Tear Jerker / The Caretaker

Per site policy, Spoilers Off applies to all Tear Jerker pages, so all spoilers here are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

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Long decline is over.

With The Caretaker and especially Everywhere at the End of Time, James Leyland Kirby had explored the themes of melancholic nostalgia as well as the depressing horrors of dementia, and the frighteningly bleak disease it is.

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General:

An Empty Bliss Beyond this World

• While not as intense as Everywhere at the End of Time, An Empty Bliss Beyond this World has caught some listeners in sadness, given its concept on how people with Alzheimer's Disease are able to remember the songs they had listened through their life.
• The disease is also relatable with the so-considered boulder in the cover art (titled "Happy in spite"), which has been interpreted as representing a failure to recall a face (or person in general due to the matchstick) that the Caretaker saw before, due to the deterioration of their ability to recognize things.

Everywhere at the End of Time

Everywhere at the End of Time is this pretty much by design, especially for those who have seen loved ones go through dementia.

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In general

• The song titles of the first three stages are a depressing mix between Tear Jerker and Nightmare Fuel within context: "It's Just a Burning Memory", "A Losing Battle Is Raging", "We Don't Have Many Days", "Last Moments of Pure Recall", "What Does It Matter How My Heart Breaks", "The Loves of My Entire Life", etc.
  • While the song titles went away for the most part in Stages 4 and 5, Stage 6 has them return and they're even more bleak with the album's Foregone Conclusion: "A Confusion So Thick You Forget Forgetting", "A Brutal Bliss Beyond This Empty Defeat", "Long Decline Is Over", and finally "Place in the World Fades Away".
• Just the fact that the series starts off with pleasant, almost lullaby-like pieces that are nowhere near as distorted as the subsequent stages gives off a rather bittersweet feeling that fits pretty well with a person in their twilight years reflecting on their life and mortality. The fact that things go From Bad to Worse from there is also rather depressing within itself.

Stage 2

• Despite it being relatively early on, Stage 2 is no slouch in demonstrating the heartbreak and grief present in the dementia process:
  • "Misplaced in Time" is a slow piece haunted by a tone of misery, accompanied by brooding trumpets that present the beginnings of the bleakness that'll soon overtake the album series.
  • "What Does It Matter How My Heart Breaks" is the second rendition of the "Heartaches" Leitmotif. This version is significantly more despair-filled than the last ("It's Just a Burning Memory"), to the point of feeling resigned and completely hopeless. And this is only the third track...
  • "Surrendering to Despair", as if the title wasn't bad enough, is another track with a feeling of total defeat. The main melody, while it would normally be cheerful, feels completely out of air and all the more depressing.
  • "The Way Ahead Feels Lonely" is the final track of Stage 2, and it makes a sobering impression. Starting off utterly foreboding, the track soon spins into an immensely soul-crushing listen, courtesy of the original track, "Sunset" from the Grand Canyon Suite by Ferde Grofé. Lowered in pitch, the instruments almost sound as if they're wailing as the song progresses, as if the patient's actively crying for help, before going out with a sad whimper, ending one last rouse of denial in the face of the tragic truth before them. A contemplative and melancholy, but at times eerily beautiful track, as the original's tone still shines through. And then, Stage 3 begins...

Stage 3

• "And Heart Breaks" is the last few measures of "Heartaches", played over and over again, but it sounds like it's collapsing into chaotic nothingness. All that's left of a once cherished memory is now dead, and slowly decaying with each passing minute.
• Stage 3's rendition of "An Empty Bliss Beyond this World" is arguably the last truly coherent melody to play in the project until the end of Stage 6; what was once the jaunty and upbeat "Wedding of the Painted Doll" is now deeper in pitch and slowed down, as the final moments of cognizance begin to slide away. Yet, it has still been corrupted by the disease; an ethereal echo surrounds the track in its entirety, heralding the arrival of post-awareness that continues with "Libet Delay" and "Mournful Camaraderie".
• "Internal Bewildered World" is a heavily modified recording of "Miserere" from an 1899 version of Il Trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi. Though the track itself is so heavily slowed down that its words are almost unintelligible, the lyrics from the section used have been identified with the track, and come off both as haunting and extremely sad:
  Ah! How slow death is in its coming, to he who longs to die!
• "Burning Despair Does Ache", following on from "And Heart Breaks" presents the patient's beloved memory as having been mutilated by degeneration almost to the point of non-recognition. It slowly ambles from key note to key note, becoming more and more distorted and malformed as it progresses. It is as if the music itself is in pain, and it is hard not to feel sympathy for it as the memory it represents desperately tries to reconstitute itself, even though it is impossible.
• "Mournful Camaraderie" is a continuation of "Burning Despair Does Ache", but with a pervasive, almost soothing yet deeply upsetting drone that follows the same malformation of "Heartaches" presented in the latter. It brings with it a sense of finality, that we really are witnessing the last moments of true lucidity of a mind which shall soon be destroyed by the disease that inexorably drags it towards its inevitable conclusion.
  • Of particular note is the title; while 'Camaraderie' is a word which has occurred in the project before - specifically "Camaraderie at Arm's Length" in An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, 'Mournful' is an entirely unique term that occurs nowhere else. To put it simply, not only is the patient aware that this is a turning point in their condition from which returning is impossible, but they are actively mourning for the life they are about to lose all grip upon.

Stage 4

• How Stage 4 ends. After nearly an hour of trying desperately to get their memories together (bliss state notwithstanding), the last 10 or so minutes are devastatingly calm and nowhere near as noisy, as if the Caretaker has completely given up trying to remember, or worse, forgotten there was anything to remember, in either case submitting themselves to the chaos that is to come.

Stage 5

• The opening track of Stage 5, "K1 - Advanced Plaque Entanglements" features a brief excerpt of Dick Powell's "Was It A Dream?" amid the chaos, a single memory struggling to fight its way through the hellish sounds surrounding it. Reading into the lyrics of the original song, the lyrics become especially tearjerking, given the context of the sufferer forgetting more and more about the people they love:
  I'm in a trance, a beautiful trance,
  Since I fell in love with you!
  I can't believe it happened at all,
  It seemed too good to be true.
  Was it a dream? Was it a dream?
  We were alone, and you were in my arms last night.
  Was it a dream? Was it a dream?
  We made a vow beneath the pale moonlight.
  I never knew, I never thought
  Such bliss as this could fill me with a love divine
  I'm afraid I'll wake and find
  It was only in my mind—
  Was it a dream, or are you really mine?
  • And then, as soon as the excerpt finishes, the sounds of hell return; for the briefest of moments, the Caretaker was remembering a happier time, eerily clear among the swirling mist, and so easily torn away...
• Stage 5's penultimate track is titled "Synapse Retrogenesis". In medicine, Retrogenesis refers to a theory that views the progression of Alzheimer's disease (and dementia by extension) as the inverse of neurodevelopment; the patient loses the ability to perform basic life skills in reverse of the order that they learned them in childhood, basically a mental version of Merlin Sickness, because their brains are atrophying and can no longer hold in the knowledge. All of this is caused by the cells themselves degenerating and dying, starting with demyelination and ending with cell death. Eventually, the brain becomes so damaged that it is no longer able to control the body, and death ensues. Thus, by this point, the trauma of the patient's death is inevitable and completely unstoppable, yet the horrors of their condition and its destructive force just keep coming.
• The final track, "Sudden Time Regression Into Isolation" features the last gasp of clarity before "Place in the World Fades Away"; rather than the intricate melodies from earlier in the stage, the only recognisable sound that rises from the sounds of the patient's internal hellscape is the tiniest sequence of piano notes. Everything the patient holds dear has been so thoroughly destroyed by their disease that this is the most their brain can recall.

Stage 6

• The album cover of Stage 6 (titled "Necrotomigaud", pictured above) is the blank backend of a canvas. What this exactly means has been open to many interpretations, but the most agreed upon theories circling around suggest that by this point, the Caretaker cannot perceive themselves and/or anything else as an image anymore, with the front being unseen to the viewer representing how they can no longer access their memories, as the most severe phase of dementia had completely destroyed their ability to think and remember.
• The last six minutes of Stage 6 is a popular pick for the most heartbreaking moment of the entirety of Everywhere. A mourning choir begins to sing for the first five minutes, then abruptly fades into a full minute of complete silence, signifying the symbolic and likely literal end and death of the Caretaker.
  • This becomes even more heartbreaking when you consider the title of the aria (from St Luke Passion, BWV 246) that plays in this segment: "Lasst mich ihn nur noch einmal küssen", which when translated to English from German reads "Just let me kiss him one more time". Whether you believe this piece to represent the Caretaker's funeral, or their moments of terminal lucidity in the hours before death, with this context in mind, it is easy to imagine their loved ones, including family and friends, gathered around a coffin or a hospital bed, weeping aloud for their death, either in its aftermath or as it looms just ahead.
    • The barely audible lyrics to the sample have recently been discovered under the title "O Jesu Christ" and give more credence to the funeral/afterlife theory and they are nothing more than heartbreaking and haunting. The original German lyrics from the aria when translated are no slouch either:
      Just let me kiss him one more time,
      And lay then my friend in the grave.
      My beloved, these thy cheeks so pallid,
      Awaken in me this longing,
      For my love will not die.
  • This sample was also used back in the project's earliest albums, such as the debut Selected Memories from the Haunted Ballroom. This makes it especially heartbreaking for those who have followed the project since the very beginning; at the end of it all, after the long and brutal decline, that one beautifully haunting aria resurfaces one last time before the silence of death consumes all else.

Other albums

Everywhere, an Empty Bliss

• Everywhere, an Empty Bliss has three tracks that will definitely get you reaching for the tissues:
  • "Loss of Want Back There" is sampled from a famous American Civil War song of the Union, "Just Before the Battle, Mother". That context makes it sad enough on its own, but the way the mournful trumpet cuts through the mix sounds like it's sung by the ghost of a soldier on the fields of Maryland or Virginia. Much like "And Bliss Everywhere Bliss", this track features very little distortion beyond what could be considered natural aging of the record (although it sounds like it is being played slightly below the correct speed, deepening the pitch), furthering the theme of farewells that unites the two tracks.
    Just before the battle, mother,
    I am thinking most of you,
    While upon the field we're watching
    With the enemy in view.
    Comrades brave are 'round me lying,
    Filled with thoughts of home and God
    For well they know that on the morrow,
    Some will sleep beneath the sod.

    Farewell, mother, you may never
    Press me to your heart again,
    But, oh, you'll not forget me, mother,
    If I'm numbered with the slain.
  • "Losing Battle of Loss" and "Losing Loss of Battle" (they're the same track, just repeated later on the same album) have background sounds that resemble a thick snowstorm and a forlorn melody which tugs at the heartstrings. The combination of the two makes the title seem even more tragic, as if the melody was a funeral march for the Caretaker.
  • If the first two tracks made you sniffle, "And Bliss Everywhere Bliss" will absolutely leave you bawling tears of sadness and relief. The melody is even sadder this time, with a "weeping" effect to the violin. The mix is hollow, as if the struggle for life and dementia has left the poor Caretaker drained of energy and life. This is probably the only Caretaker track which has not even a hint of creepiness to it, as if the pain and horror is over and the spirit can rest now. It's a haunting closer to a 20-year arc, and possibly one of the best tracks Kirby has ever made.

Take care. It's a desert out there...

• Take care. It's a desert out there... is a single-track album whose style is arguably a more naturalized version of that of Stage 6, even though distortion is still present. While its tone is nowhere near as depressing as Stage 6, it can be seen just as sad for some.
  • On a lighter contrast, some have also seen it as a fitting conclusion to the end of Stage 6, claiming that it would represent the Caretaker moving into the afterlife to rest.
• The album cover (titled "Blame shines within the demise") isn't near as uncanny as those of some Everywhere stages, but it has been argued to be among the most depressing of the Caretaker covers. The statue depicted in the cover has been seen as a representation of a family/bloodline (presumably that of the Caretaker character), given its human figures of different sizes.
• Even with all that, the context behind the track's creation hits more personally: it was dedicated and distributed at a tribute show to Kirby's late friend Mark Fisher (the writer of the liner notes for Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia, later referencing the album in his 2014 book Ghosts of My Life), who tragically took his own life earlier in the year the track was released. While it was originally intended to just be for that tribute show, the remaining stock was later sold online and given out as a free download, with Kirby simply asking that if listeners enjoy the piece, they should at least donate to Mind or any similar mental health charity in Fisher's name.
  • To add more to it: whether buying the physical copy or the downloading the piece itself, you will find a simple photo of Kirby and Fisher.

Non-Caretaker albums by Kirby:

Albums as Leyland Kirby

We are in the shadow of a distant fire

• The now unlisted "We are in the shadow of a distant fire", while using the same sample as "We cannot escape the past" from A Stairway to the Stars and being already melancholic, was made two weeks after the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in 2022 (as Kirby himself is living in Poland at the time the track was uploaded). According to commenters, the track feels like everytime it loops, the sample returns with even more agony than the last time like some sort of a tragedy that keeps going and going way further than it should be, before ultimately dying as the sample ends at the 18:51 mark, leaving the crackles alone while they take over the rest of the track.
  To save our souls from bitter, shame, and mourning,
  Thou bearest, Lord, base treachery and scorning.
  From lure of gain or gold save us,
  we pray Thee, Lest we betray Thee.
  

  And Jesus-
• Sadly, the future is no longer what it was is an almost four hour long set of somber piano tunes composed by Kirby, overlayed with distortions, which is meant to represent the disillusionment and emptiness stemming from the sadness of realizing that the past promises of a future never got fulfilled, and the general theme of loss and depression. Interestingly enough, the album also seems to bring up the subject of acceptance of the pain, and moving on, as shown in both the song titles slowly becoming more hopeful and optimistic^note contrast the title of the first track of the album, When We Parted, My Heart Wanted To Die, with the last track's title, And At Dawn, Armed With Glowing Patience, We Will Enter The Cities Of Glory, and the songs themselves becoming increasingly less distorted, with the final couple of tracks on the album being almost completely serene in tone with little to no distortion to speak about, ending on a bittersweet note with the realization and acceptance that one can't change the past, but life still goes on regardless.

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O Jesu Christ, thy Cross doth call me,
For thou did'st give thy life for mine,
For thou did'st give thy life for mine.
Thy Sacred Heart for me is breaking,
Thy Sacred Heart, for me is breaking.
For thee, my love at last is waking,
For thee, my love is waking,
My life forever more be thine,
My life forever more be thine.

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