Sparkless

From the contagion of the world's slow stain 5 He is secure; and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain-- Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 41.

But when we come to a fine thing in our own language--to a stanza from Shelley's "Adonais" for instance: He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain; Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. what can you do with that?

The worn-out brushes in a dead starter or a short circuit in a sparkless ignition distributor would eventually be revealed to a mechanic who carefully dug through the clues.

Live, though, this youthful Minnesota-based band performed a somewhat sparkless set that seemed to bury the conceptual strengths, the stark voicings, and the crisp rhythms that on the album helped shape the arrangements and link the horns.

It's a small triumph that LiveWire's sparkless production manages to preserve the plot.