Trey Forbes explores the darker aspects of life
I’ve written about local singer and songwriter Trey Forbes before, using the word “spiritual” as a descriptor of the man and his music. I did so with some reservation, and am about to do so again. My reservation is that the word spiritual can be misinterpreted, badly.
As a result, hearing or seeing the word in relation to an artist can flip a switch in the listener or reader’s head that says, “Yeah, this probably isn’t for me.”
That’s a shame, because some wonderful art can be missed altogether and I mean to avoid that when talking about Trey’s new album, The Darkness of the Light.
Perhaps it would be easier to start by explaining what I DON’T mean when referring to Trey and his work as spiritual. I don’t mean that it’s preachy, overtly religious or even denominational. Whatever Trey’s personal philosophy may be is known to Trey, not me, but there is nonetheless a very subtle subtext of peace, love and unity underlying his music.
It is so subtle that you can’t pin any particular label on it, which is brilliant, I think, and suggests that it isn’t there by design so much as it’s so much a part of the man himself that it can’t help but infuse his work.
Trey doesn’t write music from a pulpit or a shady grove, he just writes songs, but the artist himself possesses such a sublime sense of wonder and connection to life, the universe, and everything, that the art he creates reflects that, and it is simultaneously as unmistakable and as unobtrusive as a fingerprint on a guitar neck.
I’ve said it before, but it’s hard to listen to his music and not just feel good about things.This latest effort is a new direction for Trey in that it is something of a concept album; every song bears a relationship to every other song, building thematically and making for an opus that may be his finest to date.
Far from being an “everything is groovy” hippy feel-good album, The Darkness of the Light explores some, well, darker aspects of life, but it does so with the same kind of assurance any thinking person has that however violent the storm may be, it will pass and the sun will shine again, always.
Tracks like “Played the Fool,” “Lonesome Rider,” and “Queen of Hell” do not suggest for a moment that life is a bed of roses, but they do, in concert with the rest of the album, serve as a reminder that roses grow best with a little rain and healthy dose of manure.
It’s life, and life has its bad and its good. Not only does the bad make the good all the more valuable, often the bad is a necessary precursor to the good and in the end, it’s all a very sweet mystery.
One of the more interesting aspects of this album is the exploration of a variety of styles. Were you to ask, “Well, what kind of music IS it?” there isn’t a simple answer. Sometimes it’s poppy, sometimes it’s old school country, and sometimes it’s downright psychedelic. Track five, the aforementioned “Lonesome Rider,” could find equal palatability with Garth Brooks or Metallica.
Ultimately I think that Trey didn’t set out to make a “type” of album, he made a thematic one and he uses every device in his arsenal to explore that theme and it works. No hodge-podge of this-and-that, The Darkness of the Light is a solid album that makes the classic hero’s journey using a variety of vehicles to get there. As such, it is a vastly rewarding listen.
Trey is one of those guys who, while he certainly wouldn’t mind earning some money for guitar strings, is far more dedicated to music than finance and as such he has made a great deal of his work free via his website, treyforbes.com.
There you will find videos, albums, and all things Trey and it’s well worth your time to stop by and have a listen.