“Exit Calypsan” (Only in My Dreams) by Falling Up, Wednesday, October 9, 2024
Talk about Falling Up was sparse until this year. At one point they were one of the biggest Christian Rock groups and then they became a quirky progressive rock band singing about science fiction and making space operas. With Tooth & Nail Labeled Podcast and HM Magazine’s Black Sheep Podcast, many big-name Christian Rock stars from the past 20 years have gone on the record about their experiences recording, touring, and eventually breaking up. Falling Up’s lead singer Jessy Ribordy remained mostly elusive. A break-up interview with JesusFreaksHideout.com’s podcast and the Christian Rock 20 podcast was my only insight into Ribordy’s experiences with Falling Up until earlier this year when Jessy did three podcast appearances and announced that he was starting a new band, and releasing a final album under the Falling Up moniker, The Chilling Alpine Adventure.
SO EXIT THE FALL, AND NOW IT’S OVER. Jessy Ribordy’s interviews coincide with the twentieth anniversary of Falling Up’s first album Crashings. In his recent interviews, Ribordy doesn’t speak highly of the band’s second album Dawn Escapes saying that the band wrote and recorded the album very quickly, taking only a few days off from a hectic touring schedule. He even addresses the criticism of the album of many of the songs sounding similar, saying that the band was crunched for time. However, Dawn Escapes introduces many themes and motifs not present in the band’s first album that would appear in Falling Up’s later career and in the worldbuilding that Ribordy has created for other projects after Falling Up. It all started with the first single “Exit Calypsan,” released on Christian Radio in an alternate version under the name “Only in My Dreams” (Exit Calypsan) and was later released on the compilation X2005. On Dawn Escapes, the recording seems more refined, the opening synth line enveloping the listener making the original seem like an ‘80s keyboard demo. The guitars also have a more complex rhythm than the single version and the album version adds a haunting bridge.
THE MOVEMENT BURNS WITHIN MY VEINS. “Exit Calypsan” creates a dreamlike landscape musically and lyrically. It’s a weird dream that possibly ends as a nightmare, but the details of “white” washing over the narrator and “dark calling out my name” along with a “nameless”’ flight. A flag flying in the Oregon coastal town of Reedsport roots the speaker in reality before he goes on to describe other abstract details. Reedsport later appears in the album in the song “Lights of Reedsport.” But today’s song is not titled “Exit Reedsport,” instead it’s an imaginary land called Calypsan, possibly referring to the nymph from The Odyssey Calypso who detained Odysseus for seven years on the Isle of Ogygia. It may also refer to a moon in the Final Fantasy franchise. Jessy Ribordy has continued to develop the world of Calypsan, co-writing a pilot with his wife Alysha, though author James Keith has also written a space fantasy titled Calypsan. Whatever Calypsan is the speaker reminds us “It’s only in your dreams” and that once we “exit the fall” of the dream, the dream world has no power over us.
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