobwebbed staircase of creaky steps leading deep into the shadowy recesses of my mind. There my ghosts found 11 thoroughly haunted, seemingly boundless, yet somehow safe and intimate spaces to explore… 11 secret worlds wherein the music permeates and enchants everything, and where there were so many other ghosts waiting to be met and known.

I was gobsmacked. I was also not the sort of person to send fan mail, but in that impassioned fever of someone drunk on the magic of new music, I couldn’t resist cobbling together a few clumsy lines in effort to express my awe and gratitude for the creation of such an unspeakably beautiful, poignant, and wondrous album.

And looking back… that’s how I met Mer: They responded to my awkward gushing, which must be how it started, right? How we eventually became friends, how they became chosen family, and how today, some-miraculous-how we’re collaborating on the Liminal Flares podcast.

And yet… I feel like I’ve always known Mer, even though I know that isn’t and can’t possibly be true. It’s a funny internal paradox, which is par for the course inside my head. My entire sense of self feels like a paradox. But I digress…

Today is Bandcamp Friday when Bandcamp waves its cut from the sale of music by artists and labels on its marketplace. And The Parlour Trick is haunted chamber music composed, arranged, and performed by multi-instrumentalists Meredith Yayanos and Dan Cantrell. If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to treat yourself (or someone else!) to one of the most evocative and eerily atmospheric albums I have ever experienced, to say nothing of their other extraordinary aural offerings:

Wandering Room

Mystery Train (original 000 recording)

The Everpresent Tense ( ∞ demo )

Here’s to discovering those secret internal spaces — whatever your personal realms, landscapes, and architecture may be — where our ghosts may safely roam, to explore, to grieve, and to play.

And, if we’re really lucky, meeting kindred spirits in the process.