Mixtapemotions

  • “Gold Teeth” by HIGHS, Wednesday, November 30, 2022

     

    HIGHS is an indie rock quartet from Toronto, Canada. The band released a self-titled EP in 2014 and a full-length record in 2016 titled Dazzle Camouflage. The band released a single in 2021, but has been quiet since then. The band’s only LP so far has received critical praise from the few critics that have reviewed the record. The record was produced by Depeche Mode and Foals producer Luke Smith, causing some reviewers to draw a comparison between HIGHS and the latter British indie rock group. HIGHS’ Spotify page features a picture of a drum set, which seems to be apropos due to the band’s interesting irregular drum beats in otherwise chill songs. 


    YOU’RE NEVER GONNA GET IT RIGHT. Taking its name from an artistic technique in nature and implemented by the British Admiralty during World War I, Dazzle Camouflage is an engaging album, but its not one that hits all at once. I don’t remember where I first heard it, but I’d imagine that the album found its way into my library after I Shazamed one of the tracks playing in a coffee shop. It’s an album that I forgot about, though. As I listened back to the album today, many of the songs sounded familiar, though I don’t think I spent a lot of time with it before. “Gold Teeth” is the final track on the record. It’s not the lyrics that make the track stand out. In fact the lyrics seem to be camouflaged under the guitars, drums, bass, and even the vocal layering as kind of dazzle to make whatever the message of the song hidden in plain sight. Camouflage naturally occurs in nature to distract predators by making prey nearly invisible. When we think of camouflage, we usually picture dark colors or earth tones; however, sometimes camouflage mesmerizing predators. The predator is so distracted by the aesthetics of the camouflage that it naturally moves on.
    YOU CAN’T BREAK ME UP. I don’t know if “Gold Teeth” necessarily has an esoteric meaning to the band listeners who have taken the time to break it apart. But the title of the album got me thinking about the “Dazzle Camouflage” music uses to enter our lives. If you read my blog, you probably spend at least some time most days listening to music. In other words, you seek it out, whether on a commute, in the office, walking down the street, while cleaning or reading a book, or even taking some time at home to sit and listen. But music penetrates our lives through other forms of entertainment–tv shows, advertisements, the old man in the park who doesn’t use headphones, at the grocery store, in a video game, or in a cafe. Often this music means nothing to us. It’s music not tailored to your personal tastes and reached a threshold for mass consumption, a cliché in a film depicting something –stereotypical ’70s high school, Vietnam War scene, etc. But sometimes a song in those situations dazzles you. It’s that one track in a cafe that pulls you away from your book or a conversation and you wonder who sings this song. Still, you’re probably not going to figure out the meaning of the lyrics at first. No, that will take some time at home with headphones and even then you may be hearing fragments, proscribing your own meaning to the lyrics. Sometimes it takes years to know the message that was there all along in front of you.

  • "Amy, I" by Jack's Mannequin, Tuesday, November 29, 2022 (repost)
























    Following the traumatic experience of surviving cancer between Jack’s Mannequin‘s first album (Everything in Transit) and second album (The Glass Passenger), lead singer Andrew McMahon decided to write about the people and things that he appreciated the most. The singer talks about deciding on the name for the project quite early in the album’s production process in the podcast Meet the Musician. People and Things topped the Alternative Albums chart, but the lead single, “My Thoughts Racing,” only peaked at #43 on the Rock Digital Sales chart. The album was released in October 2011, but by February 2012, McMahon publicly discussed dropping the band’s name. “I foresee an end to the usage of that name. I don’t know that it’s doing what it used to for me,” he told Lehigh Valley Music. To McMahon, he wanted to start fresh. Healthy, married, and becoming a father, the concept of Jack that McMahon had created in his early 20s was less relevant to the singer-songwriter. Thus, he started releasing music under Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness.

    ANOTHER LONG WINTER, TRYING TO FIGHT THIS FREEZE. I listened to People and Things during my last semester of college, during my hellish student teaching experience. It was my album for the car, mainly driving home to North Carolina through the Tennessee mountains during Thanksgiving and Christmas. Jack’s Mannequin’s first record was basically piano-pop-punk. Their second album was a more refined piano-pop sound. But People and Things felt like it was influenced by ‘70s piano rock. Songs like “Amelia Jean” and “Amy, I” are a beautiful marriage between piano and guitar. Three songs on People were from songwriting sessions with Relient K’s Matt Thiessen. The Californian McMahon was spending time in Nashville in the wintertime. Staying at Thiessen’s house after a night of drinking, he got out of bed, his bare feet touching the cold, creaky wooden floor. He looked outside and the opening line came to him: “Snow on the ground in Tennessee.” The line stuck with him all day as he and Thiessen began writing about a relationship that had grown cold. 


    I CAN HEAR YOUR BARE FEET ON MY BEDROOM FLOOR. A Tennessee winter is cold, especially for a Southern Californian. While I’ve never spent any time in Nashville, Chattanooga got pretty damn cold. And I’m from New York. There’s not always much snow, but the wind from the open spaces leaves a bitter feeling in the bones.  I don’t remember feeling that cold in New York even when there were five feet of snow on the ground. Just keep the fire burning. Just keep the path to the woodshed plowed. Just dress in snow pants, boots, and several layers. In the South, we don’t do that. A leather jacket and a scarf will do, maybe a beanie. The lyrics of “Amy, I” made me think about something tragic happening when I first listened to the lyrics. Did Amy die by falling into the lake? McMahon, however, writes this song as a metaphor for coldness between two people. The title “Amy, I” is a trailing-off expression. Is the speaker sorry? What is he trying to say? What is preventing him from saying it? On December 1, the winter is just around the corner. There’s a lot of uncertainty I’m facing with the coming year, and we all need something or someone to hold onto. We need someone to hold onto us. Otherwise, we plunge into a lake that’s cracking under our feet.




     

  • “Blame It on Me” by George Ezra, Monday, November 28, 2022 (warning: more explicit language than usual)

     

    Wanted on Voyage was a huge debut record for George Ezra internationally. One of the biggest reasons for Ezra’s success in 2014 was that the album’s lyrics resonate with Europeans as the English singer-songwriter includes many details of specific places from his first solo journey across Europe. The first song on the record, though, “Blame It on Me,” starts at home, in Ezra’s case Bristol, England, after just moving there. He told In Style, “I was saddled with student loans, and I realized there were so many opportunities to play music, so unless I got busy, I could only blame myself.”
    WE FOUND OURSELVES SOME TREASURE AND THREW IT ALL AWAY. The music video for “Blame It on Me” shows George Ezra having a very bad day. The singer is a magnet for accidents and the ill-will of others. Hit, tackled, run over, and shot at by the end of the video as well as being the victim of a pesky raincloud that follows only Ezra as he “follows the yellow brick road,” Ezra’s performance in the video certainly seems like hyperbole. Viewers begin to wonder what will happen next? A butcher running with a machete? A pram with a baby wielding a bazooka? But who hasn’t felt that they’ve been through a day like that, even if nothing that traumatic happened? Some days you feel like you can’t catch a break– a near car accident on the way to work, a project that seems to be all-consuming, and a misunderstanding with a colleague make the day seem like its doomed. Some days, no mater how you try to redeem them only become more and more cursed. You don’t necessarily need to be negative about the fact the day is cursed; just go back to bed and try again in the morning. 


    WHEN I DANCE ALONE AND THE SUN’S BLEEDING DOWN. Yesterday was one of those days. First a notification from work, then a canceled plan, then a train delayed for an hour and a half, some heavy bags, a closed restaurant, a crappy egg salad sandwich at Starbucks—nothing was going my way. I’m usually a pretty go-with-the-flow person, but some situations seem to test my patience, like an invisible hand is tickling at my sanity. I sat in Starbucks fuming. I thought this is what privilege feels like. All the things that I was annoyed about seemed trivial in the greater scheme of the world. Me getting home an hour and a half earlier didn’t matter in the greater scheme of my life or in the universe. The dishes and laundry could wait until the next day. There were so many things that could be worse. I could be without a job, tossed from a company without a golden parachute. The end of the student loan moratorium could be this month. I could have a rare disease like viral hemorrhagic fever. Thinking about all the hard times that have befallen on my friends and family this year and how things have not necessarily been bad but just annoying for made me feel quite selfish. But this morning, having to go in early and working hard while a coworker took on none of the workload made me feel resentful. It’s not great, but before going into work, I decided to have a “Fucksgiving.” I certainly have a lot to be grateful for, but I realized that my gratitude list had shrunk, so I decided to say my “Fuck yous” out loud. I started with the most delicious ones: the people who gave me the most grief, but I moved on to friends and family. I said “Fuck you” to everyone who had been giving me stress and a sorry to them if I still liked that person and I didn’t think that their situation was their fault. Of course there were no messages sent. But saying it out loud relieved stress that had been building up. And after saying my “fucks,” I stopped thinking about myself and about how those friends, family members, and even my partner were all just victims of other people or situations fucking them up. It’s not always possible, nor is it their job to stop the fucked up situations from hitting me. So I went to work calmer than I was and waded through fuck ups with my head just a little less fucked up by the inconveniences and realized that they weren’t targeting me. I apologize for the gratuitous language. But it was so cathartic. 


    lyric video:

  • "The Shade" by Metric (Partial Repost), Sunday, November 27, 2022

    Metric isn’t a household name for alternative rock music, even though they have been around forever. They had some success with their fourth album, Fantasies, and they saw Top 20 singles in the U.S. Alternative Rock charts, but mostly the band has been confined to the Canadian charts. Lead singer Emily Haines, though, is an American-Canadian duel citizen, born to American parents in New Delhi, where her mother started a school. Haines collaborated with fellow indie rock band Broken Social Scene, singing on several albums, though Metric was her main gig. Metric’s music varies from album to album both thematically and musically. Haines often writes about feminism, war, and dreams. On their sixth album Pagans in Vegas, the music is synth-heavy, taking influence on British New Wavers. 


    I’M FOLLOWING THE SUN THAT’S SETTING IN THE WEST. Speaking about the first single from Pagans in Vegas, “The Shade,” Emily Haines wrote: “When you feel yourself becoming a coward, the best thing to do is force yourself to get out of bed and be willing to feel everything, including rejection and confusion, all over again.” The song and video seem to have a dual message. The first is what Haines writes about courage to succeed. The other theme is a little more implicit. The video has many images including beautiful scenes of nature, but there are some off-putting images as well. There are the melting ice caps, a scene of civil unrest, an overflowing landfill, massive flooding, and finally a skeleton. There are subtle reminders of climate change and the impact of humans who “want it all.” As a rock mid-tier rock band, Metric may feel frustrated that they aren’t as successful as the American rock bands. The band mostly opens for the big names like Paramore, Imagine Dragons, Arcade Fire, and the 1975, to name a few. At some point, it seems like there should be some payoff for being faithful in the scene. Maybe when the guitarist burns the “Hot 100 Bored” songs magazine, this is showing frustration at the band’s limited success on the American charts. Although there are more and more problems (flooding) there are new technological advancements (the robot arm), constantly shifting our attention away from the crisis at hand. When the music video shows Hollywood and Haines bathing on the roof with a glass of champagne, we get an idea about the decadence that this rock band is due. Yet, this decadence plays a role in destroying the planet.

    WE GOT REWARDED, WE GOT REFUSED. One of the themes of “The Shade” is manifest destiny, a popular idea in the nineteenth century as the United States set its eyes upon new territories in which to expand. But what was just once a political philosophy expanded into a personal one. Today, manifestation is a popular practice. Manifestation is a practice of meditating upon something a person truly desires, and if followed correctly, is said to lead to obtaining whatever that thing is. But what many of us products of manifest destiny rarely think about is that expansion for me means taking from you. The first time I thought about this was in my World Geography class when reading the book The Paradox of Plenty. One of the questions asked in class was how many earths would we need if everyone—then 6.8 billion, not today’s 8 billion—lived like me? Years later I wondered what if everyone lived like Donald Trump or a Kardashian or even like a celebrity I like such as Taylor Swift? What if everyone lived as I want to live?



  • “Lift Me Up” (Far Away) by The Benjamin Gate, Saturday, November 26, 2022

    The Benjamin Gate was a band signed to ForeFront Records between 2001 and 2003. The band formed in 1998 in Port Elizabeth and took their name from one of the original entrances to the Biblical city of ancient Jerusalem and also named the band as a tribute to their friend who had died in a traffic accident, Ben Herbert. The band had some success in the burgeoning field of alternative Christian rock. They released two records, 2001’s [“untitled”] and 2002’s Contact, but by 2003 the band broke up after lead singer Adrienne Liesching’s engagement to fellow Christian Rocker Jeremy Camp. 

    SEEING THROUGH A HOLE IN TIME. The Benjamin Gate was a female-fronted Christian Rock band that showed much potential for the future of the genre. Influenced by bands like Garbage and Linkin Park, the band arrived at an interesting time when music was getting heavier, more electronic, and blending pop and hard rock together. The band’s first record was distinctly Christian Rock, with the lead single declaring “Jesus’ love is All Over Me.” The Christian Rock band’s lyrics on Contact, though, aren’t necessarily always spiritual. Today’s song  “Lift Me Up,” is a song about missing family back in the band’s home country of South Africa while forging a new life in America. For Liesching, however, it wasn’t just about band life and touring, but romance that split her heart between family in South Africa and an muscular American Christian singer with a heartbreaking backstory of losing his first wife a year after their marriage to ovarian cancer. Despite Liesching’s change of passion from band life to home life raising three children with Camp, many fans of The Benjamin Gate resentfully joke about how Jeremy Camp broke up the band. 

    EVERY DAY AWAY IS EASY TO IGNORE. While most of the band members of The Benjamin Gate returned to South Africa, Adrienne Liesching married Jeremy Camp and  released two solo records on BEC Recordings under the moniker Adie. Neither record is on Spotify. She performs with her husband and has appeared on a John Rueben song but she and her former band have mostly faded into Christian Rock obscurity.  I chose “Lift Me Up” for several reasons. I think it warrants a discussion—though not today—about female Christian artists giving up careers to focus on their families. It’s the nostalgia for forgotten musical gems in my teens that makes me think about how life has turned out. It’s the “where are they now” conversation with my sister about teachers and students from our high school that makes me wonder about some of the bands we listened to. But mostly it has to do with the feeling of being torn between two continents. It’s about being unable to celebrate with family because my vacation schedule is completely different. It’s about the extended family I’m not sure when I can see again. It was  Thanksgiving this week and it hurt less if I forgot about it. So that’s my whining about the holiday.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • "World" (The Price of Love) by New Order, Friday, November 25, 2022 (repost)

    Republic was the end of an era for New Order. The band’s popularity was at its peak after scoring hits in America even outside of the dance hall. But it was an album that the band didn’t want to make. According to then-bassist Peter Hook, the band’s music club in Manchester, The Haçienda, was in dire financial straits, and the band’s record label Factory Records threatened to go bankrupt. The band members’ funds were tied up in Factory Record and the finances of the club were also entwined. However, bassist Hook and lead singer Bernard Sumner were “at the point in the relationship where you hate each other’s stinking guts.”  

    BREAKING IS A CRIME. Republic was released in 1993 and charted the best of all New Order’s albums on the Billboard album charts. The band went on a five-year hiatus after playing the Reading Festival in August, and New Order’s millennial records were nothing like the height of their popularity in the late ‘80s to early ‘90s.  The album artwork for Republic has been interpreted in several ways. Depicting a house on fire on the left-half of the cover and beach holiday on the right half, critics have interpreted the artwork to be a statement about the forest fires in California or the race riots in Los Angelos in 1992. The couple on the beach is blissfully unaware that their house burns while they are enjoying their vacation. Other critics have pointed out that the cover draws a similarity between modern decadence and the burning and collapse of the Roman Empire, a republic that became corrupted as it forgot its ideals. And yet others interpret the artwork along with many of the songs on Republic as a dig at their record label for forcing the band to record a record they didn’t want to write and for forcing a dysfunctional band to work together.

    HEAR ME TALK, BUT NEVER SPEAK. In case you’ve missed it the world is constantly in crisis. New Order’s “World,” their penultimate song before a lengthy hiatus is that topic. What’s the problem? Love is a commodity on the markets, but apparently, it’s a non-renewable resource.  Although it’s a thinly-clad metaphor for prostitution, the song also reminds us that love for mankind is bought and sold, and that resource might be used up. The year is 1992. George W. Bush is in office. The Cold War had ended and with it many problems had come to a close. But just as one war finishes others begin. Bosnia. The Rwandan genocide. Blame of the “other” for the economy. David Koresh and Timothy McVeigh. Clinton’s impeachment. Yes, I’m zooming ahead over the decade. All of these were things I heard in the background of my childhood. Given all of those images of the ‘90s in a time that was interpreted at church to be apocalyptic (and the title of the song: “World” inserted between the band’s name New Order isn’t lost on me), I think about how a lack of love and empathy is the world’s primary problem. 

    Read the lyrics on Genius.


  • "Typecast" by Hidden Hospitals, Thursday, November 24, 2022 (updated repost)

    Last March, I wrote about the track that comes directly before “Typecast” on Hidden Hospitals‘ 2018 album Liars,  “Pulling Teeth.” Liars is the second LP by the Chicago-based progressive rock band. Singer Dave Raymond started in a short-band called League in 2004 before joining a band called Damiera, a math-rock band which evolved into another band called Kiss Kiss. Finally in 2011, with member changes, Hidden Hospitals was ready to release their debut EP. The band’s co-founder, guitarist Steve Downs departed before the band recorded Liars. With only Raymond left on guitar, the band experimented with synthesizers throughout the record. 

    TELL ME A STORY I’VE HEARD BEFORE.  On the Little Fires podcast Dave Raymond explained some of the craft behind his lyrics and writing process. Raymond’s discussion of rock music is perhaps the best description of the visceral feelings listeners get when listing to Hidden Hospitals. He says: “It ain’t leather jackets and ripped jeans. It isn’t sex and f–king slamming whiskey, it’s just saying yes . . . whatever’s coming at me is going right through me or over me. That’s f–king rock ‘n’ roll.” Raymond talks about working with J. Hall, producer and lead vocalist for the Helmet-influenced Hundred Years War, and about how Weezer‘s Blue Album changed his life musically, and ultimately switched his genre preference from Hip-Hop to rock and even helped him listen to The Beatles through the context of Weezer. Speaking of “Typecast,” Raymond described the humorous lyrics as being “what my ego says I am.” In psychological terms, though, it’s actually the id carrying out these fantasies while the ego is moderating the life full of exploring a destructive self-serving addiction.
    KICKING A DEAD HORSE THAT KICKS BACK. “Typecast” picks up the pace from “Pulling Teeth,” which is an engaging song too. The heavy guitar of “Typecast” and the somewhat irregular drumming sound like they are playing competing rhythms, yet somehow when Raymond sings his quiet lyrics within the layers of sound, the song seems to even out. Like “Pulling Teeth,” “Typecast” works in several metaphors, clichés, and mental images that take a bit of listening to make sense. The meaning of the term typecast refers to actors who are only cast as a particular role, often because of their excellence portraying that role or the actor’s performance is so culturally linked to that role, the actor cannot be cast in any other role. However, the song seems to do little with acting, but rather deals with type-casted person, giving into their unadulterated self. What we have instead is a singer who lucidly tell his faults as a lover. The tone of the song is so sharp and biting that it seems that actually the partner of this lover or even an outside perspective is pretending to be the singer. “Typecast” sets up a truly toxic relationship in which the speaker wants control to the point where he even controls the level of spontaneity his lover is allowed to bestow. He says, “A scripted romance is half full of heart.” He tells his lover to “Tell [him] a story [he’s] heard before / One where [he] knows the ending.” The lover is instructed: “Show me the moves I’ve loved you for, but nothing else.” The singer can’t help but admit that “I’ll leave us broke[n] beyond compare / Terrorize your safest thoughts / I’m not the one you think you love.”

  • “Balconies” by Paper Route, Wednesday, November 23, 2022 (repost)

    Listening to Paper Route makes me wonder, what if Coldplay, after recording X & Y had continued making electronic music and honed in on their lyrics. Paper Route has a solid pop-rock band, on par with any of their contemporaries (i.e. OneRepublic, Coldplay), but their somewhat eccentric fidelity to their craft, recording their albums themselves in old Tennessee mansions to let the natural acoustics reverberate on the record, had cemented them as an indie rock band. “Balconies” was kind of Paper Route’s first and last hit. The band’s music had been featured in movies and television shows, but “Balconies” got them a late-night performance slot on Seth Meyers. As one of the most obvious hits from their third album, Real Emotion, the song was released to radio but didn’t do too well on the charts. After touring to support the album, the band went on “an indefinite hiatus.” However, as the band has had long gaps between albums, I wonder if JT Daly and Chad Howat will assemble a group of musicians together for album number 4. 

    RAISE YOUR ARMS AND HOLD WHAT YOU CAN’T REPLACE. “Balconies” uses several mixed metaphors to convey a message about being unable to hold it together. The singer claims “that the simple things [he] can’t get right” and he “know[s] that it’s [his] fault,” yet he offers to comfort the listener: “You don’t have to speak/ you can just sleep while I drive.” He talks about the difficulties he faces: “For every wound, there’s a hill to climb” and that he has a “hunting heart trying to survive.” This song can draw an obvious connection to Daly’s lyrical theme of wrestling with God and religion, but it also seems to be about his other theme, struggles with romantic relationships. If it’s the first option, the singer is letting God down in the first verse, and in the second God is offering comfort. I don’t like how the speaker shifts so much in that interpretation, so I think the song is about showing support for a loved when you both are having a hard time. The minor key keyboard synth riff that is repeated throughout the song sounds like rain, and the subject matter of the song matches with the dreary sounds of the song.

    IF I’M IN YOUR DREAMS, AM I WHAT YOU WANT TO FIND? “Balconies” is certainly not Paper Route’s lyrical masterpiece, but it is a comforting, uplifting song. It was a perfect song of the day because of the bleak weather we’ve been having lately. Yesterday it cleared up for a day only to start raining again today. Whenever I hear “Balconies” on days like today, I’m transported back to my childhood on a boring, rainy day. My mom ran the dryer and folded the laundry and as I got older I folded the laundry. She’s watching some late afternoon talk show and I’m watching it too because there’s nothing else to do. I’m sitting on the couch, warm towels just out of the dryer are covering me, and I feel the warmth of the afternoon laundry. Later mom announces it’s boxed macaroni and cheese for dinner. That was pretty typical food when growing up and there was nothing special about it, but on boring days like today, mac and cheese is kind of a highlight. I can’t fully understand the struggles of my parents trying to feed three kids on a single income. I don’t know what their daily hopes and fears were. I was sheltered from it. I can look back fondly on those boring, rainy afternoons when I didn’t have to worry about money or not being loved by my parents. I know that this is not true of every family, so I’m thankful for the privilege that I had for that time. I think “Balconies” taps into that human emotion of a loved one saying, “Don’t worry about it and let carry your burden for a bit.” It may be just a box of macaroni and cheese, and we may have to worry about our nutrition later, but you won’t be hungry. And sometimes that’s what you need.

    Music Video: 
    Seth Meyers Performance:

    Album Release Live Acoustic Performance:

  • “Many Funerals” by Eisley (partial repost), Tuesday, November 22, 2022 (trigger warning: discussion of a hate group and some explicit language regarding sexuality)

     

    I’ve talked about Eisley, the named-for-Star-Wars sister/cousin band from Tyler, Texas. Their major-label debut garnered indie cred, but due to some issues in the music industry, the band’s label de-prioritized their sophomore release, delaying it almost a year from its recording and mastering. As for promotion, the record label pulled radio support as they weren’t sure which format to market the band and canceled plans for a second music video to the band’s only non-radio single “Invasions” and never released the video for today’s song, “Many Funerals.” Eisely can be added to the list of Christian-adjacent bands that were failed by major labels. Some of these groups saw initial success, whether radio, video, or touring, but ultimately they were left abandoned by the major label. Although RadioU plays some of their latest singles, by the end the Room Noises cycle, Eisley’s creative path didn’t have them marketed to the Christian rock format, which is what happened to groups like Mae, Copeland, and The Juliana Theory.

    YOUNG AND AGILE, SEASIDE BORN. The eerie, somewhat passé lyrics of “Many Funerals” make the listener imagine a dark sea-side setting, that perhaps is set in the past. The lyrical content is fictional. The Dupree parents are still alive (and active on Instagram), and the Dupree children were born in a landlocked county in Northeast Texas. There’s not much information online about Eisley’s comments on the song, so listeners are left to guess what it’s about. The listener, the person the song seems to be addressing, seems also to have died by suicide. Sherri sings, “How could you have left us here? You had your friends, you had us, goodbye.” It could also be blaming the person for a sickness or accident that person had no control over, which sometimes happens when someone dies. No matter the cause of death, “Many Funerals” is a gloomy album opener. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying categorizes stages of grief humans had been unconsciously practicing for millennia. Art–be it literature, painting, song, or dramatization–helps us as a species reconcile with our own mortality. We can see others in their grieving processes. However, we cannot weigh the grief of individuals in the past, when death was much more prevalent, nor can we weigh the grief of others in the present, in a time when statistically we are living longer, despite the cancers, heart disease, car accidents, and gun violence. One funeral is one too many. Eventually one day, the funeral will be yours if it’s not mine first. 

    I’M CONTENT TO LIE PEACEFULLY. As music takes on a meaning beyond its original intent, I will again hijack this song to use it as my own soapbox in order to address the senseless killing at a night club in Colorado Springs. I first saw that there was another shooting when I was on Instagram. Then I saw it on the news. It turned out it was an LGBTQ+ club. It turns out it was in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which so happens to be the home of moral majority bulwark Focus on the Family. It’s the state where gun-loving, homophobic far-right candidate Lauren Boebert barely clinched a second term. Boebert other anti-LGBTQ+ politicians and public figures have offered condolences online, but it’s easy to question their sincerity when Boebert and company have spent their entire career attacking LGBTQ+ people and organizations and bolstering gun rights. Since I wrote about Westboro Baptist Church on Sunday, I wanted to understand the group through a firsthand experience so I found a podcast, an interview with the current pastor, Timothy Phelps, son of founder Fred Phelps, Sr., on the Pastor with No Answers Podcast. I thought that host Joey Svendsen balanced the interview well by allowing Phelps to talk about his beliefs and pushing back on them in a respectful way. That being said, I don’t necessarily recommend listening to this interview, particularly if you struggle with issues of depression especially regarding your sexuality or if you have past religious trauma. What I took away from listening to the interview was that due to the church’s strong belief in Calvinist pre-destination and their view that only the most faithful to the letter of God’s law (as understood by Westboro Baptist Church’s teachings) will be saved. Everyone else is awaiting to be burned for eternity, and somehow “the kindling wood,” bundles of sticks, or faggots,  is what God hates the most. And while Boebert and other right-wing groups may not belong to Westboro Baptist Church, they all belong to churches that think very similar things about gay people–that they are doomed to burn for eternity. But until then, what’s the far right’s solution? Restrict rights? Conversion camps? Mock and insult publicly? Propose solutions like building a wall and trapping all the gays in to not be able to reproduce? Influence a political genocide? Or preach and brainwash until you get a suicide? Nope the fundamentalism secretly and not so secretly wishes us all dead. And I’m sick of questioning my right to exist.


  • "Spiders" by Lovedrug, Monday, November 21, 2022 (repost)














    First appearing in 2001, Lovedrug released their eponymous EP in 2002 and their  Rocknroll EP in 2004 before releasing their debut record, Pretend You’re Alive, in June 2004. Selling over 20,000 records soon after the record was released, the band was signed to Columbia Records, and their song “Spiders” was intended to be marketed as a radio hit. But rock star grandeur was never really in Lovedrug’s reach, as the label dropped the band in the middle of restructuring. Lovedrug was a hard-working band, touring with acts such as The Killers, Robert Plant, Sam Phillips, Switchfoot, and Copeland. They would enjoy some success with their follow-up record, Everything Starts Where It Ends, but would continue making music until 2020, although they are probably best remembered for their first two records.  

    SEARCHING ON A WIRE FOR A WIRE. The Militia Group was a record label founded by former Tooth & Nail Records employee Chad Pearson. Pearson founded the label in 1998, and some artists in Tooth & Nail’s sphere signed to The Militia Group. Pearson who grew up overseas in Papua New Guinea in a missionary family had discovered Christian rock through Tooth & Nail Records. Pearson curated a group of artists who were ambiguously faith-based or ambiguously agnostic. Lakes (Watashi Wa‘s Seth Roberts‘ band post-Eager Seas’ failure on Tooth & Nail), Waking Ashland‘s Jonathan Jones‘ We Shot the Moon, and Denison Witmer all called The Militia Group their home along with groups like The Beautiful Mistake, Copeland, The Rocket Summer,   Quietdrive, Rufio, The Summer Set, Acceptance, and their most successful act, Cartel. At one point, they almost signed Fall Out Boy. In this context, Lovedrug signed with The Militia Group. They toured with fellow Militia Group acts and played at Cornerstone, which led many fans to think that they were a faith-based band. However, in a 2011 interview with IndieVision, the interviewer is awkwardly shut down when guitarist Jeremy Gifford explains that the band is not Christian, though he doesn’t claim to speak on behalf of everyone in the band’s beliefs. In fact, Christian media, back in the late ’00s were keen to include bands with any kind of faith into the fold. Jesusfreakhideout included Lovedrug’s Everything Starts Where It Ends and Paramore‘s Riot! on their best of 2007 list. 

    CONNECTED TO THE OTHER END OF THIS TWISTED FREQUENCY I’VE SPUN. Joan Osborne asked the question “What If God Was One of Us?” Plumb tells us that “There’s a God Shaped Hole in all of us.” Both of these songs were on the Bruce Almighty   soundtrack, a movie that was both praised and condemned by Christians for handling the lesson that no human could do a better job than God. Or Morgan Freeman for that matter. When an overtly religious song evokes God, there’s a theological agenda. Sometimes a Christian band tries to be cool, singing about girls and nonsense for fourteen songs and tacks on a ballad about being lost without any direction until finding God. This track is either in the center of the album or attached to the end as sort of an epilogue to the album, either to be skipped or included to fulfill a contract. Sometimes, the band feels that this inclusion–no longer having to meet the j’s per minute quota of the ’90s–is the real purpose of the album. They would usually give a 15-minute speech toward the end of their set, saying something like, “You know guys, our band believes that you are here for a reason” or something like what Roma Downey said on every episode of Touched By an Angel. Using God in a song, though, whether by an evangelical band or by one that is agnostic immediately triggers a confirmation bias in listeners’ minds. “But God doesn’t it feel so good?” Paramore declares in their breakthrough hit “Misery Business.” “I’ve found God,” The Fray declares in “You Found Me.” Hundreds of examples would make the band palatable to a Christian audience. When Michael Sheppard imagines “If God (or god) was on the radio,” listeners at Cornerstone, at the Copeland tour, and at the Nothing Is Sound Tour with Switchfoot heard what they wanted to hear. God was on the radio, speaking to them, telling them exactly what they already knew. Funny how that happens.

     Official Video:


    Haley Williams Instagram Live: 

    Further Reading/Viewing/Listening:

    Chad Pearson, founder of The Militia Group: