Mixtapemotions

  • "Fly Away" by Lenny Kravitz, Monday, February 28, 2022

    Born in 1964 to African American actress Roxie Roker and to Jewish-Ukrainian NBC executive Sly Kravitz, Lenny Kravitz built a musical career in the ’90s based on Rock ‘n’ roll nostalgia. As a biracial rocker, Kravitz had a hard time securing a record contract with the labels telling him that he wasn’t “black enough” or “white enough” for a specific genre. However, when Kravitz did become a rockstar, he was often criticized for his regressive, old-time rock sound. 

    I WANT TO GET AWAY.     “Fly Away” comes from Kravitz’s fifth album 5. It peaked at #12 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles, and it topped the charts in several countries. The song was used in a commercial for the French-made automobile, the Peugeot 206 supermini car, making the song popular wherever the car was sold. Years later, the song would appear in the American commercial for Nissan’s Xterra. And while “Fly Away” hit the airwaves in 1998, about a year before I started listening to the radio, I knew the song thanks to its inclusion in the commercial for the first American version of Now That’s What I Call Music!  The song is simple–a catchy electric-guitar hook, a funky bass effect on the verse, Lenny singing with a rockstar voice lyrics that could have been penned by his ten-year-old daughter (the now famous actress Zoë Kravitz). But somehow there’s just enough nostalgia and just enough catchiness to make this the badass song of middle school. It may have been one of those moments when sheltered from the dangers of the secular world I decided that I liked this rock’ n’ roll sound, much to the disdain of my mother.

    I’D FLY ABOVE THE TREES. That being said, I wish I liked Lenny Kravitz’s discography. I wish I could get submerged in it. Why? Because there is such an absence in Rock history of musicians of color, especially as the genre of rock music comes from styles appropriated or stolen from black influences–whether it was blues, jazz, or early rockers. Lenny Kravitz has such an interesting Wikipedia page, but I remember so many haters from back in the ’90s and early ’00s saying that he was a rock ‘n’ roll poser or even some sort of bad influence on the fallen Cosby daughter, Lisa Bonet. Kravitz’s simple music–at least the hits–are talked about as being a) stadium anthems or “jock rock” b) “butt rock” or c) “dad rock” –basically music for people who are indifferent to music. Maybe the Imagine Dragons or Coldplay of his day. But how did this happen? He is influenced by what some have called the greatest music ever. But in that is also part of my problem. I’m a terrible music critic in that I love Sufjan Stevens, but I’ll press skip 9 times out of 10 when a Led Zeppelin song comes up on shuffle. Yet, some of my fondest musical memories are watching The Song Remains the Same as a teenage with my dad. With as much racism that was a part of the Lenny Kravitz conversation, I wonder just how fair the criticism was. 

    I WISH THAT I COULD FLY. So as we end Black History Month, I want to challenge myself to more musical diversity. It’s more possible now than ever for anyone to make music in any genre. Sure, production costs may limit the sound quality. But the Internet has given artists of all colors, beliefs, and gender identities a platform to build an audience in any genre. Queer Christian singer-songwriters, MAGA rappers, black country singers–it’s all online. Of course it doesn’t make up for the gaps in music history. There were no black Third Eye Blinds, Anberlins, or Sufjan Stevenses.
    There was only old-timey rock ‘n’ roll singer/guitarist Lenny Kravitz, and hip hop/R&B and a slew of white alternative rock groups. 
     

    Rick Beato talking about Autotune: 

  • "All of Me Wants All of You" (Helado Negro Remix) by Sufjan Stevens, Sunday, February 27, 2022

    I’ve talked about how Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Steven‘s 2015 masterpiece, is a quintessential portrait of dealing with grief and forgiveness when I wrote about the first two tracks, “Death with Dignity,” and “Should Have Known Better.” By the third track on the record, “All of Me Wants All of You,” explores grief in a different way from the previous two tracks. As with most songs on the album, “All of Me” appears to be deeply personal to the artist. But being personal doesn’t stop this track’s language from being the most obscured with allusions to geography and possibly an allegory from a little-known Spanish play.

    ALL OF ME THINKS LESS OF YOU. There’s a debate on Lyrics Genius about the meaning of this song, especially surrounding the identity of the only other character mentioned by name in this song, Manelich. Is he the one the song is about? Stevens has written vaguely about homosexual attraction throughout his discography; however, the Christian imagery he uses in his songs have certain listeners saying that the perceived homosexual elements in his music are just elaborate metaphors for Christian allegories. Another interpretation is that song is written from another point of view and that Manelich is Sufjan himself, and he’s referencing a 1896 Catalan play Terra Baixa (Marta of the Lowlands), which was made into a film in 1914. In the play, goatherd Manelich is duped into marrying his master’s daughter, Marta, who was abused by her father. This may account for the exasperated line “Manelich, I feel so used,” as Manelich was used in the master’s twisted plot. 
    YOU CHECKED YOUR MESSAGES WHILE I MASTURBATED.  As one Genius commenter points out, this debate between whether the song is queer or Christian misses the point. Straight or queer, the relationship described in the song seems to fit into what Stevens said in an interview with Pitchfork in 2015. Stevens said,  “In lieu of her death, I felt a desire to be with her, so I felt like abusing drugs and alcohol and fucking around a lot and becoming reckless and hazardous was my way of being intimate with her.” “All of Me” shows the singer in an unhealthy relationship or pattern of relationships he can’t fully commit to, but he wants to at times. Stevens’ grief and self-destruction was unlike anything the singer had done before. Essentially, while his mother was dying, the singer was in his most avant-garde phase with The Age of Adz. A Sufjan Stevens fan podcast called this extravagant tour with all of its costumes and synthesizers a “masturbatory period” in Stevens’ musical career, and possibly his personal life, too. Today’s song helps us to realize that grief can look strange. In our grief we can hurt other people and make horrible choices, romantic or otherwise in our grief. But ultimately, we just want Manelich to hold us and wipe away our tears. Is he capable of that, though?

    Greatest Gift: 


    Carrie & Lowell Tour Live version:

  • "Sick in the Teeth" by Jonezetta ft. David Bazan +Aaron Sprinkle Essentials playlist, Saturday, February 26, 2022

    Labeled fans are still waiting for the Jonezetta story. Several parts have been teased in previous episodes, about how they were one of two general-market bands signed to Tooth & Nail (The Classic Crime being the other). The band’s sound drastically changed between their first and second record, Cruel to Be Young. But today rather than digging into Jonezetta’s story, we’re going to explore the career of Cruel‘s producer, Aaron Sprinkle, as Cruel to Be Young has become a cult classic and an essential piece in the legendary producer’s catalogue. Using just tracks that I’ve written about over the year+ I’ve been blogging, I made a playlist celebrating Aaron Sprinkle’s career.

    IT’S NOTHING PERSONAL. I’m going to post the Spotify playlist here and talk briefly about each track and why it is quintessential Sprinkle. This is an unofficial list. I may be missing some from my blog, and there are certainly other artists such as MxPx, Poor Old Lu, and Gatsby’s American Dream, but I decided to stick with the ones I’ve written about.

  • "The One That Got Away" by Boyce Avenue (Katy Perry Cover) + Under the Covers: Spotify Edition, Friday, February 25, 2022

    Twelve years ago, Katy Perry tied with Michael Jackson for the most #1 Hot 100 songs from a single album, 5 in total. The album’s sixth single, “The One That Got Away,” peaked at #3 on the Hot 100, but topped other Billboard charts, including the Top 40 pop radio-play chart.  Today, we’re hearing from another perspective, a cover by Boyce Avenue. Katy Perry’s music video depicts an unrequited teenage romance that ends in a fiery car crash to the tune of Johnny Cash singing “You Are My Sunshine,” Perry as an old woman visiting the spot where it happened. But the true story of this song probably didn’t end so dramatically.

    IN ANOTHER LIFE, YOU WOULD BE MY GIRL. Wikipedia doesn’t have a “personal life” section of Katy Perry chronicling her dating life. At the time of this single, the singer’s marriage with polarizing actor Russell Brand was about to end. Currently, Perry is engaged to actor Orlando Bloom. But sometime back when Katy Perry was Katy Hudson, a Christian pop singer, and perhaps during her transformation to the star she became, Perry dated Relient K frontman Matt Thiessen. The relationship is said to have lasted about ten years. Many rumors and much speculation among Christian music enthusiasts and Katy Perry fans surround this relationship. While it’s quite possible that the relationship was casual and that neither party was too much affected by it, I’m going to entertain another theory. First, it seems that Matt Thiessen has a commitment problem given that the album Forget and Not Slow Down is a simultaneous apology and a denial of guilt for cheating on his ex-fiancé, Shannon Murphy. Thiessen later secretly married songwriter/producer Emily Wright in 2015 and they divorced in 2018. 


    ALL THIS MONEY CAN’T BUY ME A TIME MACHINE. Whatever ended the relationship between Perry and Thiessen, the two stayed friends, though “not close” friends. Thiessen co-wrote two songs with Perry post-major label debut, “A Cup of Coffee,” a Walmart Exclusive track from One of the Boys (2008) and “Dressin’ Up” from Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection (2012). It’s true that Katy Perry told James Corden that she wrote “The One That Got Away” about Josh Groban, and there may be some truth to that story; however, I don’t buy it completely. While Perry and Groban may have had a short romance, they didn’t meet “the summer after high school,” which seems to match up with her and Thiessen’s timeline if not literally then metaphorically. Of course, we all know that songs work on multiple levels and that while a songwriter may write about one thing but it’s just as true about another thing. Sometimes songs are too personal to reveal the true meaning. Heck, we may never know exactly who “You’re So Vain” is about. Maybe the song really is about Josh Groban. Maybe it’s about a movie Perry watched or about nobody at all. But my guess is that the song is so personal to Perry that she hasn’t told the public who it’s really about.  In the meantime, imagine it appearing, kind of like in the form of this Boyce Avenue cover, maybe with a few more electric guitars, covered by Relient K on Forget and Not Slow Down. 

  • "Ocean" by Lovedrug, Thursday, February 24, 2022

    In December of 2017, Lovedrug released their seventh album Relive. At this point in the band’s career, they maintained some loyal fans, but it seemed that their chances at success were behind them. The next year, lead singer Michael Shepard announced that the band would be ending after releasing their final project, a reworking of their first three albums. The band, however, did release another album in 2020 of original songs,  Turning into Something You Were Never Meant to Be, so die-hard fans may have even more music to look forward to in the future if the band continues to break their promise to be broken up.
    MY HAUNTED WATERS ARE HARDLY CALM. While Lovedrug may or may not be broken up, the second track on Relive is an interesting love song. The narrative is ominous, starting with talking about how the future is open full of possibilities, but “her waves are cold [and] our chances thin.” The speaker respects the force of the ocean, realizing “a generation of gods and men have come before” and “The deadly wave will break at dawn/ You carry mountains and salt the sea.”A question I’m left with is, who is the ocean? Is it her? Is it him? But then I think about the the Hindu proverb, “A drop of water in the ocean.” If the old adage about marriage “two become one” is correct, then in the eyes of God, nature, other people, the couple should be one entity, much like how the ocean is a sum of zillions of drops of water, salt, sand, and the things living in it. The beautiful union of marriage is dark and deep. Love is still mysterious. There are storms that may affect things in the ocean, but it doesn’t harm the ocean. 

    I WANNA BE SEMI-GLOSS. But human relationships, no matter how stable, no matter how perfect, no matter how blessed the situation is, cannot be compared to the ocean. No person can truly be swallowed up by another person, and if that situation happens, there might be spousal abuse. The idea of being a “semi-gloss” finish on the ocean is actually quite romantic both in the common usage today (i.e. flowers and candy) and literarily (i.e. 18th century Romanticism). On one level, the speaker longs to be a part of the other person or part of the institution so much, but he wonders where he fits. The ocean swallows up life in drowning or a hurricane, but it is also a life source for countless creatures we can and can’t see. The speaker could ask to be a wave, but waves are not a part of the ocean, just a movement or a situation. There is the salt and there is the water. Water can evaporate and rain far away from the ocean, and salt will miss its water when the evaporation happens. No, salt and water are just like the cells that die off and no longer are part of a person. What he can be is the glossy finish on the ocean, the semi-reflective color that can be seen in any light. That’s a deep love. No pun intended.

  • “Run Away with Me” by Carly Rae Jepsen, Wednesday, February 23, 2022

    When your first American hit is the second biggest song of the year, how do you follow that up? When your signature song has been called bubblegum and immature, how do you change your image to show that you’re an adult with adult relationships, without getting X-rated? These were two questions Carly Rae Jepsen answered in her follow up to Kiss in E-MO-TION. If those two questions were on the interview, Jespsen would have the job on the merits of her 2015 effort. 


    YOU’RE STUCK IN MY HEAD, STUCK IN MY HEART, STUCK IN MY BODY. Sure, if your introduction to E-MO-TION was the first single “I Really Like You” turned you off as another “Call Me Maybe” so you never clicked “Add to Library” on the rest of the album, that’s an understandable mistake. The meme-able first single arguably is less dynamic in the wake of its massive hit predecessor “Call Me Maybe.” But while critics were divided on “I Really Like You,” E-MO-TION as a whole received mostly favorable reviews, holding a 77% on Metacritic and a 9.0, or “universal acclaim,” according to user reviews. Unfortunately, “I Really Like You” was the most successful single from the album, and that track failed to reach #1 as “Call Me Maybe” had. The album’s other singles didn’t do well on radio. “Run Away with Me“didn’t make the Top 40 in America, though it did better in Europe, and “Your Type” only charted in Canada. Still, critics praised the album, and though “Run Away with Me” didn’t chart well, it made many pop critics year-end lists and even end-of-decade lists. 

    OVER THE WEEKEND, WE COULD TURN THE WORLD TO GOLD. “Run Away with Me” is on my short list of songs–perhaps an upcoming playlist–that the moment I hear it, I know I’m going to have a good day. It’s particularly effective when my bags are packed, and I’m expecting something good to happen. E-MO-TION was the album I listened to in 2016 and 2017 when I was in need of an adventure. When I needed to get away from my on-campus housing and explore or figure out how to do something in Korea. The pandemic, of course, has taken that joy–the unexpected shopping trips or checking out a new cafe or restaurant. So what’s exciting about today? My bags are packed and I’m moving out of my gloomy apartment and moving into a new home–bigger, brighter, and in a quieter neighborhood. I’m dreaming of the furniture I will buy and the logistics I’ll solve this year. But mostly, I’m looking forward to getting unpacked and sitting at a new desk facing the river as I write my blog. Until then, I’ll be hiding out out of town for a few days. 
     

    Behind the scenes: 

    Simlish version from The Sims 4: Get Together:

    Mic The Snare’s musical analysis: 

  • "way it goes" by Hippo Campus, Tuesday, February 22, 2022

    Formed at the Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Hippo Campus consists of bandmates who studied Jazz, while lead vocalist Jake Luppen studied opera. Guitarist Nathan Stocker suggested the name Hippo Campus, after taking a psychology class, but separating the word hippocampus into two words because it sounded sexual. After working as an independent band and touring with acts like Modest Mouse and appearing at Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo, the band recorded their first album landmark with BJ Burton who has worked with Bon Iver.

    GRAB A GUITAR AND JUST MOAN AND SHIT.   The second single from landmark, “way it goes,” is a self-aware hipster anthem about “kids these days.” The setting of the song is Cumberland, Wisconsin in the early spring. The music video visualizes the setting—a party in a cabin of twenty-somethings hanging out, drinking beer, and playing music. There’s also some suspicious Fruit-Loop looking cereal passed around and some trippy light effect on the tree at night. Is that a natural or drug induced phenomenon? The next day the snow starts to melt. The lyrics of the song spend most of the time describing the kids in the song, their fashion conscience–how they’ve got “the Doc Martens on” and their penchant for obscure ’90s records, like the indie rock band Pavement. The kids of the Hippo Campus generation, late millennials in their early 20s when this song came out in 2017, prefer to listen to “easy going shit” in which the singer half-heartedly “grab[s] a guitar and / Just moan[s] and shit[s].” The differences in the music cultures between the pop-punk/emo early millennials and the chill-wave, EDM of late millennials felt drastic. I remember one day around 2013 listening to the Alternative Sirius XM station thinking I didn’t know any of the groups that were playing. I felt old and irrelevant. 

    WE’RE WEIRD, BUT LORD KNOWS WE’RE TRYING. I still think that there’s an “older brother” appeal to music when we first start listening to the radio or finding bands we really like. The boys in the band are cool and we want to be like them. They dictate our sense of fashion, how we see the world. But then you get be 25 and your older brothers in the band have called it quits. They’ve gotten “real jobs” and so should you. And the last thing you want to do is listen to your younger brothers band. Discovering new music in high school and college felt effortless, but at some point, it starts to be hard work, and there’s just too much of it. That was me from 25-30 something, which made me miss out on a lot of great music. It’s also caused me to try to catch up, too. Believe me, there are some days when the last thing I want to do is listen to any music, let alone some of the new kids’ stuff. But there is a reason I chose music out of all other subjects to blog about daily, mainly that a song can help me understand the world in a way that no other medium can. YouTube’s algorithm knows what kind of music I will click on, so after watching a quarantine concert by COIN, I was recommended several full-length concerts by Hippo Campus. And that’s how I started listening to Hippo Campus. There’s plenty of other stories about how I started listening to younger artists, how I started respecting younger voices. Ultimately, isn’t that life? Don’t we have to stop living under our older siblings’ shadows and start learning from those younger than us? 

  • “Viva la Vida” by Coldplay, Monday, February 21, 2022























    My musical history started with hymns and classical music playing in the house, and sometimes classic and alternative rock in the garage. After going back to church, my mom stopped listening to secular music, well contemporary secular music, and tried to convince me that rock music was evil when I started liking the sound of it. Little by little, she started listening to modern music–first CCM, especially Michael W. Smith‘s This Is Your Time album because of the bagpipes. Then she started listening to music she grew up with, the soundtrack to her teenage rebellion. These were the smooth pop songs of Hall & Oats and Elton John and some rock bands like Boston and Journey.


    MY MISSIONARIES IN A FOREIGN FIELD. All of these songs’ artists could be heard on local light rock radio stations along with contemporary hits by Kelly Clarkson, Train, and of course Coldplay. When my mom heard “Viva la Vida,” she loved it and bought the album. Soon, on long trips, the CD rotation included greatest hits compilations by The Bee Gees, Elton John, Hall & Oats, and 2008’s Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends by Coldplay. At first, it was a refreshing change. Sure, this was the time when Coldplay was getting too big for music snobs who were questioning their musicality and whether or not they were a rock band or just a commercial pop act. I was, and still am, quick to defend Coldplay, though not as a rock band, but as what a big budget can do with some of the best producers. My mom was slow to adapt to the band’s prior or subsequent albums, but Coldplay made her less resistant when I was driving and I slipped in a Copeland record. Today’s my mom’s birthday, so I wanted to revisit the eleven tracks on the original June 12, 2008-released standard edition of  Viva la Vida. 


    Viva la Vida by Frida Kahlo

























    FOR SOME REASON I CAN’T EXPLAIN, I KNOW SAINT PETER WON’T CALL MY NAME. One thing I appreciated about Coldplay’s 2008 album was the thought that went into the concept. While I was hesitant to call it a rock album due to the lack of distorted guitar-driven songs, I also didn’t think it fit with the disposable nature of a hedonistic pop record. The single “Viva la Vida,” for example was inspired by the painting of the same name by Mexican painter Frida Kahlo when she was suffering from health problems. The bold expression in her painting inspired lead singer Chris Martin. The song “Viva la Vida” mixes historical and biblical allusions to tell the story of a king who has lost his kingdom and now roams the streets he used to rule. Nothing is particularly sad about this song. Along with the optimism in the Kahlo painting, the message seems to be to make the best out of a bad situation. Like with “Viva la Vida,” I feel that there’s a classical quality reacting to and even appreciating romanticism–the forms must be kept. Nothing is overly emotional, just factual. Maybe it’s the emotional restraint of Coldplay that keeps them from being loved by music snobs who prefer the garage band indie rockers or emo/goth kids. Coldplay is, well, boring if you don’t step back and try to appreciate the simple, straight brushstrokes.

  • “Dismantle.Repair.” by Anberlin, Sunday, February 20, 2022

    Fifteen years ago today on a two-hour break between classes in community college, I went to Walmart on the rare chance that a Tooth & Nail CD would be in stock. Not only was it in stock, but both the standard and deluxe edition of Cities were placed in the main aisle of CDs: the a section of the Pop/Rock/R&B aisle. I eagerly shelled out the $15.99 for the deluxe edition, which had a darker cover, three bonus tracks, and a 30-minute making of the album DVD. I popped in the CD into my 1991 Toyota Corolla to hear “(Debut)” and by the time I made it out of the parking lot, the album’s second track “Godspeed” had me speeding back to school.


    DIDN’T WANT ANY PROMISES. The truth was, though, that I had already listened to the album, except for the final track, “(*Fin),” on MySpace a week before the album hit stores. The band had released singles before the album preview. “A Whisper & a Clamor” was played on Christian Rock radio, “Godspeed” was on PureVolume and MySpace. They also released “Dismantle.Repair.” at some point in 2006 or early 2007. And though I don’t remember the exact, I do remember it was a warmish day and I was at work trying to access my MySpace account on an excruciatingly slow DSL connection on an ancient computer, only to be interrupted by a phone call that kind of changed my life. But that’s a story for another day. The lyrics of “Dismantle.Repair.” stuck in my head, a simultaneous hope of genuine change and the doubt that people who say they’re going to change are just bullshitting themselves and everyone else. The charged lyrics made me wonder who the song was about and who was wrong in the relationship? Was it the other person? Was it Stephen Christian? And who was wrong in my situation?

    ONE LAST GLANCE FROM A TAXI CAB. Two years ago Stephen Christian talked with American Songwriter about “Dismantle.Repair.” The article pointed out as all Anberlin fans know, “Dismantle.Repair.” is one of the band’s concert staples, despite it never receiving radio play (Christian or Alternative Rock) or having a music video. In fact, even though the band recorded four albums after Cities, songs from Cities and their second album Never Take Friendship Personal appeared in their set lists at a similar proportion to the album they were actively promoting. In the interview with American Songwriter, Christian breaks the seemingly minor detail of the song’s title and its deliberate use of punctuation. He says: “With ‘Dismantle. Repair.’: a dismantle period is a process and it’s about – that song is about – breaking down what you think you know about yourself and then repairing it all again and coming back to life and transforming ideologies and philosophies.” He goes on to give examples about when this dismantlement and reparation can happen:

            [T]here’s a lot of moments in life that afford us that. Moments like, when we
            leave to go to college and we’re not under our parents’ wing – who are we going to
            become? Or, when we move to a new city by ourselves. You know, it’s just us
            against this new world; that’s another moment. A death in the family, a
            monumental birthday, the birth of a child: all of these [occasions] are life giving us
            moments to end the sentence, to stop right there and break it all down and build it
            exactly how we want it.

    Every day we’re given new opportunities to become the person we want to be. Every major change happens and we can take the opportunity to be a better version of ourselves. But sometimes there’s the uncomfortable process of tearing the old structure apart. I’m about to start a new school year, and the mistakes I’ve made as a teacher can be rectified with a fresh perspective. I’m about to move into a new apartment in a new neighborhood, and it’s an opportunity to try something new. It’s been an uncomfortable process of dismantlement. A lot was out of my control. But I have the tools to repair. And repair I must.

    Studio version:

    Live at Williamsburg acoustic tour recording:

     

  • "Meet You There" by Augustana, Saturday, February 19, 2022

    Best known for their hit, “Boston,” Augustana is a band whose members met at Greenville University in Illinois, where bands Jars of Clay and Paper Route also formed. Following up their debut album, All the Stars and Boulevards, the band released Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt in April of 2008. The lead single, “Sweet and Low” didn’t chart as high as “Boston,” and the band started fading into obscurity. The band’s next album, their self-titled, was praised by American Songwriter, but by their fourth record, Life Imitating Life, only lead singer Dan Layus remained in the band. 

    I’LL DRIVE ALL NIGHT. There’s an energy to “Meet You There with Me” that made me think for years that it’s all sunshine and roadtrips with the one you love. But the Americana pop-rock song talks more about the ups and downs of a relationship between people who love each other, but ultimately can’t understand each other. The hope is that the singer will “meet [his partner] there someday.” The song could also be about the hardships of keeping a stable relationship between a man in a touring band and a girl back home. When Layus sings, “You probably only know my voice from a goddam microphone,” listeners may hear a hint of sarcasm. Because of the touring schedule of a band with a few radio hits, the closest that friends and a girlfriend can get to the band is by hearing them on the radio. Having written about music for three years and having been listening to the stories of touring bands for many more years than that the theme that Layus sings about is quite common. It causes the breaking up of many bands. It may have been the reason that Layus is now the only member of Augustana, and the fact that they don’t put out much music anymore. 

    IT’S A BACKSTABBING WORLD, HONEY.  After their radio hit season, Augustana toured, mostly opening for groups slightly out of their genre. They opened for The [Dixie] Chicks and One Direction. Laysus, like many career band members, seems to have found a balance, and that solution spelled out the end of Augustana as a collaborative project. There haven’t been any Augustana records since Life Imitating Life, though they released the single “Remedy” earlier this year. Laysus settled down, marrying and having four daughters. After Augustana’s hiatus, Laysus began a country music career, which is pretty common for career rock musicians who settle down around Nashville. Similar to Andrew McMahon, Laysus seemed to outgrow the Augustana moniker and simply became a solo artist, at least for a while. But with a little over 1,000 monthly listeners on Spotify for Laysus’s solo project and with nearly 700,000 monthly Augustana listeners, it seems to make more sense for Laysus to draw on the support from Augustana fans. What that will sound like is really up to Laysus.