Angels and Depots

Listening Post 363. Forget the billionaires’ rockets: Commonfolk have probed the heavens for millennia through the power of music. Case in point—Stand Together, Fall Apart by Palms Station (aka Hillel Tigay), a nine-track exploration of despair and hope across a between-stops universe. It’s an exhilarating ride, starting with I Don’t Know the Way to Your Heart (video 1), suspended between cosmos and concrete, words and chords ringing like incantations. Is the song about romance or a higher authority? Or are we meant to just keep moving? Tigay describes his style as “art pop-rock,” but he’s not fixated on sharp lines. Palms, the Los Angeles neighborhood where he lives and composes, has no official boundaries; the titular depot is likewise imprecise. The artist’s foundations are layered: A rabbi’s son steeped in synagogue liturgy; ears and heart open imbibing the Beatles and U2; student of musicology, following his guitar strings to Renaissance lute. He arrived in LA on a pop mission and signed with a label but his finished album was dropped under a regime change; he resurfaced as half of a Jewish hip-hop duo called M.O.T. Later he became (and remains) music director/hazzan at a high-profile synagogue, bringing all his sonic influences to the role, and did a two-album series reimagining the music of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, creating new melodies for hallowed psalms and biblical verses. Ostensibly Stand Together… marks a secular reboot, but the album is the sum of Tigay’s earthbound and meditative experience. The world spins in Blue Skies Back (video 2) and there’s a palpable sense of liftoff in Alive (video 3). The most ethereal track, (You Can Have) Everything You Wanted features choral vocals that seem to thread through music like angels traversing clouds (video 4); and there’s something approaching resolution in Amen Hallelujah (video 5), though it marks just the end of a chapter. Unwind the Psalm in Palms and instead of a station you’ll discover the journey. (Be Why Music/Wailing Wall of Sound)

Historic note: The first Palms Station was a stop on the nineteenth-century railway that ran from downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific. The picturesque building was featured in many early films, and after the railroad shut down the station house was declared a historic landmark and eventually moved to the grounds of the city’s Heritage Square Museum. Some 600 yards east of the original depot’s location, the current Palms Station is an elevated platform stop on the LA Metro Rail system.

Full disclosure note: Hillel Tigay is my nephew. —AT

I Don’t Know the Way to Your Heart
Lyrics & music: Hillel Tigay

Shadows play/on the streets in the night
North Star fades/there is no guiding light

(I don’t know what’s the way, what’s the way, what’s the way to your heart) 4x

Starlight wades/through the sea of the night
Headlights fade/through a crack in the light
Daylight waits/like a thief in the night

(I don’t know what’s the way, what’s the way, what’s the way to your heart) 4x

Won’t let go/But I’m holding on tight
Must I wait/A man apart

(I don’t know what’s the way, what’s the way, what’s the way to your heart) 4x

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know
What’s the way to your heart
What’s the way, what’s the way, what’s the way, what’s the way to your heart

Blue Skies Back, feat. Torii Wolf
Lyrics & music: Hillel Tigay

Did you notice that the world is spinning faster than before
and the feeling that the sun was gonna shine don’t come no more
there’s a shadow/on my pillow
I dream in black and white

I want my blue skies back/Been around the world and seen it fade to black
I can’t find my way/Without my blue skies back
Tell the man who sold the world to give it back/Oh, I want my blue skies back

Can you hear me?/Well the grass is always greener when it’s gone
Now I see it/And I pray for yesterday the whole night long
Raise your glasses/To the future
Cause the best day’s gone

I want my blue skies back/someone took the world and made it fade to black
Where is yesterday?/I want my blue skies back
Tell the man who stole the world to give it back/How I want my blue skies back

I want my blue skies back/Been around the world and seen it fade to black
I can’t find my way/Without my blue skies back
Tell the man who sold the world to give it back/Oh, I want my blue skies back

Alive, feat. Torii Wolf
Lyrics & music: Hillel Tigay

You save my life/Every night
You take my pain away

You lift me high/When I die
You make me want to cry/You make me feel alive

You bring me round/When I’m down
You take my breath away

You lift my eyes/Through blue skies
You make me want to cry

You make me feel alive

(You Can Have) Everything You Wanted
Lyrics & music: Hillel Tigay

And when you touch what you can’t feel
And when you love what you can’t see
You can have everything you wanted

And when you can see what you can’t hear
And free your mind your heart can be free
You can have everything you wanted

You can have everything you wanted
Everything you wanted

Amen Hallelujah
Lyrics & music: Hillel Tigay

Amen Amen Amen Hallelujah…./Amen Amen Amen Hallelujah….
Amen Amen Amen Hallelujah…./Amen Amen Amen Hallelujah….

A world forged in fire/We still reach for the light
A man (who) crawls on his knees/Can reach so high

Amen Amen Amen Hallelujah…./Amen Amen Amen Hallelujah….
Amen Amen Amen Hallelujah…./Amen Amen Amen Hallelujah….

I want to cross your ocean/I want to pierce your sky
But love fades and it flickers/Like shooting stars in the night

Amen Amen Amen Hallelujah…./Amen Amen Amen Hallelujah….
Amen Amen Amen Hallelujah…./Amen Amen Amen Hallelujah….