421: Into the Light

Chaos and Disorder (1996)
An appropriate title for this song. Not because the lyrics concern reincarnation, or that it’s influenced by Betty Eadie’s self help book Embraced By The Light which describes her near-death experience. Both of these are true, but the reason the title is wholly apt is that for the first time in Chaos and Disorder there’s a break in the bitter clouds, a lull in the hard guitars and snark, and for a six minute period we’re bathed in pure spiritual illumination. A piano-led grace. Unlike the false dawn of the earlier Dinner With Dolores, an incandescent bulb of a song that appears light and poppy but has dark, twisted lyrics which some have taken to be an allegory of his relationship with Warner Bros. None of that cynicism here. The lyrics are hymn-like and when the guitars do come in we get a flash of Gold before it settles into a luminous body of spiritual rock with a saxophone corona. Into the Light doesn’t end, it metamorphosises into the following track I Will, suddenly yet subtly, Abbey Road style. Reborn as a more enlightened being after shedding its light rock carapace.