The 13-year cicadas, Brood XIX of the magicicada septendecim, emerged south and west of St. Louis and moved inexorably toward the metropolitan core. After such a long hiatus, it's odd that they’ll be with us only a fortnight—and understandable that they're hellbent on mating before they get eaten or crunched underfoot. How to describe their orchestrated screech? Its nuances differ, of course, from those of the more familiar Scissors-Grinder Cicada, Walker Cicada, Swamp Cicada, and Dog Day’s Cicada...
Edward Spevak, curator of invertebrates at the Saint Louis Zoo, says, “With all of them calling at once, the chorus vibrates like a pulsing heartbeat. If you ever saw the original War of the Worlds, well, it’s the sound of the spaceships.”
Agnes Wilcox, artistic director for Prison Performing Arts, compares the cicadas to “an audience during intermission—delighted patrons at a new play. None of them can wait for their turn to speak because their responses to the production are enormously witty and profound.”
Bert Coleman, president of B&B Records, says, "If The Alan Parsons Project had heard this sound, I think they would have used it at the beginning of "Eye In The Sky," before the synth, guitar, drums intro—then that steady beat. Who knows, maybe somebody was having a flashback."
Sarah Bryan Miller, music critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, says, “At its best, the whir of the cicadas is a kind of quiet and almost vaguely comforting white noise. At its worst—which is most of the time—it’s a high-decibel screech like a dentist’s drill, a buzz bomb descending, the ill-pitched call of an insect love that not only dares speak its name but refuses to shut up.”
SLM culture editor Stefene Russell drove all over the metro area to find the magicicadas, then decided, “It's a giant sizzling sound, like the sea, if it were made from electricity instead of water. Or maybe like the respiration of a giant robot with emphysema. The really unsettling thing is the way the sound moves around... It’s monotonous, but you can never quite peg where it's coming from. No wonder it drives people mad..."
