I CAN ONLY STARE
This playlist has been marinating for a while. I think that’s because the world has been “a lot” lately, both globally and personally. Many of us are coming at this thing called life from very different vantage points, so the paralysis resulting from all of it, everything at once, is overwhelming. Sometimes, things take the time that’s required. The wait for January 20th felt never ending, and even after getting there, it was a day for celebration for some and a reminder of how much further we need to go after dragging Joe Biden’s uninspiring corpse across the finish line to avoid an ethno-nationalist junta. But the things we want in life are worth waiting for. Our discipline always gets rewarded if we make strides towards the future we want. Sometimes, things take the time that’s required. This playlist is no exception.
Ryuichi Sakamoto - opus
Los Campesinos! - What Death Leaves Behind
Violent Soho - Covered in Chrome
The National - Bloodbuzz Ohio
Massive Attack - Future Proof
Bat For Lashes - Kids in the Dark
Khalid - Outta My Head (with John Mayer)
Primitive Man - The Lifer
blink-182 - Violence
Sleigh Bells - I Can Only Stare
I was gutted when news broke about Ryuichi Sakamoto’s second cancer diagnosis. I discovered Sakamoto this year during quarantine, mainly because I had begun to find comfort in a lot of modern classical and ambient music. I’m not the only one but I found that losing myself to soft textures and warmth helped articulate a sensitivity about modern life that often gets lost in a morning commute to the financial district. “opus” is a porcelain, minimalist, piano piece that serves as the overture to 1999’s BTTB—shorthand for “Back to the Basics.” Ambient or classical music may not be your thing but it’s hard to argue with what Sakamoto is able to present here, a twinkling and humble kind of frailty that taps into our collective grief and joy at the same time. Get well soon Ryuichi, we need your voice with us now more than ever.
Punk can rage but it can also be fun in the face of the total annihilation that comes with the “NO FUTURE” mindset. Case and point—I get a strong White Crosses era Against Me! vibes from this Los Campesinos! song that’s obstensively about the work of tending to our own death. That is to say, the stutter-stop drumming, the dizzying arena-ready power-pop chug all coalesces into a massively catchy meditation on the eternity of now before we’re dust in the wind. If you want an anthem, if you want to scream at the top of your lungs, together, it would be hard to do better.
On paper, trying to explain Violent Soho to people presents some challenges. I’m often describing them as Weezer meets the Smashing Pumpkins but seeing how “the Discourse” is tired of both Rivers Cuomo’s creepy neurosis and Billy Corgan’s abrasive bullshit, the conversation tends to end before we get to the music. The piece people are missing is that Violent Soho’s brand of big, dumb, caveman rock provides more food for thought than you might expect from these ex-heshers. “Covered in Chrome” floored me when I first hear it, an electric blend of slacker musings and big time riffing, praising the devil while realizing the limits of our bodies. This is the kind of song you can throw on your skate mix, while also crying with the boys about the enormity of it all. Hell fuck yeah, indeed.
When High Violet came out, I was at war with myself. I was stuck at a job that I hated, making not nearly enough money, while studying for the LSAT and reaching for a future that was far from certain. “Bloodbuzz Ohio” hit me like a freight train in the fall of 2010, full of sinewy but expansive ennui and Matt Berninger’s slurred baritone that felt like it was ripped from my own thoughts. I think a lot of people are afraid to overshare in this world. There’s the thought they will be rejected, or somehow, made to feel less than. They shouldn’t. This song is a reminder that sometimes, the burden of keeping the rougher edges at bay is too much. Sometimes, we all need a messy confessional moment about how we’re mortgaging our future for a lottery ticket—for the hope that everything does in fact get better. Those kinds of moments give us our humanity and are worth living for, no matter if you’re 4 PBRs in or walking home alone to hit the books at 5am. Alongside the pristine swell of french horns and impressionistic guitar strangulation, The National get it too.
“Future Proof” is the song that really unlocked this playlist. I was looking for something to take the energy down after the messy finale of “Bloodbuzz Ohio” and was reminded of this underrated Massive Attack song in all its crystalline glory. It game up on shuffle during the holidays when my wife and I were driving through some snow. There’s something pristine about it, the way the synths bend like vapor and the sequencers sparkle like icicles. Everything on 100th Window carries this vibe, the kind of quiet solitude that also features a foggy sense of dread that just seems to expand without limitation.
“Kids in the Dark” reminds me of long BART rides to Berkeley, visiting my then girlfriend and feeling like the whole relationship was on borrowed time. It’s the kind of song that makes you feel like you’re on the edge of something that’s going to dissolve as soon as you wake up. She eventually told me she was moving to the UK for her PhD studies and that was pretty much it. Sometimes things aren’t meant to last and nobody hates each other afterwards—maybe that’s the worst part. “Kids in the Dark” wasn’t written during our relationship (and at her request, we mostly listened to American Idiot and Neon Bible during our time together) but the warbly synths and cloud clap explosions have a way of pulling me back to a time in my life where the road ahead seemed impossible to travel alone. We need people, however long we’re connected to them, to help us reveal our true selves together. Sometimes that kind of mutual exploration can be very intimate, like sharing a nondescript red cup together and looking out from the top of your East Bay apartment as everyone empties out of Jupiter’s Pizza. It’s a moment onto itself, like if you’ve ever kissed in the rain and really meant it.
My wife listens to sexier music than I do, which is why I owe her a big debt of gratitude for showing me this Khalid cut. The soft disco vibe is perfect for Khalid’s voice, which has everything you want from pop—soul and control. Meanwhile, John Mayer does just enough guitar doodling and breathy backing vocals to make you forget he’s a jerk. I love this song because its hypotonic hook perfectly captures the kind of infatuation that exists with new love (or even lust). It’s the kind of ear worm that boomerangs from your head to your heart, and everywhere else. The bouncy bass line is perfect for daydreaming as you cruise down the highway, whether or not the journey is the destination.
I love the disconnect, and the dissonance, of flipping from something light and airy into an industrial trash compactor from hell. “The Lifer” is a violent miasma twisted metal, as Primitive Man crawl across the song’s 7 minute run time. It’s absolutely disgusting to think something this sludgy can retain any semblance of musicality. This is music to be enveloped by—waves of monolithic, grinding, distortion.
It’s trendy to say that (untitled) is when blink-182 grew up and admitted they loved The Cure but I think that short changes just how vast a departure it was for the band. There’s a lot of weird flourishes on this album that bands like The 1975 achieve through sequencing, carefully honing and focusing their genre studies track by track. blink-182 made it a point to smash these disparate parts together in the same song, walking so that others could run. There’s typical pop-punk here but only in spurts. When I first heard “Violence,” there was an edge to it that had never been present on a blink-182 song before. It was dark, borderline industrial, and disjointed. Where blink-182 had been loud before, the split between the hushed spoken word poetry of its verses, and the rusted guitar riffs, gave way to steel and bile, desperation and post-punk menace in an unending cycle. I think it’s easy to pick on Tom DeLonge these days because he’s become something of a punch line for indulging his fantasies and playing it safe. On “Violence,” he and the rest of the band, do everything but play it safe.
My wife and I started listening to the Song Exploder podcast over the holidays, which has been a real joy. Making music is no easy task but Hrishikesh Hirway’s podcast highlights that inspiration comes through unexpected paths. I’ve loved Sleigh Bells since their debut but the Song Exploder episode that discusses “I Can Only Stare” made me reconsider and appreciate this forgotten single from Jessica Rabbit. There are a variety of things here that serve as a feast for your ears, whether it’s the molasses churn of it’s cavernous, hip-hop inspired, beat, or its delicate dream pop passages. The one thing I didn’t catch until I listening to this podcast was just how indebted the chorus was to 60s girl groups (in the best possible way). I think that’s because I was fixated on Alexis Krauss’ pain. There’s a kind of paralysis that’s happening, something that doesn’t feel like rumination over a crush or a lover, but rather, and the feeling you get from witnessing some kind of unavoidable horror. You can only stare as you watch something you love fall apart, even if you give everything you have to save it. Ex-metalcore veteran and band mate Derek Miller noted that the song is really based around how Krauss’ singing is over extended, the way she hits the ‘A’ in stare. It’s a sharp and strident moment in an otherwise kaleidoscopic song. Of course, trauma is often piercing and revealing, which makes this song the perfect synthesis of shock by a group that always loves confrontation.
Originally published January 24, 2021 as part of Hella Vibes.