Invisible War : Merry Ellen Kirk

Merry Ellen Kirk : Invisible War.
Pretty pop that sounds like jewel-tone colors.

Glittering narratives: songs that spring up wildly from her subconscious and bloom into vibrant, lilting melodies. Her sparkling piano refrains sweep and spill into fresh, sweet rivulets of notes; her lyrics weave bright, halcyon tales of dream sequences, the light and dark polarities of the human experience, and beauty in its many forms.

Sometimes at night fireflies light up; and so we catch them and put them in a jar. Living beings they are, and lamps they become until they burn out and die. They serve one purpose--to entertain. A song holds within itself a certain power of the same measure. When it is created, it holds captive the thoughts and ideas, emotions and inner turmoil of its creator...over time the song grows and evolves, and though it may mean different things to different people, its final end is to give the listener pleasure. And so, here you are - my jar of fireflies.

"Invisible War" is my first jar...a collection of some of the first fireflies I ever caught; mostly they were just sprouting their wings in that time, learning all about life, exploring the world, and frolicking about with me in fascinating places like Mongolia, where I lived until I was eight. Really I caught the first specimen in this particular jar when I was fifteen - "Song of the Open Road" - based on the Whitman poem of the same name.

Now, at 21, I'm always chasing around a few fireflies at a time, attempting to master the art of capturing the most elaborate creatures. The idea is that the better the creature, the longer it will stay alive and the brighter its light will shine. We need bright light, see, because it's dark sometimes, very dark.

I have dreams about how the world should be. Indeed we live in a place which was meant to be beautiful; though we oftentimes ruin it ourselves by default. In science there is the idea of entropy - the tendency of things toward disorder. If a vase is sitting on a little table, it's quite probable that it could fall off and shatter into a hundred pieces, if not rather unlikely that all those pieces would jump back together again and shape themselves once again into a beautiful vase--unless of course someone worked very hard to glue it all back together into something new and different.

Unfortunately the implications of this in real life are much more complicated than a single vase shattering to the ground. We see natural disasters that destroy and reshape lives; wars, rumors of wars that create tension and dissension between people groups; poverty, disease, starvation, and everything that lies between.

These are the things which burden my heart, and the things which I've always felt compelled to express through my music. If all I do in life is shine a little light into the dark spaces of the world, my time on earth will certainly not have been wasted.

So I catch fireflies.

Here's a short quote about Invisible War - "Merry Ellen's CD is excellent. I like the single "Blinding Me" the best. It fits her voice and style of delivery to great effect I think?"
- Mark Isham, Grammy, Emmy, and Clio Award Winning Film Score Composer (Crash, October Sky, Fly Away Home, Of Mice and Men)

Songs:
1. All Your Life
2. Let the Lightflow In
3. Lost
4. Blinding Me
5. The Falling Sparrow
6. Let It Find You
7. These Four Walls
8. Victory
9. Song of the Open Road
10. Lay Your Hands On Me
11. When Something Falls Apart

Listen to: the entire album.
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Release date: 3/24/2012
Merry Ellen Kirk lives in Tennessee USA
Tagged as: Alt Rock, Folk-Rock, Vocal, Contemporary Piano, Singer songwriter
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Downloads:

MP3: High quality MP3 variable-bit-rate files. Most people download these: they are audiophile files that play everywhere.
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AAC: High quality Apple Audio Codec files. If you use iTunes or an iPod, these files sound great and include CD art and artist info. This is the standard format provided by the iTunes music store.
WAV: Perfect quality WAV files. This format works everywhere, and is an exact audio copy of the original CD. It sounds fantastic. Album art and artist info is unfortunately not possible with this format.
FLAC Perfect quality open source FLAC files. This is an open source audio format. It is an exact copy of the original CD, and includes CD artwork and artist info. Works great on Linux, VLC and many audio players based on open source.
OGG: High quality open source OGG files. This is an open source audio format. It is a compressed (smaller file size) version of the original CD, and includes CD artwork and artist info. Works great on Linux, VLC and many audio players based on open source.
128k: Medium quality 128K MP3 files. These are medium audio quality MP3 files that will work on every device. The audio quality is good enough for most uses. These files are intended for cases where you want to conserve disk space.