I can’t vouch for the accuracy or authenticity of this review. I did write it, but I wasn’t exactly in my right mind when I listened to the album or when I wrote the review, due to a combination of feverish illness and the effects of heavy medication. All I can say is that I’m writing what I’m feeling at the moment. Maybe it only goes as far as a recommendation for the feverish and/or drug-altered listeners in the audience, and everyone else will have to make up his or her own mind.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is a twin suspension bridge that crosses Puget Sound south of where I live, connecting the city of Tacoma to the Kitsap Peninsula. It opened to traffic on July 1, 1940, as a single suspension bridge, the third longest suspension bridge in the world at that time. Only four months later, on the morning of November 7, it collapsed under high wind conditions. The collapse was caught on film, and the sight of a large concrete and steel structure twisting like a rubber band is still a freaky thing to watch. The bridge was replaced 10 years later, but the collapse still resonates as an example of man-made creations succumbing to the power of nature.

Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster is also the name taken by five-man band from London, who came together in 2008 with the aim of creating “epic soundtracks for terrible events”. Yesterday, they released their second album, Exegesis. Composed of eight largely instrumental songs, most of them lengthy (with more than an hour of total run-time), the album is itself like a fever dream, which may be why it affected me so powerfully.

Continue reading »