A Harmony of Loss Has Been Sung by Tunic

Grief leads a parade of deeply uncomfortable emotions, feelings we struggle to express even to those closest to us as their contradictory, incindiary, or self-destructive nature only deepens our isolation. Canadian noise rock band Tunic gives this parade a megaphone and a pedestal on A Harmony of Loss Has Been Sung, a musical stream of consciousness based on the writer and his wife’s experience of a miscarriage delivered in brutal lyrical and tonal honesty. Musical influences from post rock and skramz pull the record further into the darkness, with a highly percussive sound whose sparse and unconventional use of melody only intensifies the suffocating atmosphere of stagnant dread. Sharp alternations between mumbled, spoken, and shouted vocals convey red-hot anger, anger directed at unempathetic wellwishers, cosmic misfortune, happy families, and a myriad of other targets. Of course such negativity will not reverse our loss or soften its blow, but this transparency into the speaker’s uncomfortable thoughts and reactions validates those feelings we find in ourselves, preventing us from ruminating in this pointless anger by providing us an outlet for catharsis.