A Review of Act I: The Lake South, The River North by The Dear Hunter

As mentioned in previous reviews, the Act albums are what The Dear Hunter is most known for all they all follow a linear story of a character simply known as "The Boy." However Act I begins before he's even born but it establishes the environment in which he was created. So with these reviews, not only are we going to give our opinions of the albums but we're also going to display an interpretation of the story itself (something the band hasn't provided although graphic novels are in the works).

Below is a rough plot summary, none of which has been confirmed by the band but it's the interpretation that I (Chris) most agree with and I feel it's the closest to the band's intention. The source of the summary can be found here.

Act I: It begins with a prologue to set the story of a child that will be born and gives a vague foreshadow of what's to come.
After the instrumental, we are introduced to Ms. Terri and, as the song suggests, she is escaping a place simply referred to as "The City" with a group of people giving chase after they had brutally beaten Ms. Terri. She manages to board a train headed to a place referred to " The Lake and The River."
While on the train, she reveals that she's pregnant and questions if escaping to a new life is really the right thing to do after quitting her "career" as a prostitute. Ultimately, she decides this is what she's suppose to do and begins a new life in a new place. Soon thereafter, The Boy is born and is a constant reminder of Ms. Terri's past.
We then are introduced to The Priest/The Pimp, an antagonist that runs a church in The City during the day but at night runs a brothel called The Dime. He runs The Dime with an iron fist and doesn't allow any of his workers to quit very easily and he dispatches a number of his workers to hunt down
Ms. Terri and bring her back to The Dime.
As The Boy reaches his teenage years, Ms. Terri continuously reiterates that he should try to live a new life and chooses to not tell him about how cruel life can be, causing The Boy to live in naivety.

Kue: My introduction to the Dear Hunter’s audio narrative was a rather short one. But length doesn't always matter. Sometimes, it's the girth. And there was certainly a good amount of the latter in this album. Any album that is approached as one project from start to finish feels far more cohesive than a simple collection of songs. And “The Lake South, the River North” is pleasantly cohesive. The songs are arranged incredibly well, and it certainly does feel compositionally like a structured narrative.

The songs themselves seemed like various odes to post-emo bands. “City Escape” is reminiscent of Thrice. “1878” screams Taking Back Sunday. “The Inquiry of Ms. Terri” has an AFI feel. And my personal favorite track of the album, “The Pimp and the Priest” sounds like a more lyrically-infused Panic at the Disco song. The unique standouts were, of course, the acapella-based “The Lake South” and the ballad “His Hands Matched His Tongue”.

The only real criticism I have about the album is the overabundance of useless ambient white noise. These sounds can occasional serve to progress the narrative, but in this album, they were more filler than anything else (similar to the excessive noise intros in Michael Jackson's “Dangerous” album). The songs and how they were structured were more than enough to tell a cohesive audible narrative. Other than that, solid album. Looking forward to Act II.

Chris: Act I is possibly the weakest album in the Act series by Dear Hunter standards but a good album by all other standards. Casey Crescenzo's vocals feel a bit shaky but it's amazing to see the improvement that regard as the Acts continue. However, the primal nature of those vocals fits the raw emotion pulsing through a lot of the album, specifically The Inquiry of Ms. Terri (one of my personal favorites) which shows exactly why Ms. Terri needed to escape her predicament. I agree with the Kue on how the arrangement of the album is conducive to story-telling to clue the audience in even without the help of any outside source of the plot. Ultimately, Act I is a dark album with the intro already foreshadowing death and soon thereafter, any hope of Ms. Terri surviving long in this story is taken away. However, there's a lot of optimism surrounding The Boy. He's seen as this pure figure that knows nothing of the life his mother lived before his birth even if her past life is behind The Boy's conception. However, this will cause The Boy to live ignorance so this album is a discussion of if it's better to be left in the dark and know nothing about the real world or if knowing the real world will force someone to go through life cynical and never truly able to enjoy anything. However, this naivety can't stop a curious mind as "His Hands Matched His Tongue" portrays The Boy's desire to explore beyond this simple small town he was raised in but expresses a fear in what that horizon holds. The Boy basically will only allow himself to leave when the day comes that Ms. Terri passes away which, as he'll come to find out, is happening sooner than he realizes.