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.

5/26/15

Yesterday, on an impromptu drive through southern Pennsylvania, I caught a three-song Dawes set the radio. One of these was "If I Wanted Someone," which is my favorite track on 2011's "Nothing is Wrong." But the first was "Things Happen," one of their newest singles that is very new to me, and sports a chorus that shattered like a china plate over my head.

"In a different time, on a different floor
I might mourn the loss of who I'm not anymore.
So I'm driving up to Oakland for a good look back,
And a few revisions to my plan of attack.
Let's make a list of all the things the world has put you through,
Let's raise a glass to all the people you're not speaking to
I don't know what else you wanted me to say to you
Things happen, that's all they ever do."
~Things Happen
Dawes, All Your Favorite Bands


I love the way they blend blues-folk feel with rock sensibilities, an Americana blend through and through. This track felt a little more classic than those on "Nothing is Wrong," at least vocally, as if they went back to draw more inspiration from 70s rootsy rock than the mellow-hipster contemporaries they found themselves on the radio among in recent years. I love the guitar line too, something very spacey-hippie about it. Whoever mixed this deserves some serious credit, because it sounds straight from the stage. Given I never got into Dawes' 2013 release I'm not sure what kind of evolution I missed, but if it wound up with the kind of raw layers and harmonies produced at the end of "Things Happen," then I'd say they are heading in the right direction. The album is now streaming in pre-release form on NPR, and I think I will listen for more - more ringing guitars, more honest-to-goodness honest folk, more feelings from the 10,000-foot perspective.

5/14/15

"What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round the sun
What a beautiful dream
That could flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye and be gone from me
Soft and sweet
Let me hold it close and keep it here with me.
And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see,
Love to be
In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me.

What a curious life
We have found here tonight
There is music that sounds on the street
There are lights in the clouds
Anna's ghost all around
Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me
Soft and sweet
How the notes all bend and reach above the trees"



So many times people try to cover songs from Neutral Milk Hotel's "In an Aeroplane Over the Sea" and it is arguably a huge waste of time, because those songs are so classic and memorable and legitimate classics, reaching even beyond the cult status they once achieved. They are great songs because they are beautiful songs, because they are well-written songs. Because Jeff Magnum channeled something innate in him. Yet as far as the cover efforts go, I have never seen anyone do it as well as the brilliant and talented Lera Lynn.

She and her band truly make this song her own, with a twinge of blues-rock in the guitar and a downbeat swing on the kit. The mournful solo, the doo-wop bass line.they bring out an accessible folk quality in this song that was formerly slightly unreachable in its literary pretense. It's far more approachable, here. There's the same dark passion that exists in the original, but it is funneled through something more immediate, in this live and lively setting. Then...the way she sings the final verse is as promising of an up-and-coming performer I could imagine, and the best kind of indie rock female vocal, in my estimation. So strong and beautiful and crystal clear. I am a little obsessed and more inspired.

"Oh how I remember you
How I would push my fingers through
Your mouth to make those muscles move
That made your voice so smooth and sweet
But now we keep where we don't know
All secrets sleep in winter clothes
The one you loved so long ago
Now he don't even know his name

What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round the sun
And when we meet on a cloud
I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all."
~In An Aeroplane Over The Sea
Neutral Milk Hotel, In An Aeroplane Over the Sea/Lera Lynn at Athfest 2011

5/12/15

"For you, there'll be no crying
For you, the sun will be shining."

~Songbird 

Eva Cassidy, Songbird

Not entirely sure how my day evolved from one of extreme productivity and socializing into sitting at my desk in a stuffy apartment with overheated cats binge listening to Eva Cassidy, but, here we are.

She's pretty amazing, though at first the recorded setting felt somewhat dated to my overtuned ears. Then I became adjusted, found the performance embedded in the first blush, and was subsequently taken by her unique precision and flawless transitions and exquisite tonality. Live footage memorized further. Her legend is the stuff of a blessed and tragic life, as they so often are. 

I went in looking for "Songbird," an all-time favorite from the luscious throat of Christine McVie. Her rendition is pure, and I never ever tire of these words, they will always sound like home to me for reasons I don't dare pinpoint. From there, I wound up finding her "Fields of Gold" cover - a song I had not heard in ages that brought me back to times pre-dating that. Times of dancing in basements in old costumes and party dresses, my cousins and I playing choreographer and artistic director and corps performers. Then I knew this was a pretty song - most everyone does, one could easily argue it is the only true valid post-Police contribution Sting made to modern music. Then I saw a pretty scene of fields and words my mother sang. Now, so much older and lived, I hear it as much more of a sad song, maybe due in large part to Cassidy's sincere, sustained delivery. Some research (or, um, Wikipedia) tells me this cover was one of two that sparked her success with British audiences that had her album charting posthumously. 

"I never made promises lightly,
And there have been some that I've broken.
But I swear in the days still left,
We'll walk in fields of gold."

~Fields of Gold 

Eva Cassidy, Songbird

The other song was her "Over the Rainbow" rendition. This is the live one I couldn't stop watching. This song, the Tori Amos version, was the most important contemporary solo I ever danced. I don't think I ever placed higher than third in bad local competitions. My rehearsal slot was Thursday nights after the group, winding up at home by 9:30 or 10 or so. Jess screamed at me and my sickled feet, chided me for mouthing the words even though I had  no idea that was a habit, and changed up the attitude turns when I couldn't get the timing right and wound up overstepping before the next sequence. Not everyone gets a Tori solo, I knew, and I couldn't mess it up. Years later, Jess would joke to me: "Yeah, and that was a cover." Cassidy's version is nothing like Tori's (guitar, not piano, for starters) but it is stunning in its own right. Her fingers are patient and her choices on when and where to change up the melody, weave in trills and pluck a few extra strings are unique and unexpected and altogether beautiful. Timeless in every way. This one she performed at Georgetown's Blues Alley, a place I once visited with intense adoration and disguised wide-eyed glee:

"Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me"

~Over the Rainbow 

Eva Cassidy, Blues Alley Supper Club, 1-3-96

I am grateful to have found these songs tonight. Perhaps I am sentimental of the highest possible order. Perhaps I am more than a little nostalgic and in awe of the moments that come and go with such meaning while we, so caught up, are none the wiser they are happening to us. Maybe I am just a little melancholy, no surprise there. But how interesting,to hear these three perfect songs that incite so many memories and feelings in a new way, a never before way, an of-the-moment way that leaves me grateful for the present and its joys and sorrows, and ever-moving toward those to come - because if all we know can someday, somehow, in some way sound new again, then aren't we so lucky, to know what there is to look forward to. 

5/7/15

"Where’s your heart gone
And where’s your soul?
Where did all of your faith go?
And where’s that old spark, a failure stole?
Well I bet we’ll find it in no time at all."




I do not write often enough about how much I love Mute Math, or how excited I am by the promise of new material this summer.

Also, they're funny on Twitter.
Lately I've been catching up on their live footage (which is insane, between Darren King being an octopus and Paul Meany crawling on the crowds) and random B-sides. Still I always come back to the closing track, "In No Time," on "Odd Soul," a wonderfully energized and enigmatic record, inventive with is sound and bold in its direction. This song is an easy standout. Something about the organ sound here strikes me as very Coldplay but it is far less pretentious, and is really something of a wind down after the whirlwind of the second half of the record. I love the patient-until-its-not build, with steady beats, hypnotic repetition and a melodic outro. This is one of those songs where the instrumentation tells the story as much as the lyrics, the story of rising from some sort of depths into back where you're supposed to be. Taken as a whole, it is uplifting, without being sappy or syrupy. It acknowledges the broken things and identifies the only way to fix them: time.

"Where’s your nerve gone
And where’s your hope?
And where’s that sunrise you’ve been waiting for?
And where’s that one day you got it all?
Well I bet we’ll find it in no time at all
We’ll find it in no time,
We’ll find it in no time,
We’ll find it in no time,
We’ll find it in no time at all.

When the wars start falling on the world you had
Just hold tight, in no time we can get it back
When the skies come crashing on the world you had
Just hold tight, in no time we can get it back
We can get it back
We can get it back
We can get it back."
~In No Time
Mute Math, Odd Soul

5/3/15

"You thought God was an architect
Now you know
He's something like a pipe bomb ready to blow,
and everything you built that's all for show
goes up in flames
in 24 frames."

~24 Frames
Jason Isbell, 

Something More Than Free

I knew when I woke up this morning Jason Isbell would be releasing new music this July. I did not think I would get the gift of a new song that same afternoon.

He tweeted out a single, and I saw it, so I played it, and I cried at my desk when the chorus kicked in because I am so struck by his ability to capture difficult feelings so succintly.

This song is kind of perfect. It's structured so simply, lyrically and melodically, and yet it sinks into the darkest places of hearts and minds, somehow without caving to them. Life is sort of like that, sad but ever-moving, incredibly deep and layered in meaning, but simple when taken as a whole. Isbell writes about life, all his imagined ballads, all his confessionals, all his stories woven from feelings of love and loss and longing, it's all just life, and I do believe he is among the best of modern musicians because of this.

Earlier this year, I saw him in concert for the first time. Hopefully not the last, because it was mesmerizing. He played almost all of "Southeastern," it felt like, plus the best of the DBT tracks ("Decoration Day," "Goddamn Lonely Love," "Danko/Manuel,' "Outift") and soloed for bars upon bars upon bars with a natural fluidity and masterful precision. He is never too much, but he is never too sparse. I could listen to him sing for hours. I kept meaning to write about that concert, this magical few hours where the world sort of stopped spinning, but I figured I'd just sell it short. I do know I would love to see him again, as soon as possible, and that mid-July can't come soon enough.

I tried to be still tonight. I tried to be still after a 12-hour day, and never enough sleep,and preoccupied worries of the friends I didn't call and the bills I've yet to pay and the frustrations of my own limitations and faulty connections. I tried to be still and I couldn't, so I just listened to this until I felt clear enough to at least focus my kinetic energy into something worthwhile.

(EDIT: This is my 600th published post on this here blog. I like that number).