A year or so ago I came across a band called We Lost the Sea whilst scrolling through recommended videos on YouTube. The name had me interested, so I started exploring their music. The first thing I found was an album titled Departure Songs. I decided to give it a listen and was immediately enraptured in its beauty. The very first notes played on a single guitar washed away my focus on the outside world as the ocean’s tides would footprints in the wet sand. The story this album told me, with minimal word use, was one of anguish and loss, but likewise of sacrifice and compassion. And that is exactly the meaning behind every song within the masterwork of music; the purpose of Departure Songs is to honor the stories of real heroes who sacrificed their lives to save others or benefit the human race and We Lost the Sea does this phenomenally. In the interest of time and to allow the reader to experience the rest for him or herself, I’ll just be discussing the two songs I found most intriguing.

‘A Gallant Gentleman’

The first song in this album is a tribute to the self-sacrifice made by Captain Lawrence Oates, who was part of an expedition to the South Pole of Antarctica in the year 1912. The trip proved too much for the team as they decided to turn back. Oates, who had been silently suffering from gangrene and severe frostbite, realized he was quickly becoming a burden to his comrades. One morning he resolved to get out of his sleeping bag and exit their tent into a blizzard saying he’d be heading outside and that he’d probably take some time to return. He was never seen again alive or dead.

This song made to honor Oates begins with a single guitar playing mournfully with a tone of resignation, for me creating the image of a vast white expanse below a clear blue sky. The music slowly swells from that mournful guitar, anticipating his exit into the great blizzard. As the climax of the piece finally bursts forth, the audience is swept up in the storm of music and emotion. This storm lasts only for a short time, gradually dying off into simply a choir of women. This is my favorite song in the entire album as it is both rousing an relaxing. It represents his peace in the decision to end his life to save those of others.

‘Bogatyri’

The word Bogatyr is an ancient Russian title for a warrior and folk hero. The Bogatyri were famed for defeating great evils to save others as well as being fiercely loyal to their homeland, defending her from all sorts of invaders. Many of these great men actually existed, such as the ones to whom this song is dedicated. However all but these three lived ages in the past. The three men in this song, Valeri Bezpalov, Alexie Ananenko, and Boris Baranov, are credited with saving half of Europe ten days after the events of the Chernobyl Disaster began when it was found that radioactive steam from the water flooding the reactor was threatening to break out into the atmosphere creating a truly massive fallout. These three men trudged through extremely radioactive water to manually release the floodgates and lower the pressure within the reactor, thus sacrificing themselves to save an innumerable portion of the people on Earth. They did it for for their families and Russia.

‘Bogatyri’ begins again with a single somber guitar, however it gives this sensation of a looming catastrophe. The bass joins in and the music increases that sense of urgency, once again slowly building to an epic climax. When it finally reaches its peak, it lets completely loose, thrilling the audience with its intense sound, reminiscent of the soundtrack of some epic war movie in the final climactic battle. Soon after, however, the music dies, but maintains its tense tone. It puts the image of everything going white in my mind, showing how quickly these heroes were snuffed out.