Thanks to geography and I-95, kids in New England during the 1980s had the ability to travel to Boston, Northampton, Providence, and New York to see the bands they read about in Spin and Maximum Rock n Roll. Sonic Youth, Pixies, the Replacements, and many others played small clubs up and down the east coast before Nevermind redefined the economics of alternative rock. Amidst this burst of brilliance from bands changing American music for the better, a band from Connecticut delivered a series of records that interpreted the experience of growing up in creaky, haunted coastal towns.
New Haven’s Miracle Legion was the band we listened to when we got home, the soundtrack on our Walkman as we walked down the middle of our empty streets at midnight. As hometown heroes, the band connected the fascination with the natural world that growing up by the sea engenders, the mysterious histories of New England’s old homes, and the sense of wonder small town kids have about the rest of the world. In their songs was the richness and longing of our lives delivered in gorgeous and contemporary melodies.
The two EPs and two LPs Miracle Legion delivered in the 1980s were gifts to those of us who saw our hopes and fears reflected in them. From the first, Miracle Legion seemed like a friend sitting next to you at the water’s edge in the dark. On one hand, the vastness of the universe and of the Atlantic Ocean fulfill us with their beauty. On the other, our tiny place in both raises questions about how we fit in to it all.
The six songs of Miracle Legion’s debut EP The Backyard reassure us that, at the least, others feel this push and pull. The EP opens with a warm, buoyant guitar groove that welcomes the listener. Within a minute, singer Mark Mulcahy’s warm rasp, full of a Van Morrison-like soul, reassures the listener that, “The world was so big, and I was so small / Your voice was always the loudest of all.” We’re in this together, even when we’re not together.
The six songs of Miracle Legion’s debut EP The Backyard reassure us that, at the least, others feel this push and pull. The EP opens with a warm, buoyant guitar groove that welcomes the listener. Within a minute, singer Mark Mulcahy’s warm rasp, full of a Van Morrison-like soul, reassures the listener that, “The world was so big, and I was so small / Your voice was always the loudest of all.” We’re in this together, even when we’re not together.
As the diversity of the postpunk era forever expanded the boundaries of popular music, everything seemed possible. “Just Say Hello” asks why the possibility of the moment was not apparent to everyone. “Beauty means different things to me,” Mulcahy sings over chiming guitars, “I capture beauty in a conversation.” And if that conversation was with “the cats and dogs on my block” – close relationships with the animal world are a recurring theme in Mulcahy’s lyrics – what’s the difference? “They don’t say hello, but they mean a lot.”
I’ve always assumed the namesake of EP closer “Stephen, Are You There?” is a stand-in for God. Listening now, though, perhaps the song is product of 80s nuclear paranoia, as a group of travelers follow their plan to “hit the road” and “find a new way.” They arrive at was once a city but is now “closed today for the final holiday,” and call out to a friend who represents a lost stability or innocence. The song can be read many ways, but at the end takes on the form of a hymn, leaving the listener with a question cried out from the coastline. Does anyone hear me?
Miracle Legion answered many of its own questions with their first LP, Surprise Surprise Surprise. The themes of innocence and wonder carry over from The Backyard, but purity is now tested by sexual opportunity, the unveiling of family secrets, and the next chapter of a personal mythology. The narrator is growing up right in front of us, or alongside us.
In the big ballad “Truly,” what seems to be a simple love song reveals itself to be a description of love struggling to take flight. The song’s title turns out to be a touch of irony, as the intertwined lovers can neither reveal themselves to each other nor form a shared vision of a future together. Similarly, “Country Boy” depicts fumbling lovers in a possibly haunted house lit by oil lanterns. The rendezvous is scuttled as the singer pleads “I’m not ready / I’ve been wishing for this / But baby let’s wait just a little bit longer.”
The Glad EP that showed the band’s live power but is most notable for the performance of British poet and musician John Cooper Clarke’s “A Heart Disease Called Love.” Miracle Legion transforms the tune, originally released on Clarke’s 1982 album Zip Style Method, from a plodding near-polka to a romantic lullaby. The trick is some nifty magic.
The band closed out the 1980s with their first shot at broader attention by recording with a major label. The band’s rhythm section departed before recording, but Mulcahy and lead guitarist Ray Neal soldiered on, delivering an entirely acoustic record that is hardly a world-beater. Me and Mr. Ray is the type of record a band’s existing audience waits for and cherishes.
“And Then?” reveals self-awareness of the risk the band was taking, suggesting that the band is “like a bluebird / into the lion’s den,” with only each other to trust. “You’re the One Lee,” the song that passed as a single, the band expands the range of the album’s mostly sparse instrumentation. One can imagine this charming waltz as a wedding song with its universal description of romantic love. This is still a Miracle Legion song, however, and we find that the object of our Romeo’s affections hasn’t come home all night, leaving him alone with her parents, checking his watch. Miracle Legion ended the 1980s with characteristically leaving the listener adrift, as the yearning “Gigantic Transatlantic Trunk Call” hopes that someone is at the other end of the line.
Miracle Legion put out two more records in the 1990s but seemed a little lost as they tried to connect with a larger following. A weakness for a bit of goofiness that first showed up on Me and Mr. Ray continued on the later records. These missteps and the vulnerable romanticism they wore on their sleeves meant they stood little chance of riding the waves of grunge and Britpop, both of which relied in part on macho bravado. Eventually, with the brilliant Fathering, Mulcahy launched what has been a successful and enduring solo career. Perhaps scaling back his sound and vision brought Mulcahy back to the best of what Miracle Legion could be.
While every performance of music, live or recorded, is unique because the listener cannot be duplicated, some songs and records transport us immediately to a certain place and time. In soft focus, we remember how it felt to hear that music at that moment. Miracle Legion’s songs return the listener to a time when each moment felt uncertain but brimming with possibility. They remind of us of how it felt to be innocent, excited, and alive.
.brilliant take on something I was there for
Awesome article! Really captures the essence of small town music fanatics as well as “hometown hero” musicianship.