The world would be a much better place if every individual sat down and listened to The Reticent‘s undoubtedly authentic and sincere new record, please.
Release date: November 13, 2025 | Generation Prog Records | Website | Facebook | Bandcamp
Buckle up, it’s a long one today.
I am a firm believer that the world would be a far better place if we all had to go through experiencing a certain set of stories, told through books, films, or music, that stripped away our comfort and forced us to feel the weight of someone else’s pain for once. For example, stories of war were especially impactful on me and really opened my eyes to some of the horrors that mankind is capable of and is subjected to suffer; All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque), Night (Elie Wiesel), A Long Way Gone (Ishmael Beah), and Flags of Our Fathers (James Bradley & Ron Powers) were specific pieces that truly opened my eyes and these only scratch the surface. If you haven’t taken the time to read them, I suggest that you do, even if just one of them or a few chapters or pages.
Like these and other works of literature about a multitude of other topics, music is also an incredibly effective vessel for sharing these types of stories and for some people, music can elicit an even stronger visceral reaction than if it were to be read. While words in a book guide you in describing someone else’s pain, music makes you feel it as if it was your own. When it comes to depression and mental health, a subject that’s inherently complex and unfortunately carries a lot of stigma because of said complexity, music consistently achieves what literature sometimes can’t by fully immersing the listener in things that cannot be described purely with words.
One such artist that is time and time again, a masterclass act in tackling difficult lyrical topics with such grace, is The Reticent; the band name checks out indeed. Completely spearheaded by Chris Hathcock, The Reticent doesn’t shy away from composing music about experiences that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, yet the albums themselves should be experienced, much like the novels I named above. Previously, I discussed The Reticent and his earlier works, which if I had to briefly summarize, address the leadup/aftermath of the suicide of a loved one (On the Eve of a Goodbye) and the seven stages Alzheimer’s disease (The Oubliette). The depth of those albums, musically and lyrically, warrants a full separate conversation which has already been had; give it a read after this if you haven’t already!
Anyways, Hathcock’s successor to The Oubliette, please, although a separate conceptual embarkment focusing on depression and suicide, is intimately intertwined with the concepts on the preceding records. While putting that other article together, I got to interview Chris and based on my interactions with him, he was the most down-to-earth guy (which you can easily glean from his responses), truly passionate about what he does as a musician but also as a Grammy Foundation nominated music educator. Not only that, but it became clear that the stories behind these albums aren’t just fictional pieces but actually rather lived experiences of his; in the case of please, perpetually ongoing experiences. These aren’t just albums but rather musical memoirs and please is another story to be told.
please takes you through some of the many symptoms and realities of living with clinical depression on a daily basis. The listener is taken through a symptom-by-symptom musical synopsis of depression and how it just drains the life out of you, day after day. Having to put on a façade to hide from the world what is consuming you from the inside is captured in “The Concealment (Those Who Don’t Want to Wake)”. The chronic insomnia and hallucinations that happen due to the perpetual lack of sleep is brought to life in “The Night River (Those Who Cannot Rest)”. “The Bed of Wasps (Those Consumed With Panic)” horrifyingly captures the essence of frequent panic attacks and desperately wanting them to end. “The Scorn (Those Who Don’t Understand)” address the stigma behind the disease, which explains why people feel they have to put on that face and act is if they aren’t rotting from the inside. The one-two punch of “The Riptide (Those Without Hope)” and “The Chance (Those Who Let Go)” tackle suicidal ideation, attempts, and completion.
Betwixt all the aforementioned tracks, are the informational interludes that provide more context to the disease. The opening and closing tracks, “Intake” and “Discharge” respectively, set the stage for the album, providing dire context on the prevalence and seriousness of mental illness given the increasing rates of suicide. As if this album wasn’t heavy (emotionally, well also musically but mostly emotionally), the final line in “Discharge” prior to the informational segment rips your heart in half with the ‘how fast does a soul travel? Can I please catch up and be with him?…’. It is a stark reminder that suicide doesn’t end the pain, but rather passes it along to someone else, much like a domino effect that never ends.
The other interludes, “Diagnosis I” and “Diagnosis II”, give additional context on other symptoms that underlie mental illness. The former is honestly the most musically terrifying moment on the record, starting off with the melody to “Row Row Row Your Boat” playing on a music box that starts to deteriorate (and reoccurs towards the end of “The Bed of Wasps…” with a gnarly guitar squeal), whilst you have these bone-chilling shrills constantly panning from left to right, giving the listener a tiny taste of what insomnia-induced hallucinations could be like; all on top of Hathcock’s hyperventilation.
In every record The Reticent has composed, you’re made to feel as if you’re Ebenezer Scrooge as the Ghost of Christmas Past vicariously gives you a crash course of whatever the given subject matter is; please is no exception. This is a metaphor I’ve already used before when previously describing The Reticent’s other records because I find it difficult to explain otherwise. please does take this one step further by making you feel as if you’re the main character experiencing it all as opposed to being a distant spectator on the other records.
While this album starts and ends, living with clinical depression to the degree that is personified in this album does not. Although the music is designed to give you a taste, that is all it can do as it is impossible to musically document the day-after-day-after-day of such severe mental illness. Honestly, that is no slight on the band at all, it is just reality. Much like non-parents won’t be able to understand the exhaustion of being a parent every single day for the rest of their lives (being a good and present parent should leave you exhausted), the same goes for trying to explain depression and mental illness to someone who has never experienced it. All that being said, The Reticent’s please is as close as anyone could get to portraying the horrors of depression in just fifty minutes.
Looking back on my 2022 interview with Hathcock, he was very transparent about his own mental illness along with recent and ongoing struggles. I will leave you with this direct quote from him when talking about new music (which would end up taking the shape of please), as looking back after hearing the music, it feels even more real than it already does:
‘I had decided in 2021 that I needed to write an album (please) that was just about my personal struggles. My mental health had deteriorated further and further over the past year. I just felt that I needed to write about what it is like being constantly at war in your own head while trying to maintain outward positivity. How it feels to explain you have a clinical issue and others will say something dismissively pedestrian like, ‘just cheer up.‘ What insomnia is like when you literally are whispering out loud begging, pleading for even 5 minutes of sleep. What a real panic attack feels like – the utter terror and frozen mind. I wanted to capture such things in a way that spoke to me. So I began writing about it all.
‘In the midst of that, just over a month ago (early 2022) my father died suddenly. As my biggest supporter and the man I most admired in the world, his loss has hit me so hard that I don’t believe I’ve come even close to fully feeling it yet. As I oscillated through different stages and extremes of grief, I decided to write and capture the grieving process in its raw form. The apocalyptic rage you feel when anger takes hold, the hopelessness that despair leaves you with. The things you would sacrifice if you could make a Faustian bargain to bring them back. Both of these upcoming records may be the worst things I’ve ever released or the best things I’ve ever released. What makes these two records different from previous ones is that I am writing them as it is happening. On the Eve of a Goodbye and The Oubliette were both situations I had some distance from when writing. I don’t think they’ll sound like people expect. Perhaps the emotions are so raw that I won’t compose well at all. We’ll see, I suppose. But as I said, I write what I need to write, not what I want to write. These two records are what I need at the time. I’m still so deep in the bowels of this grief that I can’t think objectively about them musically. I cried, I mourned, I hurt, and these sounds are what came out of me.’
This gives please even more devastating context, now having a better understanding that there is a huge component of grief for his beloved father (may he rest in peace and continue to live through you Chris) that contributed to his mental state and subsequently, the music. I honestly wish please was an album that never had to be written, meaning that Hathcock wasn’t battling this disease and his father was still around to spread the warmth of his personality with the world today; we all know that we need it right now. Hathcock himself is now carrying the torch to warm the hearts that never got to know his father through The Reticent, and I can openly say that my life is all the better for it. Such a record (and everything else written by Hathcock honestly) deserves to be in academic curricula, considering its compositional aptitude and eye-opening emotional journey.
I leave these few words directly for Chris hoping that he sees this.
It is absolutely clear that you are a genuine soul, a masterful musician, an inspirational music educator, but more importantly, you’re an amazing son. I never got to know you or your father or your family, but as weird and bold as this sounds coming from a complete stranger on the internet that learned about you solely through the music that you make, I know deep in my gut and heart that he is and always will be immensely proud of you. He lives through you and your music, and although it’s immensely dark, please oozes the passion that he instilled deep inside of you. You are far more than you think you are.
