Lindsay Schoolcraft – Rushing Through The Sky – 10th Anniversary Edition
Lindsay Schoolcraft – Rushing Through The Sky – 10th Anniversary Edition
Cyber Proxy Records
Release Date: 30/09/22
Running Time: 28:16
Review by Dark Juan
9/10
Alreet, me old muck spreaders? I am Dark Juan and I am from Yorkshire. This has nothing to do with anything, but I have to start somewhere, and I have been silently sitting in front of my computer screen for a significant amount of time trying to cudgel my poor, overused, abused and very tired brain into some form of meaningful synaptic activity before I lapse into the inky dark of unconsciousness. I need to write, though. It’s a compulsion, a drive I have to share what passes for actual thoughts in my head with you, the faceless masses, out there wherever you are in the world, who are unaccountably entertained by an old man ranting in a terrifying fashion and randomly insulting Warrior Soul just for the hell of it. They suck so much arse that Gemma Collins is thinking of booking them for a liposuction session.
As I am fatigued from wrangling my young gentleman at work and I have been tending towards the more extreme end of the underground recently, with a sudden and violent re-awakened interest in Djent and Drone, I decided to not go to the sharp end again, and instead apply my intellect (what’s left of it – 48 hours of constant Drill Rap will do that to a man) and keen insight to Canada’s most famous Gothic export, Ms. Lindsay Schoolcraft, as she celebrates the tenth anniversary of the release of her debut solo work, with this remastered and expanded edition of “Rushing Through The Sky”.
Now, most of you will remember that Lindsay was the keyboard player in the ever-revolving circus that surrounds miniature, priapic howler monkey and serial band rearranger Dani Filth in Cradle Of Filth and somehow survived long enough to quit before getting fired or falling out with him, so she’s resilient as fuck. She’s also a vastly experienced musician and has lent her considerable talents to the likes of Cancer Bats, Motionless In White and Myrkur.
Now that we have finished slagging off people vastly more talented than Dark Juan, I shall tell you about this record. First things first, if you’re expecting and wanting to hear Metal, forget it. You’re going to be experiencing a lush, spine-caressing descent into Gothic splendour, underpinned by the mellifluous alto of Lindsay Schoolcraft throughout, as she laments and sighs her way through a kind of dark fairy aether that has little flashes of light in it, represented by the piano and harp she also plays, rather superbly.
‘Into The Night’ opens the album with a repeating piano line before Lindsay employs “the” voice, and instantly the jaded fake Metal journo writing this nonsense listening to it is charmed and thinking about how effortlessly elegant the song is, the arrangement adding strings to the central piano line and Lindsay utilising a cleaner, more discernible, less operatic style than she did for the backing vocals in Cradle Of Filth.
I don’t know what to do with myself. This music is too relaxing! The album has such a pin-sharp, pure production it makes my heart hurt. It is rich and full and voluptuous and offers caresses and provides gentleness rather than the sustained violence I normally subject my poor head to. The vocal harmonies on ‘Your Mind’ are particularly goosebump-inducing as they are so lush and rich, soaring effortlessly over piano and sombre cello. ‘December Rain’ whooshes and sweeps over ice-covered forests and warps and wefts around broken turrets of a ruined castle as the protagonist laments and yearns for a lost love who died centuries ago, her sadness only growing as time passes slowly by…
‘You Forever’ also features a surfeit of mournful cellos on the intro and verse with a delicately picked harp dancing below them before picking up the pace a little with some subtle drumming and a surprisingly descant piano line as Lindsay remembers the person she’s singing about with a kind of mournful joy, leading into ‘Masquerade’, which is quite upbeat as it switches in and out of waltz time and cudgels the listener’s imagination to picture a formal dance, with frock coats and cravats and cummerbunds on the gentlemen and gorgeous, lush taffeta and silk dresses and extravagant coifs on the ladies as they pirouette around each other in a formal dance held in a grand hall as Lindsay tells the mystery protagonist that she will “Give you everything but not the last of me”.
‘Darkness Falls’ is just harp and voice as a relationship ends (or someone is dying) and the frosty calm that the protagonists have managed with each other finally starts to crack and warmth and lifeblood starts to leak through again as they realise that their time has come and it is time to leave, with all the sadness, sorrow and recrimination that comes with it but with the promise of a new, happy future ahead. It is a haunting, simple thing with what is perilously close to a cello solo in the middle part of the song.
The bonus item on this reissue is an instrumental version of ‘December Rain’ which makes you realise just how talented an arranger and composer Lindsay Schoolcraft is. It is a quite complex piece of several different elements all operating contrapuntally and it is rich, vibrant and luxurious throughout, like sitting in a black silk chair to sip a fine claret from an exquisite crystal glass. It is actually my favourite part of the album, this instrumental piece, because I get to hear all the glorious little flourishes that I didn’t hear on the version with vocals.
So, if you wish to be beguiled and entranced by sorrow in equal measure, Lindsay Schoolcraft has you covered in splendid and voluptuous luxury, but if you’re expecting full on Operatic Goth you aren’t getting it. Instead, you’re getting a kind of highly polished North American style of Gothic music, like the glittering bastards in the vampire thing everyone went crazy about, where a two-hundred-year-old bloodsucking sex pest bothered the teenage girl who secretly fancied a magnificently chiselled, yet utterly brain-dead dog-man numpty, so they had a war about it while Kristen Stewart moped and wept her way through basically being groomed and emotionally abused by a vampire and a werewolf. What was it called? Twilight! That’s the bastard.
Where was I?
Yes, polished North American Gothic music for people who wish to be charmed beyond measure. Lacking the acerbic wit of the likes of The Sisters Of Mercy, it is a much more emotional listen, dealing with affairs of the heart rather than “Getting your flowers pressed” or being a “Kino runner for the DDR”.
I have always wanted to use that line in my writing. Next, I will be shoehorning “Seen the way that careful lingers undecided by the door” into some kind of sentence.
Come here, I think you’re beautiful.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards Lindsay Schoolcraft an exquisitely carved and finished and French polished 9/10 for making the sad old goff writing this feel all introspective and sigh for a past and wasted youth that will never be reclaimed.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Into The Night
02. Your Mind
03. December Rain
04. You Forever
05. Masquerade
06. Darkness Falls
07. December Rain (Instrumental)
LINE-UP:
Lindsay Schoolcraft – Vocals, Piano, Harp
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
