Mary Magdalene (Cry Of The Banshee)

Album: Stereopticon (2014)

Songfacts®:

  • This song is about Hurricane Sandy, which devastated coastal areas in New York and New Jersey in October 2012. Klose and Lucas wrote the song with lyricist Dan Beck, a resident of Rockville Centre in Long Island, close to some very hard-hit areas. Beck says the song is about "survival and resurrection," and a reminder that many people affected by the storm were still struggling years later.

    Beck drew inspiration from the Irish enclave of Breezy Point, which was leveled by the storm. Many of the firemen were battling infernos while at the same time dealing with a flood, and many lost their own homes while trying to save others. The tragedy and absurdity of the situation led Beck to think of it like an Irish drinking song, where all you can do is drink up, say a prayer, and count your blessings.

    In our interview with Beck, he explained: "I envisioned the firemen exhausted, having a beer afterwards saying, 'We got through this.' And then I started thinking about the whole kind of Irish impact. We had friends that lived out on Long Beach who lost their home, and started thinking about how their whole thing was trying to reconstruct their home. To me it was like a resurrection, and then I thought of old biblical stories. The first witness to a resurrection was supposedly Mary Magdalene, and I thought, Here's to you and me and Mary Magdalene. And let's toast to getting through this, let's toast to our survival and resurrecting our lives."
  • A video for this song, shot in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy, was released in 2014. In 2016, the song was included on Stereopticon, which Lucas and Klose worked on for about three years.

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