The Little Death: Vol. 1

I'm going to NYC to see my little brother's off-off-Broadway pop opera "The Little Death, Vol. 1."  It's a story of boy meets and falls in love with girl, but she's a good girl devoted to Jesus.  My brother is the composer and stars in the show with his girlfriend Mellissa Hughes.  The music has an electronic/trance feel to me, yet many of the lyrics are taken from southern hymns my mother used to sing to us.  I'm sure there are also a few ditties from Vacation Bible School, which we attended every single summer of our youth.

I can't speak for him, but we always marveled at the passionate and rapturous atmosphere when people sang hymns at our church, yet outside of this, everyone was very serious and conservative.  He is a heck of a talented musician and composer and I'm so proud of him I could punch the sky.  I can't wait to see his show!

  

It opened to rave reviews last week at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery.

• The New York Times calls the production "a consistently affecting evening of theater"
• Time Out New York describes the "extraordinarily witty" opera as "unabashedly boppy, baroquely multireferential, then suddenly sentimental"
• Outsideleft.com writes calls the opera "blatantly lush...[it's] musical drama for the post-Glee set, using the medium's uplift to tear the fake walls away"

Listen to songs streaming here!

Here's the music video for "I Don't Have Any Fun"



My favorite is "Penetration Overture." I tend to be impatient but just let it play.  It has a Massive Attack vibe to me. "OMG I'm Shot" is incredible too. The last song "And You Know Jesus" jumps right off and makes me want to dance (which we weren't allowed to do at our church).