6/15/15

I first heard this song on a long drive back sometime this spring. From where, I don't remember, but I was heading in some direction on the Turnpike, and when I drive the those kinds of highways, I often like to listen to the radio. Whatever market it is, I just pass the time by sipping coffee and scanning the stations. So much through the midstate is country or Christian or talk radio. I wind up listening to NPR a lot, and on this particular occasion, the program had an interview with PHOX and played their single "Slow Motion."

I enjoyed it - her voice especially, and that banjo riff - and then I found myself wondering about all the little bands out there with their new, derivative sounds, and could this one cut through the noise? It wasn't until this played during a set change at a local rock show last night and I recognized the hook that I remembered them. In the past two days, I've played it about eight times.

From the creator's perspective, you always strive for your work to be memorable. In the highest of daydreams, your work connects to others in a way that inspires them, that heals them, that gives them better perspective to understand the world or their lives or our times. But this goal is also really flexible. Just giving someone an enjoyable few minutes is success. The next listen, or the next listener, becomes a better marker for how well the work connects overall. That lasting potential is the elusive ingredient.

I'm feeling a weird listener's guilt for enjoying this song earlier and then not checking out the band further, as is my usual mode of finding new music and enjoying artists. But, since it came back around and I recognized it, I'd say PHOX did their job. Tough to not like that hook. I've decided it's a sweet new tune to kick off a week of muggy, wet summer, something to interrupt the daily doldrums and constant mental maladies. It is not quite happy, but it is perceptive and wandering and patient, and full of air and lightness.

I'm surprised I like this. I don't love this formula. And I usually hate whistling in songs. Like really hate it. It's kitschy as hell. But I don't mind it here, it works - maybe because it's followed by such a heavy, up-front bass, and the banjo is charming, and the oboe solo (!!!) before the bridge is pretty magnificent and rich and unexpected. I really appreciate the fullness this song builds to, and the skill required to make it sound cohesive with so much going on isn't nothing. Bands like this can get so overanxious and obnoxious with too many elements weaving in and out of another, but this builds really well, like a long and winding road, with honeysuckle vocals and blue bonnet bells dotting the path.

I checked out some of their live material on YouTube and found it really interesting. Better playing than expected, and a bluesy vibe lurking under the strings. While that interest may rise and fall, or pass with time and other surprises, I feel it is worth recognition, if just  the lesson: one simple - albeit instrumentally complex! - song can be heard once and promptly forgotten for a myriad of reasons, and then catch you off-guard as a perfect fit. No matter how long it lasts.

"Everything I do, I do in slow motion
I don't know what to say
Everywhere I fall, don't know name or location
Baby, I'll just find my way, I'll find it
Heavy is my sleeping, terror is my dreaming
While you are pretty through the night
You may taste the salt that rolls off my cheekbone
But you don't know why I cry."

~Slow Motion

PHOX,PHOX

6/9/15

"And you're, you're the kind to hide your eyes from the sun
And in your world the strong survive
But won't you lay your body down
Yes and now, now's the time to wrap your ears around the sound
Of your train coming round
You'll have to lay everything down."
~Arms Like Boulders
The War on Drugs, Wagonwheel Blues

Tonight I get to see one of my favorite bands of 2014, The War on Drugs, perform here in town. I'm crossing my fingers for a setlist full of "Lost in the Dream." I will give myself a present if I don't break down in tears during "In Reverse." Or maybe, if I do, that will be a present of its own kind.

I am taking this day as an opportunity to revisit some of their older tracks, which carry much of the same aesthetic with less of the study. The story of how hard Adam Granduciel worked on this album for a year in and out of Philadelphia studios became intertwined with its own success, told and retold in celebratory reviews. Rightfully so, I'd say, as I like it when critics recognize and reaffirm the work that goes into creating something worthwhile. This album is full of shadows and light, woven together with seemingly off the cuff lyrical content, from daylight observations to silent musings alone in the dark. These are not words, or melodies, that try too hard. Patience is the key to this album's success-- it is also the biggest difference from past releases, and it is in this self-actualization and realization Granduciel found commercial success. A dream, indeed. 

It's easy to write, when you know how to. Writing well is another matter entirely. That takes a different kind of concentration and focus, one that's hyped up and hurried by intensity and insanity. I'm hoping to see some of that on display tonight. I need to see some of that on display tonight. I want that reminder of how working hard is worth it every time, trusting yourself is not a risk but a challenge, and while giving up is for losers, getting lost isn't losing at all. 

"And I don't mind you disappearing
When I know you can be found
When you livin' on the dark side of the street, damn?
We just livin' in the moment, making our past, losin' our grasp through the grand parade."
~In Reverse
The war on Drugs, Lost in the Dream

6/5/15

 
"So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go
'Cause I'm leavin' on a jet plane
Don't know when I'll be back again
Oh babe, I hate to go."
~Leaving on a Jet Plane
Eisley/John Denver

Beautiful song, beautiful interpretation. On replay now. Can't believe this is the first time I've heard it with a string section behind it. Let me reiterate how stunning I think Sherri DuPree Bemis is as a singer and human being. And, knowing the life she lives as a musician who is also married to one, I can only imagine the sentiment of goodbye and return with the one you love as so eloquently displayed in this song have a meaning near and dear to her heart. While there are not shortage of covers of this track, I am very glad to hear this one from this vantage point. Some songs, some sentiments, do not get old or tired no matter how many times you encounter them. Some just floor you every time.

6/4/15

"Chancing, glancing, so enough mood for romancing
So love dawn can't you see
That you only gotta dance with me."
~Lowdown
My Morning Jacket, At Dawn 

Because friends are cool and summer tours are better, I get to see My Morning Jacket perform in a few hours. What an epic band they truly are, maintaining such a strong presence and popularity despite the labels they've encountered as a jam band for a decade and a half. While I am hardly heading into this concert as a superfan, I'm familiar enough with their aesthetic and discography to know my ears are in store for some fluid guitars, loud swells, classic-rock rhythms and the powerful high range and almost-twang of Jim James.

It's a fortunate coincidence I've been in classic rock and alt-country mode all week. My mind is on forests and trees and lakes and grasses and skies instead of the pavement and highways and sky-high structures around me daily. Summer calls for open-air getaways and I've yet to be able to escape. If I cannot be there myself, it is at least a comfort to run away to music that can make me feel just as pensive or reflective or carefree, or otherwise altogether chill. So many bands do it well but My Morning Jacket is one of the leaders of this tribe, with refreshing American rock that does not bother with the trends of the day, and instead relies on satisfying progressions and melodies, a healthy dose of harmonies and a dash of blues-rock soul. To last this long, in this era, requires timeless chops. How else could they make it 15 years?  This is not a band to be sad to, though they can be back, this is not a band to flaunt to, though I anticipate hispter fashion galore as I roll up in my work clothes.

Should be a treat - and an unexpected one at that. Obviously I hope they play "Bermuda Highway." That line about dreams and the crack of the bed and the wall is an unforgettable metaphor. But their latest LP, "The Watefall," is lush-lush-lush and a bit wordier than their older material, which I totally dig. Regardless of whether I am familiar with the songs or not, I'm looking forward to jaw-dropping guitar playing, and getting lost-lost-lost.



"There is only so many ways that one can
Look at a given situation
And I wish you all the love in this world and beyond."
~Get the Point
My Morning Jacket, Waterfall 

5/27/15

"Jesus Christ. I'm 26.
All the people I graduated with,
All have kids,
All have wives,
All have people who care if they come home at night.

Well, Jesus Christ, did I fuck up?"
~Passing Through a Screen Door
The Wonder Years, The Greatest Generation


I am compelled to post this tonight as it will only remain true to my life for the next several hours -- and because it is a pop punk bridge for the modern age that reflects ultimately what I find many in my generation often grappling with.

I know it seems like all we care about is what's happening on our phones but the timeless mortal longings for companionship and love and meaning in our lives - surprisingly!!! - remain. In my conversations this past year, with friends or acquaintances or strangers of a similar age, I've heard plenty of takeaways on what it means to be alone, what it means to be coupled up, or somewhere in between. Some seem dead-set on running as far as they can from commitment of any sort, thinking such trappings spell doom for their individualized futures; others seek it like water in a drought, gasping and grasping for something to hold onto other than themselves that will provide vitality. Still others I meet are in some sort of medium ground, not alone and not lost though conventionally behind the times and, through their personal choices, redefining them. Some others just don't seem to care where they fit. They just seem happy.

I am one of those who is not alone, though I live that way. I am one of those who pokes and prods and rips up roots almost fast as I can grow them, though I have a few places I can call home enough to find someone to laugh with and buy me a drink. I often feel as though I have fucked up, though I know in my heart of hearts and deepest of consciousness that I have not.

To me this song spells out fervent desire for change, without yet knowing which kind to make. It starts from the feeling that the present in all its normalcy is not adequate, when the room to run is so far and wide and somewhere out there is something more. That feeling, the opposite of sought-after stability, is glorious in its own way, and glamorized thoroughly, but it presents challenges and fears in the way traditional settling down might in others. What if nowhere feels like home? What if there's no one to look over at, and smile to know all you've shared? What if, to be running and constantly seeking, means you lose everything that is worthwhile after all? Answering these questions sometimes only brings a stronger desire for sameness, for stillness, for closeness that may not be found outside in the world but behind your bedroom door. And then the cycle begins again...

With this song, with this album, Dan Campbell and The Wonder Years presented a story of the times that I hope will preserve the emotional trials and struggles felt by many in the here and now. It helps that it is incredibly fluid, aggressive and devastating rock music, that makes your neck arch and fingers drum and throat ache to shout. I shouted these words 10 rows deep last August, screaming as loud as I ever would packed among hundreds of strangers younger than me, or older than me, or cooler than me, or more scene than me, and for that day, for that set, I did not feel fucked up. I did not feel like I'd missed out. I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.