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This Is the Moment The Violet Burning

Longevity and continued relevance (along with material success)
must be on the wish-lists of even the most idealistic musicians.
On the first two counts, at least, The Violet Burning is the
envy of many a hardworking local band. Since 1990, songwriter
Michael J. Pritzl has been making music under The Violet Burning
moniker, accompanied by a varying lineup of players.
On the Violet Burning’s latest record, This Is the Moment,
guitarist Andrew Prickett joins Pritzl, as do Herb Grimaud, Jr.
(bass) and Violets newcomer, Sam West (drums) of Stavesacre.

This eighth Violet Burning offering is comparable to Pritzl’s last,
an album entitled Fabulous, Like You, released under the name
The Gravity Show. That record consisted of irresistibly hooky,
New Wave-inspired songs backed rhythmically by drum machines
and other electronics. This Is the Moment runs in the same vein,
but the electronics are less conspicuous, serving mainly to highlight
the skillfully woven layers of guitar tracks. In some ways, this collection
of songs is even more happy and uptempo than the sometimes manic
Fabulous, Like You -- for example, there’s not one really slow ballad on this CD.
Moment may also be slightly more celebratory of its New Wave roots –
a few homages to the Cure appear, ranging from subtle to overt.

Lyrically, This Is the Moment plays out like a mini-chronology of a believer’s
walk with God. The first track (“Lovesick”) conveys a fascination with Christ
and a zeal to begin life anew; the last track (“Manta Rae”) takes the listener
on an eschatological voyage to the day of redemption. In between the two,
This Is the Moment gives us songs of love and separation, faith in
disappointment, sorrow and gratitude.

The album’s title is not arbitrary. What Fabulous, Like You was to place,
This Is the Moment is to time. If Fabulous, Like You was a meditation on
what it means to be simultaneously displaced and rooted -- lost and found
-- then This Is the Moment is a meditation on what it means to be
simultaneously waiting and living in the now.

The thematic center of Fabulous was the lyric, “I’m fighting to hold back the tears /
Because gravity’s keeping me here.” The “here” Pritzl contemplated on that
record was the embodied existence of the believer. What he found when he
considered his fallen world was that, contrary to appearances, God was in it with him.
Likewise, it’s within a song called “Lost Without You Near Me” that Pritzl finds the
thematic center of This Is the Moment:

When I can’t be with you

My heart has no home

This is the moment

Here in your arms, today

As soon as he realizes his distance from God, the believer finds himself in God’s presence.
The moment of sorrow becomes the moment of recognition, which in turn,
becomes the moment of communion and fulfillment.

Eventually, this sorrow-to-worship cycle is bound to begin again. Because God is
both “here” and “not here” -- or, to use temporal terms, He is both “now” and “later” --
life on earth is a mad juxtaposition of joy and longing. This Is the Moment rejoices
in both of these emotions, as Pritzl finds it gloriously impossible to separate them.

This Is The Monent is available from Northern Records .