IndiePulse Reviews: What’s in the Meaning of That Cloud in the Sky by Greg Roensch

Reviewed by Joseph Timmons: IndiePulse Music Magazine

San Francisco based Greg Roensch has released a album that could be considered a magnum opus of the modern musician, with a “Talk – Singing” style indicative of Avant-guard artists like Tom Waits or early Dylan, he has created an album of 13 tracks which sound like the 13 steps to wisdom, philosophical and rebellious in a fashion, simple yet complex and all highly infectious.

What’s in the Meaning of That Cloud in the Sky by Greg Roensch has a fully poetic melancholy and is the spiritual “to do” list for a modern spirit. In this review, we will explore and try to observe what this artist has done to give us an opportunity to awaken the inquisitive imp within, but to reflect upon all 13 tracks in writing this review, we would not do him the justice  that is so well deserved. So we will look at 4 tracks, the 4 elements, the 4 seasons and , as I would say, 4 mantras in this labyrinth of audio bliss.

1^st track to explore, Grasshopper, Greg reflects upon a person in his life, one that has impressed him to the point of complex remembrance, making his mind like the grasshopper, bouncing from memory to memory, telling a new tale with every time it lands, asking if our memories are how things happened, or how we wish they had been. The melody of the song is just as intriguing, with a hypnotic and fascinating timber it drills down into you mind, tapping into your emotions.

Next track, lovingly titled Don’t Forget To Pack Your Hand Grenade, I would think, may be an analogy to the fractured and frazzled lives we lead, we are so anxious all the time, w feel we have so much to accomplish, yet so little time to breath, if life was an airport, what do we pack, how do we prepare?

The title of this album is actually a line in a verse of the song Tell It Like It Is, which is very cunning, think about it, we see the album title, and scour the album track listing and we don’t see it, it is only until we take the time to listen to the whole story do we see the real meaning, and we find the truth in the compounded verses, the pile of words, it is hidden, but not for reason of deception, but for the search for truth. Like all the songs on this album, there is a hidden meaning, and the real meanings somewhere in front or behind the one you see first.

I would like to finally provide my thoughts on the 4th track Celluloid Dream, a song where Greg Roensch weave a pronounced romantic series of verse that could be of  movie starlet in which he draws close to loving “There She Dances cross the Silver Screen” or possibly the movie, the Celluloid ribbon of images are his own memories, time with a loved one perhaps, a love lost or a love to be, or a loved one long gone. I have often thought memories were the “Home Movies” of the mind, the images of the silent movies that run in the background while we do other things. The sights and sounds sometimes change, but the movies is always the same, leading characters sometimes change, and there are cameos, and a script that is at best ambiguous…

I feel he work of Greg Roensch is inspiring, and inspires one to think and sing along, maybe not outload, but inward, in our own holy chorus, one where our inner angels and demons sing together in raptured disharmony.

Learn more about Greg Roensch at http://spiralnotebookproject.com/ and on Facebook