WE’LL CELEBRATE YOUR END
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried, watching the map flip along familiar fault lines Tuesday night. Felt like it was one of the longest weeks of our lives. I know that closure may not come until January (or at all), but this weekend felt like a breath of fresh air in an ordinarily claustrophobic year (or 4). Whatever comes next, it’s nice to claim this weekend for ourselves.
The Wonder Years - Came Out Swinging
The Story So Far - Proper Dose
YG - FDT (Feat. Nipsey Hussle)
Kacey Musgraves - Slow Burn
Bring Me The Horizon - Kingslayer (Feat. BABYMETAL)
Planning For Burial - Where You Rest Your Head at Night
Hesitation Wounds - Charlatan Fuck
Kings of Leon - Temple
Wolf Parade - Dinner Bells
Green Day - Waiting
I had a feeling that it would come down to Pennsylvania. Again. It seemed like it had to. I think about the moment in 2016 when the needle flipped from blue to red and all at once the avalanche hit. It was a long walk home. One step forward and 2 steps back for the next 4 years. I’ve often joked that 2020 was Earth’s “gap year” and the boomerang narrative that haunts “Came Out Swinging” was too pitch perfect to avoid. The truth is, it’s been longer than one gap year, even if this year alone felt like 4 of them. It’s been a bit hallow for all of us and I’m sure I’m not the only one that’s felt like a ghost through it all. You get it. Dan “Soupy” Campbell gets it. But the moment when Pennsylvania shifted blue, the moment where the guitars roar back in, where we all came out swinging from that South Philly basement, in that moment hope stopped being a dream and started feeling like strength. Because ultimately you have to get back up in this world if you want a chance at all. That’s what The Wonder Years, and this year, have always been about—resilience in the face of tragedy.
As you will see me write many times, I was late to appreciate The Story So Far. I’m making up for lost time. “Proper Dose” is ripped from the group’s similarly titled 2018 offering and features the kind of pogo stick, post-aughts pop-punk that is thick and buoyant. It’s the kind of witty guitar-based chug that fell out of favor once Warped Tour bands realized they could mine 60s and 70s classic rock. There’s probably something to be said of the bro-friendly gang vocals but every once in a while it’s nice to listen to something easy and it’s as easy as it comes with “Proper Dose.”
I saw some friends in Oakland yesterday and no less than 4 cars along Lake Merritt passed by while blasting “FDT.” I can’t say I’m the biggest YG fan but I love this song, and the joy and enthusiasm was wonderful to hear against a silky smooth baseline and military grade sound systems. Reminder that nobody parties like the Bay Area.
Kacey Musgraves is an exceptional storyteller. She has an economy of language that can warp you across time and connect you with intensely intimate moments in the blink of an eye. That serves the soft skyline of Golden Hour well, a collection of songs that glimmers like stars in the distance. “Slow Burn’s” soft eddy reminds me of the twilight confessional of Beck’s “The Golden Age.” But where Beck is channeling loss and nostalgia, Musgraves is lost in the feeling of everything happening at once, the slow crawl through this thing called life before the embers fade. It’s a great reminder to appreciate what you have, while you have it.
Mick Gordon and Bring Me The Horizon make so much sense on paper and the spastic audio clash of deathcore and glitch really made for an astounding EP. I’ve been obsessed with “Kingslayer” since the very subtle POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR dropped, which features everything from seizure inducing keyboards, to a death rattle bass, to mechanized blast beats. I’m not sure you can slap a genre on the everything and the studio approach of Bring Me The Horizon. Which is probably fine, because for music that sounds like the matrix rebooting itself with digital shrapnel, you have to hear it to believe it.
The Flenser has been killing it as of late, with high profile 2020 releases from Midwife and Sprain. That doesn’t even consider their stunning 2019 run, which featured Drowse, Have a Nice Life, and Wreck & Reference (among others). The label really understands atmosphere though, and given my recent Planning For Burial kick, it made sense to feature a track from their 2014 effort, Desideratum. “Where You Rest Your Head at Night” is the kind of distortion laden dream that gently hums until you find yourself surrounded by swirling piano and thick sheets of fuzz. There’s something meditative about their robotic approach to shoegaze-by-way of post-rock—open rather than suffocating. They fit right in with the rest of The Flenser line-up, which seems to find new ways to bend the arc of abrasion towards melody.
If you haven’t checked out Jeremey Bolm’s side project, Hesitation Wounds, now is the time. Owing more to hardcore than the dream country direction Touché Amoré has been exploring as of late, last year’s Chicanery was a blistering salvo of rage and throat shredding screams. Including “Charlatan Fuck” this week…well it just seemed right. As a side note, I’ve always found the snare sound here to be reminiscent of St. Anger, though Hesitation Wounds isn’t getting the same heat. Go figure.
The next two songs were really inspired by my wife. I’m not the same kind of Kings of Leon fan that she is but I told her yesterday that Mechanical Bull is their most listenable album. I’m not sure that it’s as musically sophisticated as Only By The Night but Mechanical Bull is hookier, leaner, and knows that it wants to be the kind of album that oscillates between Friday night excitement and last call blues. “Temple” has the kind of drawling confidence that peak-Taking Back Sunday used to throw around, mixed with the kind of Queens of the Stone Age cool that only worked when Josh Homme was really lonely. The palm muted tension finally breaks during the bridge but nothing ever gets too rowdy—just rowdy enough.
The last concert I attended was Wolf Parade at the Fillmore Theater in San Francisco. I didn’t know it at the time but it was a demarcation, the end of the Before Times, and maybe the last time I was in a room with strangers, shoulder to shoulder. My wife is the real Wolf Parade fan but I’ve started to come around after listening to their late period albums and seeing them perform. The three piece is schizophrenic live, switching from taught indie rock one moment to broken Nintendo-wave the next. They closed the encore with “Dinner Bells,” which stretches Jackson Pollock-like distortion across a dreamy keyboard waltz. It’s the only song I really love off of Apologies to the Queen Mary because it actually has some weight to it. In a twist, I didn’t know how prescient that song would be at the time. Owning the grief of a lost era, a lost year, and our lost ones, is something this song forces me to face, whether or not I’m longing for the memory of what it was like to consider it in person, with people I’ll never meet.
I participated in a lot of musical theater during high school. The thing I miss about it the most is that it’s a shared experience, built on rituals. No matter your background, superstition creeps into everything you do. You build these small traditions to bond you to others through the long hours, the energy crashes, the flubs you wish you could get back, and the time you spend waiting for something meaningful to happen, because everything is *a lot.* Especially in high school. Especially when you don’t like yourself, or what’s happening around you. My friend and I started screaming “Waiting” after our shows, once we were out of our costumes and make up and on our way out of the theater. It became something to look forward to, something we could share in the midst of a production’s whirlwind. We did this for 4 years, our bad impressions of sorta British Billie Joe Armstrong bouncing off the cavernous halls after every performance. There was real joy in those moments, the reward of freedom through resolve. Getting older, I’m reminded that this kind of joy rarely comes around, and when it does, it’s fleeting. So savor it. Thank your lucky stars that you made it because we’re starting all over again tomorrow and it’s a long road ahead. At least we have something to look forward to while we’re waiting.
Originally published November 8, 2020 as part of Hella Vibes.