Netflix documentary series Song Exploder takes a look at the writing process Alicia Keys and co-writer Samphra, a London-based electronic Soul/R&B singer, took when writing this emotional ballad. Musically, Keys takes a minimal approach: electronic beats and subdued piano chords. But like many of the songs of July, in the minimalism of this track, the meaning lives in the lyrics. The little details, too, like the sounds of water, the electric guitar at the end, give this track a quiet emotion. The song is inspired by motherhood. Singer Samphra’s mother had recently died, and Keys thought about her children and that one day she too would die, leaving her sons to grieve her death, just as Samphra was grieving his mother’s death. The four-minute track captures a moment of humanity–being alone with your thoughts, reflecting on something that’s happened or going to happen. It talks about the moments you have enough time to let your mind wander where it needs to go.
I’M HEADIN’ NOWHERE. It had turned to pure hell out on the Interstate. The Sunday-after-Thanksgiving traffic made the four-hour trip between Mern and Chattanooga to a good five-and-a-half hours. By the time Allan hit Knoxville, the eight lanes of traffic, minus one for construction, were like the seven layers of hell. He shouldn’t have stayed the three extra hours. The cold rain that began falling made tail lights brighter as the other drivers rode their brakes. “If only I can get back in two and a half hours, I can start my Classics term paper,” was the stressful motif playing on a loop in Allan’s brain. Listening to Copeland’s Eat, Sleep, Repeat had a simultaneous calming and panicking effect as the lyrical themes are searching for love and meaning and learning to be content with a state of lacking. Allan’s thoughts of which lines from Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides he would need to show that that Donnie Darko is actually a Greek tragedy in disguise, intermixed with Aaron Marsh’s voice and the memories of a home life that was becoming more alien to him and a social life that he wished for, yet it seemed to hard to obtain. He thought about his roommate Mike was talking to that girl. He didn’t have much time for the Allen or Jim. And Jim, though he was dating Alicia, always seemed to have time on the weekends. He thought about Lena and how she had been so kind to him. She didn’t seem attached until he tried to make a move. Then she was always busy with some other guy. Traffic was backed up on I-75, too. It would be a long night of writing.
KEEP TRAVELIN’ BY, LOOKIN’ FOR LOVE. Long train rides were a time to process the weekends for Josh. As the summer turned into fall, traveling to Seoul every weekend had become an expensive lifestyle. But new relationships took effort, and it was a lack of effort that made his last relationship unravel. But Min Jin was a polar opposite to Sung Jae. Min Jun had introduced Josh to a lot of friends, most of whom were also gay. Min Jun had his own place and Josh could visit any weekend he liked. And Min Jun was a year younger than Josh, and Min Jun’s dream was to leave Korea someday. Josh thought about their time together riding back on the train every weekend, switching from the two hour fast train to the four hour slow train mid-October to save money. Josh thought of the blue light in the room as Min Jun fell asleep to an episode of Will and Grace, a show he had never allowed himself to enjoy. It’s like the same structure as Seinfeld, but with gay characters. He thought about the time in September they both had gotten food poisoning from some undercooked chicken and how Min Jun had taken care of him, even coming into the bathroom as Josh was throwing up. He thought about how Min Jun was teaching him virtues he had never learned in Sabbath School of self-acceptance and self-care. As the nights got longer and the sun started setting in a different northern city every week, eventually departing in darkness, Josh was falling in love.
The opening track to Tyson Motsenbocker‘s sophomore record, Someday I’ll Make It All Up to You, “High Line” is the singer’s thoughts as he takes the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan to walk on the High Line train overpass. As the singer is alone with his thoughts, he thinks about urban alienation, loss, the future, and realities he wants to deny, yet he can no longer deny. The calm acoustic guitar and warmth that the strings and piano bring the the melody as well as the female backing vocalist make this a track that works for every season, though admittedly, even in a somewhat cooler, northern city, like New York, nobody wants to be taking this kind of journey in the middle of the afternoon, despite the air conditioning on the subway.
TIME HOLDS ME DOWN LIKE A BROTHER. The High Line Park opened in 2009. In 2017, South Korea opened Seoullo 7017 borrowing the concept of the High Line. Since then it served as a first or last destination every time Josh came up to Seoul. Arriving before dinner on Friday night and leaving right after dinner on Sunday night, the newly gentrified restaurants and pubs were places he met up with friends. The train from Dong Daegu to Seoul Station arriving at 6:50 in the middle of rush hour was meditative–a process of undoing, forgetting the pressures of the week. The further he got away from the ultra conservative small town where he taught, away from the responsibilities and the denial of himself, the more he let his guard down. Seoul was by no means New York or Los Angelos, but what he found in Seoul was anonymity. The closer he got to Seoul was the less possibility of no one knowing his name. In the small city near Daegu he called home, he couldn’t go shopping without seeing a student or someone who know him. In the rush of people getting off the train, Josh could just be anyone else.
NEW YORK SMILING LIKE A MONSTER IN A CAGE. Josh had only been to New York once when he was growing up. It was a bus tour around Christmas Time. There was always a big distain for the city to upstate New Yorkers. “The city is barely in the state,” his dad complained from time to time. Yet in Korea, and in the States for that matter, whenever Josh said he was from New York he got questions about how many times he had been to the Statue of Liberty. “You gotta visit me in New York. Maybe when you visit your family this winter,” Andy said. “I will try,” Josh said committal. “We’ll see a broadway play and go to the galleries. It will be fun, and a good chance to get away from your family.” Josh and Andy’s relationship had changed since their first meeting in C. 2014. When they met online it had been prurient photo exchanges and some dirty talk, but it was Andy’s closeted Christian story that had kept the conversation interested when they finally met in person in early October of 2014. How normal the encounter seemed, like meeting up with a business partner or a language exchange. How in the conversation Josh had forgotten the dirty pictures the two had exchanged and how when they talked it was like he had been hearing his own story told back to him. How the golden light of 1 pm in October made Josh forget that he would have to be back at work in two hours. How a talk about what Josh had never before done resulted in a bathroom trip that could have gotten Andy arrested and Josh deported until Andy said, “I think we’d better stop,” after getting a taste of it. In 2018, the two had quite a different relationship. Perhaps four years later it was a good time to say goodbye.
You might know Filous if you get the bonus tracks of pop singers. He’s an Austrian producer, musician, and remixer, and he’s remixed Selena Gomez, Troye Sivan, Kodeline, and others. For “Feel Good Inc.” Filous teams up with electoro-pop singer-songwriter LissA to bring a new interpretation to Gorillaz‘ 2005 hit, “Feel Good Inc.” The song has been covered by multiple artists, and while the original is the best, Filous’s cover highlights the melancholy of the song by stripping the song of its bass-line, and leaning into it’s minor chord melody. Filous’s “FGI” is laidback. It’s a perfect coffee shop cover of the track because coffee shop tracks often don’t have rapping or words like “ass crack.” While today’s song of the day is by Filous, it’s the artistry of the musicians behind Gorrilaz that make this song interesting.
DON’T STOP. GET IT, GET IT! In 2001 Blur frontman Damon Albarn and animator Jamie Hewlett released what would go into the Guinness Book of World Records as the “most successful virtual band,” meaning a band that existed in the studio rather than on the road. Blurring the lines between Rock, Hip-Hop, Electronic, and Pop, Gorillaz were a hit on multiple radio formats. In 2005 when the band released their follow up with the lead single “Feel Good Inc.,” it was a song that was played everywhere. But it was also a misunderstood song. The funky bass and hip-hop contrasting with the emo-style sung lyrics, made it seem like the perfect summer party anthem, similar to their 2001 summer hit “19-2000” (Soulchild Remix), but just as many artists got away with hiding sexual innuendo to their songs, Gorillaz hid an Orwellian dystopia below the bass-line making the minor key “Feel Good” track sound like the direct opposite of the song’s message. And like other tracks the Gorrillaz wrote both for their debut, fellow Demon Daystracks, and their albums thereafter, “Feel Good Inc.” touches social issues. The themes in “Feel Good Inc.” alone of corporate greed, consumerism, and sedating the masses aren’t typical themes in pop music.
CITY’S BREAKING DOWN ON A CAMEL’S BACK. Jerod saw his future laid out in front of him if he were to stay on his dad’s farm that summer. In some ways the farm was freedom from this future, if the farm were to last. But the taxes were killing his father. And now he was going to pay taxes on the camp, too. It was only a matter of years that Jared would have to go to work at one of the factories in Norwich or Greene. And that day would be the death of his soul. So many of his classmates were already planning on it. When you go to work for the factory it’s the beginning of the end of your monotonous days. It’s the same repetitive work day in and day out. It’s the same watering holes with the same girls. Even the ones a year out of high school just looked tired, their eyes grew lifeless. He thought about the girls who used to go to school with his older siblings. How in their early twenties they started looking hunched over and haggardly. How their minds started to go. Florida was supposed to be a fix for that–getting out of the small town. And Florida had opened his mind to a bigger world full of Interstates and people with money and strange religions. Yet, he had seen the same pattern of souls being sucked from his friends’ faces, but rather than working for the factory, they were working multiple part-time jobs and still barely making rent. And so was Jerod. And to top it all off, there was the conflict in Florida with his wife’s parents. Then the phone call from his younger brother saying that their uncle had died, leaving the brothers with a sawmill.
George (in Hangeul pronunciation Gyu-jee) debuted in 2017 as a solo R&B singer in South Korea. Before his solo career, he was a featured singer on several Korean hip-hop tracks. My first introduction to George was a track he sang on an Adoy record. Like many indie singers in George’s particular K-pop sub-genre, George sings many of his songs in English, a topic I discussed with my students a few weeks ago. Whether it is a strategic plan to crossover in other countries or simply an artistic choice, these days non-Korean speakers can more easily delve into the indie music scene in Korea. Last year George teamed up with producer Cosmic Boy to release the EP Love in Summer. The title track evokes the nostalgia for summer days when love is really the only thing that matters, and this was the kind of song we needed to take our mind off of the pandemic.
I GOT A DUMB THING TO SAY. There’s this fairy tale we’re told in Christian school. You’re going to grow up one day and meet the right person. You’re going to burn with desire for her, but if you wait until you’re married, God’s going to work it all out. For God created sex for marriage and you can only marry once. “You’ll see that television tells you that you have to ‘try it before you buy it,’ but that’s not God’s way,” his tenth grade Bible teacher said to the class. A third of the class had already had sex. By high school that would become 3/4 of the class. But in the improbability, the teaching was that we were in the last days. Most would fall away; some would come back. But the greatest blessing would be in those who loved Jesus enough to be like hime to live in celibacy only broken by marriage. But what the church doesn’t talk about is sexual frustration. What happens when you escape your teenage years untouched and live into your late 20s a virgin? What happens when you can no longer compartmentalize the hours you spend chatting with men online as just “blowing off steam time”? What happens when you actually make plans to meet up with a stranger? And let me ask you, 27 year old, how much did your heteronormative, Christian school upbringing play into that? That was Fall 2014.
WE USED TO DRINK INTO LOVE BELOW THE SUN AND THE MOON UP ABOVE. But this is a song about summer. August 1, 2015 he matched with Min Jun on Tinder. Earlier that summer Grindr had gotten Josh into some drama, but he had to admit he was addicted to the apps. He had been in the middle of a pretty hedonistic summer, trying to make up for his lost teens and twenties under religious convictions. Part of him really still loved the man he had just left in the hotel room. But when Song Jae hadn’t talked to Josh for weeks, Josh turned to the apps. On the apps he could find those connections he longed for. Josh wondered, did Song Jae even believe me when I said that I was with a friend for days. What friends did I have? Wasn’t he the least bit jealous? So an eight month relationship ended in a hotel room. Song Jae was on a weekend vacation and he booked a nice hotel. Josh thought that he could make things work so he agreed to meet him. The list of good qualities of Song Jae kept listing over and over in Josh’s mind. Song Jae was kind, a good man, a Christian. When they met, he treated Josh like a prince, making him feel at home in Korea, rearranging his schedule to drive Josh home from the airport all the way to Gyeongbuk-do when Josh had gone and come back home in the winter. But that summer had changed their relationship, and one perfect weekend, just as their past weekends were, couldn’t bring back the same old feelings. So the conversation started on Saturday night in bed. “I love you, but I want more than just a perfect weekend. I want to see other people.” Was it a mistake. Song Jae’s cute smile replayed in Josh’s mind. His shirt even still smelled like Song Jae. Then his phone lit up.
The follow-up to their multi-platinum album Only by the Night, Come Around Sundown, may not be remembered like their previous album. However, the album scored a higher ranking on the Billboard Hot 100 due to their growth in fans from the last album. Last month, I chronicled the rise and fall of Kings of Leon and their reemergence to a very different rock scene. In that context, Come Around Sundown was the album cycle that lead singer Caleb Followill burned out and succumbed to the “Rock ‘n’ Roll lifestyle,” throwing up on stage and cancelling the tour. Lyrically, Come Around Sundown continues to explore the ghosts of the band’s religious past with a dose of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll rebellion, all sung with moody bluesy guitars and a southern drawl.
HE SWEAR’S HE’S GONNA GIVE IT UP, IT’S NEVER GONNA BE ENOUGH. “Son, if you graduate from high school, you can do whatever you want. You can leave the farm, you can go to south. But don’t come back here when you fail.” In May of 1979, a conflict happened between Jerod and his father. Coming to the end of high school, Jerod only had one dream: getting the hell out of school and getting the hell out of his father’s house. They had been going through a pious shift for the past few years, and with a new baby on the way, everything seemed to be about the farm, the baby, and the church. There was a growing tension in the household. Jerod, somewhere in the middle of eight children was on the forefront of “the strict wave.” His mom and dad didn’t flip out when Dana got pregnant. They had taken Caleb to an Alice Cooper concert. But now that they were good Baptists again, Jerod never heard the end of it when they found his stash of weed. It had been nothing but school and chores and church. But high school was coming to an end and some of Jared’s friends were heading down to Florida to get jobs working around Disney World. “Son, if you stay on the farm after you graduate, I’ll take care of you. Someone needs to help take care of the camp.”
I SEE YOU IN THE EVENING SITTING ON YOUR THRONE. With that Jerod lost it. Leon had started building the camp as a facility he hoped to rent out to people from the city. In that part of upstate New York, wealthy New York City residents took vacation or conducted business retreats in the Upstate. When Jerod was in middle and high school, he and his older and younger brothers spent all their spare time that they weren’t doing chores on the farm, at school, or at church, erecting buildings for their father’s dream. Then Leon announced that he would be donating the building to the church. The family mostly bit their tongues, not knowing what this donation meant. Dana had even told her father that it was a good idea. But when an evangelist from Southern Pennsylvania came church to church asking the congregation, “If Jesus gave it all for you, what have you given him lately?” Leon knew what this donation would mean. It would be a youth camp where kids could get saved and learn more about their faith. One night while smoking pot with Jerod, Dana admitted that their father had gone too far. The one advantage of donating land in New York state is not having to pay the taxes, and perhaps Pastor Wolfe wasn’t quite aware of the fact that he now had a substantial tax bill. Pastor Wolfe would conduct his summer camps yet never paid the taxes nor the upkeep of the camp, and because the camp was still very close to his house, Leon simply continued to pay the taxes and the upkeep. “No, Dad,” Jarod responded to his father, “If I could take back every Saturday that I spent building that goddamn money pit, you’d be better off. You’ve trusted your life’s savings to a charlatan. Whatever penitence you’re paying for, I’ll have no part of it.” So after graduation, Jerod went to Florida which worked out well until it didn’t and Jerod and his new wife crawled back to his father. But that’s a story for another day.
When I heard “Wake Me Up” on a NoiseTrade Holiday sampler when I was driving home from Tennessee through Atlanta to avoid an ice storm in the mountains, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Is this Jars of Clay‘s Dan Haseltine?” Haseltine’s soft voice has always kept Jars of Clay on the softer side of rock, despite their ’90s grunge-era hit, “Flood.” Though taking the name from a 1957 jazz album by saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, Haseltine’s project with former Jars of Clay guitarist Matt Bronleewe and composer/producer Jeremy Bose was actually based on their love for 80s/90s electronic music. In 2013 the trio released their full-length album Freaks, which was mostly an overlooked release. The band hasn’t done much since then, and Freaks might just be a one-off passion project for the trio.
I’VE BEEN SCREAMING WITHOUT KNOWING. Haseltine’s bread and butter, of course, is the Contemporary Christian band, Jars of Clay. Coming onto the scene in 1994 the band crossed over onto rock radio and was a staple of Christian Rock until the early 2000s. Like their fading crossover appeal, their Christian Rock radio appeal also diminished. The band’s music was in soundtracks until their third album, If I Left the Zoo. After their fourth album The Eleventh Hour, the band went soft, recording music that better fit the Christian Adult Contemporary radio format. The band released music in 2013, but in 2014, Haseltine lost many followers for Jars of Clay when he voiced his views on marriage equality on Twitter, coming out in support of LGBTQ rights. Haseltine later apologized for using Twitter as his platform for a complex discussion, and he also felt remorse that his public declaration was not a blanket statement for the band and he stated that each member had their own views on the issue. However, he did not apologize for his advocacy for LGBTQ rights. Haseltine was one of the biggest voices of support in the CCM community at the time. This was, of course, four years after fellow CCM star, collaborator, and co-headlining musician Jennifer Knapp had come out to the scorn of the Contemporary Christian press. Former Caedmon’s Call singer Derek Webb had fully supported Knapp, taking her on tour when few other Christian acts would.
THE FIRST THING THAT I WANT TO SEE IS YOU. This is not to throw shade on Haseltine. Jennifer Knapp’s very public coming out shook me. I remember reading about CCM singers who came out or scandals that were handled off stage (Ray Boltz, come to find out the missing Avalon guy), but Jennifer Knapp was one of the first artists whose music spoke to my soul, and find out that there was this side to her was complicated. She came out about ten years after the peak of her career, but the Lay it Down and The Way I Am record still spoke to me spiritually. Her music was so popular and she was decorated with so many Dove Awards because she brought honesty and sincerity to a genre that was mostly concerned with trite platitudes. When I was growing up, finding out that someone was gay had the effect of finding out something bad about someone, like a death or finding out that someone had committed a crime. In 2010, I didn’t particularly care for Jennifer Knapp’s new album, but I was not ready to dismiss her artistry. I did, however, compartmentalize this information until I was ready to deal with my own sexuality. Coincidently, also in 2014, though having nothing to do with Dan Halestine’s tweets. In 2014 it was Glee’s positive depiction of Kurt and Blaine’s relationship that made me finally read Jennifer Knapp’s memoir Facing the Music. I wanted to know a real person’s story.
Sylvan Esso is an electronic duet composed of vocalist Amelia Meath and electronic programmer/producer Nick Sanborn formed in Durham, North Carolina. The group had some success on the radio and album charts and even garnered a Grammy nomination, but their genre-bending sound of pop, rock, dance, and adult alternative has mostly gone under-appreciated. Like Oh Wonder, Meath and Sanborn are a couple, and they married in 2016. “Die Young” comes from the band’s sophomore album. The standout feature of the track is Meath’s vocals, sometimes sounding old fashioned, but the synths remind the listener that this is a modern sound. It’s a modern romance between two characters who met by chance and gave meaning to each other’s life.
I HAD IT ALL PLANNED OUT BEFORE YOU MET ME. On Genius, listeners debate if Meath is talking about suicide or living recklessly. Some may argue that living recklessly with various substances was equal to suicide. However, took me back to a classroom in Mission College, listening to a literature lecture. Dr. (Let’s use the name of the song today) Esso was the chair of the English department at Mission College. He was a tall man with an intimidating stare. Every time he looked at you, he was looking for you to say the answer he wanted to hear. If you didn’t give it to him, he would look to turn your answer into the answer he wanted. His lectures usually contain lot of Biblical counterpoint arguments against the text. His approach to literature was from suspicion, not from a position of learning what it can teach us. His 50 years of building an apologetical wall, guarding himself and the students he hoped to safeguard as well against the nearly 4000 years of secular literature, culminated in our classroom as we studied the Romantics and the Victorians. I think it was in his lecture on Kipling where Dr. Esso asked the class: “What do you think is God’s will for your life? Most people would say to get married, have a family, and get a job. But what if following God means going to India and starving, serving the people there?”
I WAS GONNA DIE YOUNG. NOW I GOTTA WAIT FOR YOU, HONEY. I kept that question in mind as I had applied to be a “missionary” in South Korea. At 25, I had very little planned for my life, but I wanted to serve God. First of all, I had so much college debt that I couldn’t imagine ever living a normal life. Maybe that was for people with richer parents. For me, just getting a degree was enough. Second, I started to think that maybe married life wasn’t for me. Maybe not being attracted to women could help me focus my life just in serving God. I’d have to do something about my Internet habits, though. Finally, what could be after Korea? I could pay off my loans quickly and go to a place in the world that had an even lower percentage of Christians. I had gotten my hands on a book of missions where you could learn about each county’s specific needs. If I was single and unattached, I could take greater risks. “You’re crazy,” Jay said one night. A year before I worked for the C. Institute, Jay worked there. I met him through church and we were hanging out one night in his apartment, watching a movie. “God certainly doesn’t want you to be alone. Sure, there are some people, but I think that’s more an exception for people with personality disorders. Believe me, you’re going to find a girlfriend here, and you’re going to forget all about this.”
Formed in 2001 in Sincheon-dong, Seoul, South Korea, Nell is one of K-pop’s few successful alternative rock bands. Taking their name from a 1994 Jodie Foster film by the same name, Nell is a sort of art-rock band whose lyrics in the original Korean have a literary quality more like the old-timey Korean ballads and less like modern K-pop. Taking influence from Brit rockers like Radiohead and Muse, Nell became known for their melancholy sound, especially prominent on the records Separation Anxiety and The Healing Process. However, after a hiatus allowing all members of Nell to do their compulsory military service, the band came back with more optimistic music. The lead single, “Ocean of Light” speaks of forgetting past hangups and focusing on a brighter future.
ARE YOU AFRAID EVERYTHING YOU BELIEVED IN WILL BECOME NOTHING? I found Nell back in 2013 when I was trying to find Korean Rock music. There were a few Korean bands back then. Busker Busker was an extremely popular 3-piece band known for their hit “Cherry Blossom Ending,” which can be heard every spring when the beautiful Sakura or 벚꽃 bloom. The band broke up with lead singer Jang Bum-june releasing solo music and drummer Brad Moore working on another musical project. There were other bands like DickPunks, Jace, and the Koxx. Many of these bands I found not so satisfying to listen to. Nell, while not very rock, had a moody vibe and pop sensibility. The moodiness reminded me of the delirious? Mezzamorphis record I listened to over and over when I was 12 or 13. It also sounded like Eat, Sleep, Repeat era Copeland or Parachutes era Coldplay meets X&Y electronics. My first introduction to Nell was “Ocean of Light,” which wasn’t my favorite of theirs. But something about the catchy hook, the electronics meets guitar verse made me go back on their discography, even shelling out over $15 each for the two albums of Separation Anxiety and The Healing Process. It was moody music for the winter of 2013-2014.
ARE YOU AFRIAD THAT EVERYTHING YOU KNEW WILL BECOME NOTHING? In November of 2013, when I purchased this EP, I was in my second year of living in Korea. I had just changed jobs and was feeling optimistic about a new life in a new country. I was teaching adult students and children, and I was especially enjoying spending time with my adult students because they were teaching me so much about their country, an experience that is hard to come by when you’re teaching kids who view learning English as just another class. I often spent my lunch breaks with my adult students. They took me to the best restaurants in the small town–small places located in the alleys where ajumma 아줌마, middle-aged women, served the best banchan 반찬, or side dishes, soups, and Korean speciality main dishes. This social lifestyle was not natural to me. I usually needed to have my alone time. The hours, too, of the job began to wear me down. My body started rebelling against this lifestyle. I started getting terrible stomach pain every day, maybe from the spicy food or the imbalanced diet or the altered sleep pattern. I had to scale back. I needed introversion. And I was seriously worried about my health.
Starting in 1997, Eisley originally consisted of three sisters: Sherri, Chantaulle, and Stacy DuPree. Later they added their younger brother, Weston, and their cousin Garron. Forming in Tyler, Texas and performing at their parents’ Christian coffee shop got the DuPree family band early exposure to the Christian music scene. But Eisley set their sights higher. While Eisley may not be a well-known band, they certainly have racked up indie cred over the years. Starting with opening for Coldplay to touring to playing SXSW, playing Conan, touring with the likes of Switchfoot, MuteMath, New Found Glory, Lovedrug, and Taking Back Sunday. All but cousins Sherri and Garron DuPree remain in the band as one by one the siblings married and/or moved onto other music projects.
FALL…LIKE A SPARROW. When you hear a DuPree sister singing, you instantly know it’s a DuPree sister. However, you probably can’t figure out who is who. The sisters have contributed to quite a few pop-punk and Christian records including The Maine, Say Anything, Fair, and Anberlin. With 2017’s I’m Only Dreaming, Eisley is now a duo with Sherri DuPree at the microphone. However, both official members of Eisley are also entangled in other musical acts. Sherri works with her husband, frontman of Say Anything, Max Bemis, on a project called Perma. Garron works as a musical engineer and a music video director for Eisley, Say Anything, and on other projects such as Anberlin’s Vital. An episode of Lead Singer Syndrome gave an interesting window into Sherri and Max’s marriage and family life. A house full of children, a few moments of peace when after bedtime to write and play music and escaping to her car for moment of peace to record the interview, Sherri and Max are continuing the rock ‘n’ roll family Sherri was raised in. “Sparking” reminds me of listening to that interview. Eisley’s lush music and instruments are usually quite positive. The poetry of “Sparking” depicts falling and being broken, but healing because of the one who loves you. Sherri’s divorce from New Found Glory’s Chad Gilbert (who later went on to marry and divorce Paramore’s Haley Williams), may have left her broken, but her life with Max, motherhood, and music beams in this beautiful Eisley track.
SITTING HERE ON THE FRONT PORCH. The weather forecast predicts that sometime this weekend the rainy season will begin. While climate change is making the rainy season more unpredictable, we can typically count on at least two to four weeks of heavy rain at the end of June or early July. It’s nice because it breaks up the scorching summer to before the rainy season (dry heat) and after the rainy season (Oh, God, the humidity!) For almost a month, you can run the fan and open the window during the light rains. It kind of feels like a front porch, like on a rare summer rainy day listening to the rain at my parents’ home back in North Carolina. When the rainy season strikes Korea, you want to be at home. Even when you think it’s cleared up and the rainy season has passed, you can easily get caught out in the rain. This is particularly no fun if you rely on public transportation and you live about a kilometer away from the stop. In 2015 I was caught in the rain many times, trying to chase the end of my fading youth. How I found shelter in your room on the first floor of your parents’ apartment. We spent all day listening to the rain falling, your windows open. We’d drink cheap Korean beer at night and continue to watch television. Your parents were at home, never questioning about the “friend” in your bedroom. It was a strange story and a strange affair that blew over as the rains stopped falling on Korea.
Musicians sometimes have to change something about their projects in response to world events. Squad 5-0 released an album called Bombs Over Broadway which showed WWII jets flying over New York City. Bombs unfortunately coincided 9-11, so the record label changed the cover of the album and the band didn’t play the song live at first. Jimmy Eat World‘s hit album Bleed Americanwas changed to Jimmy Eat World also following the 9-11 attacks. CCM singer Plumb changed her 2013 album from Faster Than a Bullet to Need You Now, in response to the Sandy Hook shooting. And in response to the 2020 Pandemic, Sam Smith retitled their upcoming album To Die For to Love Goes. Not only did Sam Smith retitle the album, but also they restructured it. The pre-released singles, “Dancing with a Stranger,” “How Do You Sleep,” and “To Die For” would all be tacked on at the end of the album.
HOW DO YOU SLEEP WHEN YOU LIE TO ME. Sam Smith’s third album delves into much poppier material, even sounding upbeat when the lyrics are sad. The music video for “How Do You Sleep?” is a little awkward, seeing the normally melancholy singer dancing with shirtless men in the background, as if it’s 1999. With songs inspired by the singer’s break up with Brandon Flynn in 2018, Smith no longer writes pining about being incapable of loving or being loved. Love Goes, is a break up record on the opposite side of pain, looking to move forward. Listeners, however, seem to prefer a hopelessly dark romantic Sam Smith. It seems that In the Lonely Hourwas Smith’s peak, with Love Goes performing the worst of the singer’s three albums. Perhaps if it wasn’t for the pandemic and the diminishing of the three singles released long before the reworked album, Smith’s concept would have boded better with audiences.
I’M DONE CRYIN’ MYSELF AWAKE. There came a point in 2014 after a conflict with my boss, who I had confronted about going against company procedures and he pleaded with me not to tell corporate that I realized that the company was all about money, not ideals. Realizing that fully was liberating. It made me realize that I could take care of me. It was when I started to check out. It was when I started looking for an out. I had invested too much of myself into my job and for what? Working in a Christian school that relied on student tuition and teachers’ sacrifice to keep the lights on was too much pressure and too much work. I lost myself in the futility of the long days from 6 am to 10 pm, Monday through Sabbath and a couple of Sundays a year. Thinking back on the time, starting from Adventist college to the “mission field,” 2008-2014, I think of my cult years. I sunk into my religious roots, hoping to be that kind of edgy one who drank coffee and listened to cool secular music, read existentialist novels, and watched Tarantino and Nolen, yet believed in the the central truths of the Bible, would make me an effective messenger of Christ. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the proverbial van, stuck on a journey without any coffee or a book or music, and everyone else was speaking a different language. I saw myself as cargo, not a person. I was a novelty to bait potential students. And I became less and less okay with that.
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