This year brings us the cold­est win­ter in twenty-five years and along with it, a new Akai album, The Cold­est Hour is Just Before the Dawn. As their pre­vi­ous album Pretty Songs About Ugly Things was a favorite I was more than eager to give their newest out­ing a lis­ten. In doing so I found it to be a fas­ci­nat­ing artis­tic state­ment. I hadn’t nec­es­sar­ily planned to review a music CD here but then again it isn’t too oftent that I have so much to say about one. In the case of Akai’s lat­est, repeated lis­tens con­tin­ued to bring cer­tain themes into focus and indi­vid­ual songs opened to reveal an unex­pected look at the mind­set of the Jehovah’s Wit­ness religion.

Before get­ting into the deeper dis­cus­sion it might be best to start on the sur­face with the stan­dard genre pigeon-holing and band com­par­isons.  The Cold­est Hour could be filed under indie-pop.   Musi­cally, it has the char­ac­ter of early Belle & Sebas­t­ian, owing more to the promi­nence of trum­pet and glock­en­spiel with the occa­sional spacey synth to any­thing else.   It terms of song con­struc­tion and vocals it reminded me of a more epic ver­sion of the quaint Twin-Cities band, the Owls.

The first impres­sion of this album is that Akai’s pen­chant for writ­ing “pretty songs about ugly things” car­ries through from their pre­vi­ous album.  Though it lacks the genius pop pro­duc­tion val­ues of its pre­de­ces­sor, The Cold­est Hour still does an admirable job, with a sparkling, melodic pre­sen­ta­tion.   Since the release of the last stu­dio album Akai’s mem­ber­ship has swelled to a eight piece live act.   While still fun­da­men­tally a duo-effort of the husband-wife song­writ­ing team of Hiromi and Rob­bie Mat­sumoto, The Cold­est Hour is more of an ensem­ble piece.  So sup­port­ing instru­ments like the glock­en­spiel and trum­pet are present on the major­ity of the tracks shar­ing ground with the stan­dard drums, bass, and gui­tar.   This cre­ates cohe­sive­ness through­out the entirety of the album, stitch­ing the indi­vid­ual tracks together as a com­pos­ite work; though it often has the unfor­tu­nate side-affect of giv­ing many of the songs a cer­tain degree of sameness.

In my opin­ion, The Cold­est Hour is bet­ter looked at as an art object rather than sim­ply a music album. Artis­ti­cally designed, co-produced and co-written by gifted painter Hiromi, this sec­ond LP release from the Akai is unabashedly a con­cept album. I don’t know too much about eval­u­at­ing art so I hope that I can be excused for any mis­teps in putting together my thoughts in this regard.

The open­ing song begins the descent into evening with other songs fol­low­ing through the night lead­ing to the final song which pro­vides hope­ful glim­mers of the new day emerg­ing on the hori­zon. Promi­nent lyri­cal themes revolve around the night, dark­ness, and cold­ness. To exem­plify these themes the music is often plod­ding with tired and list­less vocals, dis­tant cham­ber cho­ruses, somber brass lines, and the twin­kle of bells to add a touch of winter.

Mov­ing for­ward from these sur­face impres­sions we begin to unravel the piece to see what mean­ing the artist has inter­wo­ven within the musi­cal tapes­try. With con­ven­tional modern-art the artist might dis­till their work to a suc­cinct tagline. In this way Akai describes The Cold­est Hour as,

A dynamic jour­ney through the hours between dusk and dawn, ‘The Cold­est Hour’ echos a mélange of reac­tions to a dark spot in human his­tory with melody and metaphor.

This leaves the viewer, or in this case lis­tener, with the job of expand­ing on the mean­ing the artist is attempt­ing to con­vey, an effort that is often clouded by his own expe­ri­ence, back­ground, and emo­tion.  Review­ing art is a very sub­jec­tive effort.

In this par­tic­u­lar case it is help­ful that I share the same back­ground of the artists, hav­ing been raised within the Jehovah’s Wit­ness religion.   While it is true that the band makes no out­ward pro­mo­tion of their reli­gion, their beliefs have made an indeli­ble mark on the album.   From my per­spec­tive, The Cold­est Hour is best under­stood as an artis­tic, reli­gious state­ment, some­thing that may not be grasped by other listeners.

When I lis­tened to their first album, Pretty Songs About Ugly Things, I thought that it reminded me of the Bible book of Eccle­si­astes.   It seemed to express the futil­ity of the human endeavor (“every­thing is van­ity”) though not with­out some degree of hope.    The Cold­est Hour ampli­fies the pes­simism to eleven while ton­ing down the hope con­sid­er­ably.  It presents a dis­mal view of life prac­ti­cally void of any joy and warmth.

In the artists’ view we are in a cold, dark spot in human his­tory; a time period  that Jehovah’s Wit­nesses believe to be “the last days”.   The gen­eral ici­ness of the songs might be attrib­uted to spend­ing a freez­ing Min­nesota win­ter in a poorly heated home but it is more aptly a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of how Jehovah’s Wit­nesses view the world around them and their place within.     In that view the only good exists within the reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion, every­thing out­side is viewed with sus­pi­cion, pes­simism, and occa­sion­ally disdain.

In con­sid­er­ing the The Cold­est Hour from this per­spec­tive it would be ben­e­fi­cial to first con­sider the track, “Morn­ing Fol­lows The Night”. Com­ing in halfway through the record­ing, it acts as the cen­tral the­sis for the album proper, mak­ing a direct the­o­log­i­cal state­ment about the album’s con­cept. Using some­what muted, reli­gious metaphor the lyrics fol­low the fall of man into dark­ness, a tran­si­tion from day to night. It looks long­ingly toward a time of edenic renewal where they’ll “replace the old with some­thing new”. Such a tran­si­tion comes at the destruc­tion of present. “We’ll tear it down / we’ll burn it up / we’ll use the fire to light the world”. The themes of the fall and redemp­tion of mankind are not with­out Bib­li­cal basis, how­ever the response of the Wit­nesses to all of this, reveals a lack of under­stand­ing to what Jesus has to offer in the imme­di­ate present.

Whereas the Bible has light enter­ing the world with Jesus, those in the Jehovah’s Wit­ness reli­gion are still hemmed in by the dark­ness; the cho­rus repeats the imper­cep­tion that, “dark cir­cles our lives.”  This can be con­trasted with Paul’s words to Chris­tians, “For you were once dark­ness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as Chil­dren of the Light”.   (Eph­esians 5:7,8)  To uphold the power of the dark­ness is in con­tra­dic­tion to the truth spo­ken in Scrip­ture that “the light shines on in the dark­ness, and dark­ness has never put it out.” (John 1:5)  Fur­ther, it is a tragic mis­step to not give con­sid­er­a­tion to Jesus’ com­pelling state­ment, “I am the light of the world.  The one who fol­lows me will never walk in dark­ness.”  (John 8:12)

Accord­ing to Wit­ness the­ol­ogy will dark­ness always pre­vail?  No, the song expresses a hope that morn­ing will “some­day” come to end the dark, but such a time is elu­sive and the hope, incor­po­real.  In the face ever present dark­ness, the lyrics repeat­edly call for the need to have “a reminder that the morn­ing fol­lows the night”. It well char­ac­ter­izes the gen­eral weari­ness felt by mem­bers of the reli­gion who have lived with the unfilled hope that the present world would soon end and be replaced with a par­adise.  Rather then see them­selves as “chil­dren of the light” per the scrip­tures, the artist uses the term “midnight’s weary chil­dren” to describe those that have grown men­tally drowsy after so many long hours and pass­ing bed­times with no new day in sight. The his­tory of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses has been one of repeated expec­ta­tions for cer­tain dates to bring forth the end of sor­rows of the present and a tran­si­tion into a new world of tomor­row.  This song well high­lights the  increas­ing inse­cu­rity of a reli­gious com­mu­nity that is now near the cen­ten­nial anniver­sary of 1914, the piv­otal date of their prophetic chronol­ogy, with a long interim of failed hopes in between, and now no end in sight. With their eyes always pointed to the uncer­tain future they miss out on the tan­gi­ble real­iza­tion of what Jesus has offered for nearly two-thousand years.

Before mov­ing on to look at how this the­o­log­i­cal con­ven­tion is con­veyed in the other songs we can give atten­tion to the pur­pose­ful album art. The album cover is a hand drawn illus­tra­tion by Akai front man Hiromi and car­ries on the imagery of album depict­ing a stark, win­tery night.  The artists illus­trates the moon (a nod to the night) look­ing down upon a slight anthro­po­mor­phic rein­deer (a nod to the cold).  (As a side note, the moon and the rein­deer, also seem to be a depic­tion of the two Akai leads.)     In the illus­tra­tion the doe is sur­rounded by men­ac­ing wolves, one of which holds a rifle toward her.   Again this must be seen as a par­tic­u­lar reli­gious view point.  Jehovah’s Wit­nesses exhibit a siege men­tal­ity, con­sid­er­ing the entire world out­side of their orga­ni­za­tion as “lying in the power of the wicked one”. They believe it acts as  a con­spir­acy designed to rob them of their faith and lead them with the rest of the world into destruc­tion.  Per­haps more specif­i­cally, mem­bers of the reli­gion are con­di­tioned to see any who are crit­i­cal of the move­ment as rav­en­ous wolves.  In the face of such dis­tress the dis­po­si­tion of the doe  is rather abject.   In regard to the par­tic­u­lar tri­als of the last days Jesus invites his fol­low­ers to “lift up your heads, because your deliv­er­ance is draw­ing near.”  (Luke 21: 28)  While Jehovah’s Wit­nesses believe they are liv­ing in the last days they do not exhibit that con­fi­dence and joy but rather lin­ger­ing doubt, fear, and trep­i­da­tion.   The scene offers no hope of deliv­er­ance for the doe who lan­guishes in despair.

With the cen­tral the­o­log­i­cal state­ment cov­ered we can give con­sid­er­a­tion to how the other songs uphold a dis­tinct Jehovah’s Wit­ness world­view. The Cold­est Hour opens with “When the Sun Goes Down”, it acts to set the stage for the bleak, dis­mal night. When the sun vacates the sky, dark­ness pre­vails, and wicked­ness advances. Pre­sum­ably speak­ing on behalf of those that wel­come the dark­ness, Akai sings “we won’t have to fight, the con­science of light / when the wrongs become right” ; “we don’t have to see the stains of care­free ways / on our hearts and our names”. The song again reflects a semi-veiled hope for the destruc­tion of the present and a time of renewal and res­ur­rec­tion; “when the fires are lit and we burn up the past with it / friends will arise to light up our smiles.” How­ever such a time is elu­sive, a fad­ing camp­fire long­ing, as the pro­gress­ing night brings bit­ter cold, push­ing away any warmth. The destruc­tion of mankind is touched on again as the morn­ing draws near. In this new day the “hun­gry sun­rise”, a con­sum­ing fire, will catch the wicked by sur­prise, lead­ing to their demise. Despite the tragic sub­ject mat­ter, the fall of man and the destruc­tion of the wicked, the song inter­est­ingly ends with an unfeel­ing cho­rus seem­ingly mock­ing the pass­ing of the world, lead­ing to laugh­ter.   I don’t know if this is meant as an expres­sion of joy of the com­ing day or an eerie look at how Jehovah’s Wit­nesses cal­lously, and quite eagerly await the destruc­tion of every­one save for themselves.

I am unde­cided if the song “Satel­lite” should be viewed as a self-assessment on the part of the artist or yet another exam­ple of the writer adopt­ing the first-person per­spec­tive of those out­side of the reli­gion, a com­mon song­writ­ing tool used by Akai.  It is per­haps both.  The songs speaks of judg­ment, but not so much inter­nal con­vic­tion, but that which comes from the out­side.   The lyri­cal image con­veyed is of an orbit­ing satel­lite cap­tur­ing “the best and worst of life”.  As a source of ever present, ex-terrestrial judg­ment, the satel­lite might be seen as a stand-in for the Wit­ness con­cept of Jeho­vah God.  As the “satel­lite” snaps pic­tures of the singer, he won­ders what the ver­dict will be. He is con­cerned if he will he be viewed as a “loved or hated man”.

The singer intro­spec­tively gives the descrip­tion of him­self as pos­sess­ing a “dark side” which he wor­ries about being exposed.  The end of the song offers a cyn­i­cal expec­ta­tion for the state of the man; he will grow older and his sins will become more appar­ent, but he looks for­ward to the morn­ing when he will expe­ri­ence a renewal of the 0ld man within.   This is illus­tra­tive of how Jehovah’s Wit­nesses often view them­selves in the face of con­tin­ual divine judge­ment.  They are aware of the dark­ness around them and of their own repeated fail­ings to live up to the ten­ants of their reli­gion but have no idea how to over­come.   They feel resigned that they will have to wait for a future par­adise, where they will be cleansed of their sin and be made new. This is con­trary to the good news preached by early Chris­tians. Speak­ing of the cur­rent state of those who have Jesus, Paul writes, “There­fore, if any­one is in Christ, he is a new cre­ation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Cor 5:17)  Because they have no appre­ci­a­tion of the right­eous stand­ing offered by Jesus they live in a con­tin­ued state of fear of adverse judg­ment.   Their stand­ing before God is ten­u­ous, where they feel that they can eas­ily slip from being a man “loved” by God, to one who is “hated”, ready to be con­sumed by the fires of ever­last­ing judgment.

In the song “Drifted” the artists par­tic­u­larly tip their hand to their Jehovah’s Wit­ness reli­gious dis­po­si­tion   This marks the third time a ver­sion of this song (pre­vi­ously called Adrift) has appeared on an Akai release if you count their 0.5 EP.  The song opens with the lines,

“I’ve lost all faith in your once friendly smile / now that we’ve been away for awhile. / I’ve heard rumours of your inde­pen­dent thoughts / though we’ve never fought my mind’s spinning.”

The Orwellian con­no­ta­tions of the term, “inde­pen­dent thoughts”, are not lost on any­one who has had an expe­ri­ence with the strict con­for­mity of think­ing demanded of by Watch­tower lead­er­ship.  Within the reli­gion, “inde­pen­dent think­ing”, is loaded cult-speak specif­i­cally used to describe any ideas out­side of the expressed dogma of the Wit­ness leadership.   Even if you don’t express such inde­pen­dent thoughts, mentally hold­ing them can be grounds for dis­fel­low­ship­ping or expul­sion from the reli­gion thereby sev­er­ing all con­tact with Jehovah’s Wit­ness friends and fam­ily  through orga­ni­za­tion­ally enforced shunning.

This lyrics of “Drifted” tell about a for­mer friend of the band who went “drift­ing away” with “inde­pen­dent thoughts” lead­ing to a severe, even harsh, per­sonal rejec­tion by the artist.   When Rob­bie sings “I used to call you my friend” it speaks vol­umes of the way that per­sonal rela­tion­ships within the reli­gion, no mat­ter how close, can be instantly and totally sev­ered by the wit­ness.   Whereas the pre­vi­ous incar­na­tion of this song was pre­sented with a twinge of sad­ness at the state of the rela­tion­ship, the new heavy-handed ver­sion comes across as angry and scathing.  Vit­ri­olic vocals are under­scored by a dron­ing drum beat and a wash of dis­torted elec­tric gui­tar. In the end the song is petty and full of hatred, emo­tions  stand­ing squarely against Jesus instruc­tion to “love your ene­mies.” (Matthew 5:44)

A scene from a Jehovah’s Wit­ness book for chil­dren illus­trat­ing Armaged­don. The ground opens to con­sume non-Jehovah’s Wit­nesses includ­ing a small child.

“An End Deserv­ing” brings a vin­dic­tive view of a degen­er­ate world ready to be destroyed.  The imagery con­veyed by the lyrics, while some­what veiled, paint a typ­i­cal Armaged­don scene from the Wit­ness pub­li­ca­tions.   The Wit­nesses live with the expec­ta­tion that the end of the world is com­ing and will bring with it the destruc­tion of all those who have rejected them and their message.

The cal­lous­ness by which the Wit­nesses view the world around them are typ­i­fied in the lyrics of the song that speak to a recip­i­ent of the com­ing judgment.

Like a sui­ci­dal plane, / Falling from the sky again, / Sec­ond thoughts won’t stop the tailspin.

Once the judg­ment begins there will be no oppor­tu­nity for repen­tance; destruc­tion is imminent.

And as the ground starts clos­ing in, / You start to lose your solid grin, / As you reminisce.

On the sur­face these lyrics con­tinue the imagery of a crash­ing plane headed toward the ground.  Per­haps on a less overt level it calls to mind a visual motif in a Wit­ness Armaged­don illus­tra­tion of the ground open­ing up and swal­low­ing non-Witnesses.   In this vin­dic­tive mind­set those who are fac­ing their end will lose their con­fi­dence and think back to the mes­sage they rejected.  They will feel regret but it is too late to stop their death.  Again, this end is expected for every­one who doesn’t accept the mes­sage of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses and join their religion. What is the reac­tion to the death of their neigh­bors, work­mates, and acquain­tances on the part of the Wit­nesses?  They con­clude it to be “an end deserving”.

The final track on the album, “As Long as it’s Tomor­row”  is a depar­ture in tone and in style.    An older song writ­ten and sung by Akai drum­mer Reed Sut­ter it seems selected for it’s suit­able chrono­log­i­cal set­ting rather then the mes­sage which is some­what dis­cor­dant from the other songs.

The song is set dur­ing an all-night road trip just before day­break.   Just as the album begins with the sun­set it now ends with the sun­rise.   In this way it car­ries over the cen­tral state­ment of the album that there is a morn­ing that fol­lows the dark night, a new tomor­row.  Dur­ing this drive the singer describes catch­ing sight of a city on the hori­zon that is “hope­ful”, yet “hazy”.  Again this cap­tures the uncer­tain hope that Wit­nesses man­i­fest toward future.

Oth­er­wise, the approach to the sub­ject mat­ter is quite dif­fer­ent.   With the Hiromi/Robbie songs there is a cer­tain detach­ment to the world around them as they paint rough car­i­ca­tures, often falling into deri­sion and mock­ery of human­ity out­side of their reli­gion.   Theirs is more of an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of how the Jehovah’s Wit­ness com­mu­nity views out­siders, approach­ing them with a cer­tain level of dis­in­ter­est, save for attempts to con­tact them for poten­tial con­ver­sion into the reli­gion. On a sur­face level their man­ner and appear­ance is care­fully con­structed to “give a wit­ness”.  They may appear kind and well man­nered to out­siders but it is super­fi­cial to the extent that  Jehovah’s Wit­nesses are dis­cour­aged from cul­ti­vat­ing any close rela­tion­ships out­side their reli­gion.  Out­siders, no mat­ter what their back­ground or dis­po­si­tion, even those who believe in Jesus and live moral lives, are branded as “worldly” or “bad asso­ci­a­tion” to be avoided.

To the con­trary the final song on the album pro­vides a more empa­thetic view of those who are trav­el­ing down the same road as the singer/narrator.   Dur­ing the sec­ond stanza he describes catch­ing sight of a Cana­dian fam­ily trav­el­ing along side him.  He expresses a cer­tain curios­ity and empa­thy for this fam­ily as he “wonder[s] what’s their story.”  He is curi­ous if “they love each other”. He won­ders if the sleep­ing chil­dren have just expe­ri­enced “their great­est day”.   He won­ders if the par­ents have been fight­ing, before empa­thet­i­cally offer­ing his hope that they all will be okay.

If the dri­ver is singing from a Jehovah’s Wit­ness per­spec­tive this offers a more cau­tious, curi­ous look at those shar­ing the road of life, rep­re­sented by the Cana­dian fam­ily, those for­eign to him.  It is inter­est­ing that he pic­tures them dri­ving toward that same hope­ful city on the hori­zon, whereas the other Akai songs would more likely have the car crash­ing and burn­ing.    He also offers his per­sonal hope that the fam­ily is happy, lov­ing, and doing okay which stands against the pes­simistic view of a human­ity with­out any good which is on dis­play in the rest of the Akai cat­a­log.  Through­out the song there is a per­cep­ti­ble qual­ity of warmth which is much appre­ci­ated after being drug through eleven songs of a very cold, bleak view of humanity.

In the end, The Cold­est Hour pro­vides a rare glimpse of the under­ly­ing psy­che of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses.   They have not come to embrace the light offered by Jesus, and exist in the same dark­ness they see the world embed­ded in.  Their response to this “cold­est hour” is to fear­fully with­draw, pull down the shades, hud­dle by the fire and wait for the morn­ing to come and remove the rest of human­ity so the Wit­nesses can live hap­pily ever after on a par­adise earth.   But as the night drags on, and the cold becomes over­whelm­ing, they strug­gle to stay awake, and fear that their faith will not hold out and they will be swept away along with the rest of the world.

As the album con­cludes it holds out hope but maybe not nec­es­sar­ily in the way intended by the Jehovah’s Wit­ness artists.  While cold, high con­trol reli­gious groups can sti­fle the flame of com­pas­sion, joy, love, and peace within their adher­ents there will be some who are still able to shine brightly and sin­cerely touch the lives of oth­ers.   This brings to mind Jesus who eschewed the reli­gious of his day and warmly embrace those that were con­sid­ered as sin­ners and dirt by the proudly pious.   The best evan­ge­lism tool is still sin­cere love and com­pas­sion, qual­i­ties that are often inhib­ited within Jehovah’s Witnesses. While the album as a whole is rather depress­ing the end encour­ages me that just as the dark­ness has never over­come the light there will be those whose true hearts will not always be bound up with the chains of false religion.

On a per­sonal note I have a debt of grat­i­tude to one mem­ber of Akai who dur­ing a dark spot in my life shined the light of love so brightly that it touched me and changed my life for the bet­ter.   Now that I know the source of that light it pains me that indi­vid­u­als like this are con­fined and are con­strained from truly walk­ing in it.  Yet I end this with hope, that for these ones the dawn will soon come and the day star will rise in their hearts.     I love you and look for­ward to the time when we can be see each other again.