When a teenager grows up in New Zealand experiencing American culture through Hip Hop music videos, that teenager might have a distorted view of how Americans live. Lorde‘s breakthrough single “Royals” got some backlash for “overgeneralizing American culture” and misunderstanding Hip Hop. Others have said that Lorde’s take on pop with the emerging sad girl pop sub-genre helped to usher in a slowness
revolution that we can still hear today in the likes of Billie Eilish.
WE’RE DRIVING CADILLACS IN OUR DREAMS.WhileLorde’s original version of “Royals” beats most covers, the version I’m choosing for my playlist comes from the Punk Goes Pop series, performed by the band Youth in Revolt. The New Jersey based pop punk band adds an extra layer of grit to Lorde’s song with heavy guitars and bass. Although the screaming at the end is gratuitous, I think that Youth in Revolt’s version suffices to cover both the earworm and the need to transition from Rise Against‘s “Long Forgotten Sons.” For me, in 2013, I wasn’t listening to much pop music other than discovering K-pop. I first encountered “Royals” when Paper Routecovered the song. I didn’t actually know who they were covering, but eventually I checked out Lorde. I thought she sounded like another version of Lana Del Rey, but I didn’t get into her music. I hadn’t listened to her Pure Heroineuntil recently and only listened to Melodrama because my sister had a copy of the record in her car when I went home to the states. Today, Lorde is an artist I like to listen to occasionally. Solar Power was an underrated record from last year. I mostly skip Melodramabecause I find the lack of instrumentals makes her voice a little jarring.
LET ME LIVE THAT FANTASY. “Royals” feels like it’s the song for the rest of us. I can think of several people who are constantly talking about salaries and material wealth. They’re always talking about cars, clothes, and about the things they will buy and the things that are out of their price range. I’ve pretty much killed my most elaborate dreams from when I was a kid: to be a movie star/director/ rock star, have a two-story house with a swimming pool and a wife and two kids. Instead, I’ve redefined my dreams, to make just enough to support myself so that I can live in a comfortable house and enjoy a little time off. My jewels are my Apple products, and they’re also kind of my kids. My iPhone Pro 14 says he wants a little brother as his big brother the iPad Pro 3rd generation has gone blind in the rear camera and is running out of space. I think that if I can make a small impact in the lives of my students and the people around me, I will be rich in this world. Sure, I want to be able to afford the airfare to be with my family for the big moments. I want to be able to afford groceries and a night out on the weekend. I want a small piece of happiness, and I think I have it. So I’m driving Cadillacs in my dreams and parking it in front of my commodious bungalow.
Rise Against‘s 2008 record, Appeal to Reasontook the hardcore punk band and made them accessible to Rock radio. The Chicago-based band had become known for their progressive politics, advocating animal rights, LGBTQ+ rights, environmentalism, and humanitarianism. Of course, Rise Against is far from the only left-leaning political bands, but Appeal to Reason place the band on rock playlists alongside rock bands with more dulsatory politics or even conservatives like Staind.
FAR FROM HOME ON A ROAD UNKNOWN. Appeal to Reason produced three singles that charted in the top three on rock charts. Softening the band’s sound certainly allowed the band to expand their audience and in turn allowed the band to implant punk rock ideals into the mainstream “rock bros” listening to rock radio. The album’s first single, “Re-Education (Through Labor)” deals with the decay of the American education as evidenced through the electorate and leaders during the presidency of George W. Bush. The band’s third single “Savior,” a song that got Simlish treatment in The Sims 3: Ambitions expansion pack, used its music video to make a political statement depicting a person in an elephant suit bullying a person in a polar bear suit, alluding to Republican’s stance on climate change. Other songs on the record depict America on the verge of its own demise and speak against the war in Iraq. “Long Forgotten Sons” is the second track on Appeal to Reason, and the song deals with disillusionment due to political leaders ignoring the voices of the people. The imagery is post-apocalyptic. The song recognizes the marginalized who never fit into the system. After the system breaks and leaves the “long forgotten sons and daughters who don’t belong to anyone” disenfranchised, they rise up against that system.
WHEN CRIES FOR HELP GO UNANSWERED. Rise Against’s prophetic view of America may have shocked listeners in 2008. The band’s live concerts with their upside down American flags and their message: rise against power, may infuriate certain so-called patriots today. But in 2022, liberal takes on social issues are more commonplace. The TV shows we watch today show us that the world is more nuanced that we thought back during the Bush years. But then again, I could just be seeing a reflection in my journey and friends and Facebook friends from college who have come to similar conclusions, first about the war in Iraq then on other issues like immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and even the right to a safe abortion. For me, I had to challenge my politics because of my truth. I couldn’t subscribe to a party that didn’t support my right to marry and also spoke badly about people trying to become a citizen. But that’s my journey. I don’t know exactly what happened to my peers to make them more liberal. However, it does seem that voting for Democrats these days just is a vote for the status quo–nothing improved–as the Republican party wants to strip America of social programs. There’s something fundamentally flawed with a system that forgets about it’s people.
With the U.S. midterm elections at hand, I thought about this ’60s-style protest song from Lana Del Rey, released just weeks prior to her sixth studio album, Norman Fucking Rockwell!Like most tracks on NFR, “Looking For America“was produced by Jack Antonoff. However, “Looking for America” was not an album track on NFR. Del Rey and Antonoff recorded “Looking for America” was recorded on August 5, 2019 in response to two shootings that happened two days before, one in Dayton, Ohio, and the other in El Paso, Texas.
IT’S JUST A DREAM I HAD IN MIND. In many ways “Looking for America” thematically belongs on Norman Fucking Rockwell! In both the larger work and the last-minute single, Del Rey mourns the loss of the “good old days.” Del Rey, who built her career as a nostalgia act, creating art centered on the past, shifts her sound to ’60s protest songs in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency, a candidate who campaigned on the “good old days promises” but whose presidency puts Del Rey into an existential crisis. The focus of Del Rey’s writing is no longer craggy-faced, problematic men, those men are still present, but Del Rey is singing beyond them, to the concept of America itself. But “Looking for America” takes the theme that Del Rey dances around in NFR and makes it explicit that Del Rey is longing for a version of America when it was safe to grow up, when gun violence wasn’t on the nightly news. Yet, this nostalgia for America’s past is tricky. The “Make America Great Again” slogan is older than Trump. Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and Barry Goldwater all used this call to a time when America was at its strongest. But the simplicity of the time that politicians and citizens alike harken back to failed to address human rights for everyone and minimized complex social issues. Unlike MAGA, the message of “Looking for America” is forward-looking for a Del Rey song: guns need to be regulated.
NO BOMBS IN THE SKY. And so we come to America’s 2022 midterm election. It’s best not to take voting advice from Lana Del Rey, Elon Musk, or Kathy Griffin. But this election seems important. For years I didn’t vote. I didn’t live in the jurisdiction I was registered for over ten years, first going to college in Tennessee then living abroad. I trusted that system would take care of itself; who was I in the system? In 2020, 80 million Americans thought just like me and also didn’t vote. We thought that we didn’t like the candidates or that they didn’t represent our true views. The problem is when you trust other people to uphold the system and fail to realize that you are part of the system keeping it going. And if government by the people for the people isn’t what you’re interested in, bad actors certainly will step in. So, if you want to live in a theocracy owned by an evil chocolate corporation, don’t vote. Also, remember what’s at stake, economic relief now vs. voting rights in the future. We don’t get the luxury when we’re looking at a ballot to say, “Let’s vote in a dictator now, and if we don’t like that system, let’s vote for someone else next time.” It’s too late. So, that’s my two cents. Go out and vote!
You can put Simon and Garfunkel in a playlist alongside most alternative and acoustic music and it fits perfectly. Yes, music production has come a long way since those early recordings, but somehow the duo’s harmonies, acoustic guitars, and musical counterpoints hold up in ways that many Beatles and Led Zeppelin recordings separate themselves from modern rock. Simon and Garfunkel parted ways years ago, but they have inspired countless indie folk groups in ways that separately Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel would have never impacted the world.
TRY NOT TO MISS ME TOO MUCH. Kings of Convenience is a Norwegian folk duo that sound like a modern day Simon and Garfunkel. The Norwegian duo consists of Erlend Øye and Eirik Glambek Bøe. Born in the same year (1975) and classmates growing up, Kings of Convenience formed after the duo’s band Skog had parted with two other members. After playing festivals in Europe, the group released their debut album in Quiet Is the New Loud on the American label Kindercore. Although Øye and Bøe’s native language is Norwegian, the duo sings all of their songs in English. The artwork on the album features Eirik embracing his girlfriend at the time, a woman who looks like Liv Tyler, with Erlend awkwardly onlooking the situation. The duo released their follow up in 2006, Riot on an Empty Street.On the album artwork for Riot, the girlfriend again appears; however, all three are separated. The girlfriend is looking provocatively at Erlend who is looking back at her while he sits in front of a chessboard. Eirik, sitting across from Erlend, looks into the camera. The album artwork leaves listeners with questions about the group’s dynamic—are they a duo or a trio? What’s going on with the Yoko Ono situation? Riot on an Empty Street addresses breakups and moving on. In “Stay Out of Trouble” the lyrics liken a breakup to a cold walk home.
I WISH I HAD YOUR SCARF STILL. Kings of Convenience followed up their 2006 record with 2009’s Declaration of Dependence. Eirik’s ex-girlfriend does not appear on the cover art for the band’s third LP, but instead we see the duo on an island vacation, Eirik shirtless playing an acoustic guitar and Erlend siting with a chessboard beside him. Then the duo went on a lengthy hiatus until 2019, when they started writing and recording last year’s Peace or Love. The album cover features the duo sitting on a sofa, again playing a game of chess. During the duo’s hiatus, Eirik worked on other music, fronting the band The Whitest Boy Alive. There is a visual artistic theme running throughout the albums that probably parallels with the groups sound. I just noticed the artwork connection today. I have only listened to Riot on an Empty Street a few times and none of their other albums, and I’m delighted to have discovered a focus for my future listening with this group. It’s certainly not the best music criticism, but I think that I will have a deeper understanding of the group when I write about them next time.
As the Christian Rock releases from Tooth & Nail have been ebbing in the current music market, the new Tyson Montsonbocker record is no exception. Motsenbocker explained on the Black Sheep Podcast that his third record, Milk Teeth, moves away from spiritual subjects but the songs are more rooted in stories about people he knows and about growing up and realizing that life isn’t exactly what his parents and teacher told him life would be.
LEARNED THE BACKSEAT LESSONS IN A WHITE CHURCH VAN. But steering away from Christian and spiritual themes Tyson Motsenbocker doesn’t necessarily divorce Milk Teeth from his Christian upbringing. Instead, Milk Teeth sounds something like Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, or certain Buzzfeed writers who write wistfully about episodes from evangelical pasts. For Motsenbocker on Milk Teeth, that evangelical past isn’t particularly devout. Today’s song, “Wendy Darling,” has a backdrop of a youth group in the third verse, but even with that backdrop the speaker and Wendy had snuck off to make out or have sex in the “white church van.” The chorus alludes to high school parties that involve driving “like Magnum’s Ferarri” and “throwing up [Wendy’s] mom’s locked Bacardi,” which is actually a brand of rum, not vodka. But this isn’t a PluggedInreview. I think it’s fascinating that these kinds of stories can be told now on a Christian record label, showing a frankness not shown until recently. Tooth & Nail has always been the most progressive of Christian labels, but even until recently records were censored in the writing in the writing process.
THERE’S NOT MUCH TO DO IN A WHEAT FIELD TOWN WITH YOUR PARENTS AROUND. Tyson Motsenbocker named “Wendy Darling” after Wendy in Peter Pan, stating that Wendy is the character who grows up as opposed to Peter Pan who remains in boyhood. The speaker in the song has lost touch with Wendy until he “got up the nerve to call” her. After she went off to college, who she was is preserved in the speaker’s memory as the girl who played Nintendo with him, the one who went swimming in the cold Idaho/ Montana rivers in the summer, who went to house parties with him. But the second track on Milk Teeth listeners with a warning: “The old men say the decades don’t pass slow.” Time is the main theme and even the villain of Milk Teeth, an album that takes its title from another name for baby teeth that we lose before the age of ten. The album ends with the existential “Time Is a One Way Mirror,” but that is certainly a discussion for another day. For today let’s remember someone whom we lost to time. How has that person changed? How have you changed?
Regaling her listeners with a series of hot takes, Sasha Alex Sloan shows her relatable song writing on the third promotional single from her debut LP, Only Child, “Is It Just Me?” Sloan’s songwriting is never precipitous, so any backlash from a hater is calculated. In fact the premise of this song is to start a conversation. Some of Sloan’s opinions resonate with your own. Some may not. After releasing Only Child in October of 2020, Sloan released a remix of the song featuring singer-songwriter Charlie Puth. Puth said of the collaboration on Instagram: “I only sing on songs I didn’t write when I wish I wrote them. And this is a song I really wish I wrote. Excited about this one.”
THE SHOW FRIENDS IS OVERRATED. My Seinfeld fans Facebook group would agree with this statement. Of all the tangents I could break off and address from this song, I feel it’s time to address the great ‘90s NBC TV debate. There has been contention between the fans of both shows. Seinfeld came before Friends and arguably Friends’ success is indebted to Seinfeld’s pushing the boundaries of the situation comedy. Friends is a more refined comedy with a clear plot direction and an embodiment of the American dream in the ‘90s and ‘00s: go to college, graduate, live in New York City, meet up in coffee shops. Seinfeld was far less glamorous. Jerry, George, and Kramer had nowhere near the sex appeal of Joey, Chandler, and (gulp) Ross. Writers Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld insisted that the characters not advance or even develop in a significant way—no serious relationships, no dramatic moments that would bring tears to the eyes of the viewers. Even when George gets a job working for the New York Yankees, it’s a fluke and viewers are just waiting to see when and how he’ll mess it up as he messed up with his engagement to Susan Ross. And spoiler alert, he does. Friends, however, is a show where we watch and want good things to happen to the six. Not that we don’t want the best for the Seinfeld party of four, we watch Friends and envision ourselves in our mid-twenties, graduated from college without student loans living our best lives in a spacious New York City apartment. But didn’t How I Met Your Motherdo the same thing only better? Didn’t Will and Grace? Didn’t every sitcom after Friends do that? Listening to “Is It Just Me?” makes me feel not alone in my opinion that maybe others think that Friends is overrated.
AM I JUST HIGH, OR AM I KINDA RIGHT? Ever been with a group of people who seemed like the exact opposite of you just from the things that they love? They are talking about how great The English Patientand you fell asleep twenty minutes into the film? In “Is It Just Me?” Sasha Alex Sloan attempts to cut through the bullshit and state her opinion. She wonders if other people feel the same way as she does or if she is aberrant in her thinking. So in the spirit of Sloan, I decided for the rest of this post to share some things that I might be alone in my thinking about, but I think they’re worth discussion:
1. I’m Scared to admit that I don’t know a lot about the world, like what are gooseberries? You read about them in old stories.
2. I’m also embarrassed about when I should know something that everyone else probably knows. For example, in high school I wondered if oxen had gone extinct. Eventually I learned that there is a broad range of cattle, and there’s something about castration that makes and ox an ox.
3. Parliament is more effective than congress because the recriminations both sides make in congress waste time rather than legislating for the people.
4. Congress subsidizes the lives the wealthy making the poor work for the rich, while the rich’s money works in an bank account in the Cayman Islands.
5. Circuit parties sound exhausting.
6. I’ve certainly have consciously tried to be less genteel for being perceived as effete.
7. I feel like my vocabulary is stunted so I try to make up for it by reading and looking up words and using them in my writing. And I realize it might seem unnatural, but it’s better to practice before I actively try to promote my blog. Maybe I’m just weird.
Remember what I said about Taylor Swift steering away from narcissism in folkloreand evermore? Well that version of Taylor can’t come to the phone right now, at least not at Midnights, particularly the album’s lead single “Anti-Hero.” Two weeks ago Taylor Swift released her tenth studio album, Midnights to unprecedented chart and sales success. And this week, tracks from Midnights populate every spot on Billboard’s Top 10 of the Hot 100.
I’M THE PROBLEM, IT’S ME. I still have yet to spend a meaningful amount of time with Midnights. The little time I have spent with it made me feel a little underwhelmed after spending so much time with the lush instrumentation and lyrics on folklore. Midnights is a return to form for Taylor Swift the pop star, but as I read more about the record and spend a little more time with it, it seems to be a return to form with a new richness absent of pre-folklore Swift. I think my initial impression is wrong, but I haven’t been listening to music enough these days to make an informed critique of Midnights. Switched on Pop’s episode on the record helped to give me a new perspective on the record, examining Taylor’s songwriting craft. Swift has talked about writing songs with different pens: a fountain pen, a quill, and a glitter gel pen. Each pen represents a different mood in which Swift writes. She says fountain pen songs are “modern, personal stories written like poetry about those moments you remember all too well where you can see, hear, and feel everything in screaming detail” and examples include “exile” and “All Too Well.” Her “quill pen songs are songs with lyrics that make you feel old fashioned,” and include songs like “my tears ricochet” and “Red.” Finally, Swift’s glitter gel pen songs “remind you not to take yourself too seriously, which is something we all need to hear these days.” Some examples include “You Belong with Me” and “You Need to Calm Down.”
IT MUST BE EXHAUSTING ALWAYS ROOTING FOR THE ANTI-HERO. The hosts of Switched on Pop explore the idea that Swift mixes her pens on Midnights, which is a theory I’ll explore more when I get more time with music and Midnights. I can see some glitter when I listen to “Anti-Hero.”Whereas songs on folklore and evermore called on various narrators, the “Anti-Hero” in the song is Taylor Swift, being hard on herself, asking “did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism / Like some kind of politician?” Swift demonstrates self-awareness in this song that is about her celebrity status. The indulgent music video, directed by Swift, portrays the singer as both the victim in a horror film and a “monster on the hill” terrorizing all the “sexy bab[ies].” It seems that Taylor Swift is back to her old self with a bit more profanity. She’s back to Jack Antonoff ‘80s-sounding production. It’s a return to form, but I wonder what’s next for Swift. I’m going to spend a little more time with Midnights and get back to my readers.
Brace yourself for today’s song. On Anberlin‘s legendary third record, Cities, listeners are eased into one of Anberlin’s fastest guitar-riff heavy tracks with an atmosphere-building track (Début). The instrumental track feels like Jerry Martin‘s epic Sim City 4score, using guitars and sampled recordings to paint a dingy, urban landscape. What Anberlin creates with their third record is a portrait of wandering anonymously through bustling but lonely metropolises. In contrast to the “thousand names” lead singer Stephen Christian talks about in “Hello Alone,” the singer talks about the theme of the album as “Man vs. Self,” and those introspective lyrics can be heard throughout the record.
THEY LIED WHEN THEY SAID THE GOOD DIE YOUNG. But “Godspeed” isn’t so much an introverted emo track as it is a hard rock cautionary tale about rock stars who die too young, leaving their fans wrecked by the wasted potential celebrities leave behind. Stephen Christian, in particular is addressing the 27 Club, a phenomenon about artists, often of different genres, who died of drug overdoses or suicide at the age of 27. Lyrically, Christian weaves Rock ‘n’ Roll lure in every line of the first single released from Cities. The first line references “Neverland,” which could both evoke Peter Pan’s world or it could be a veiled reference to Michael Jackson‘s Neverland Ranch. Christian calls “white lines (cocaine), black tar (heroin), the matches.” The chorus is a play on Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young.” Elsewhere in the song we get fleeting references to Sid and Nancy, the death of the original Rolling Stones frontman Brian Jones, whose autopsy report read “death by misadventure.” The song also makes a reference to The Velvet Underground‘s “Lexington,” a song that describes a heroin dealer, and gives us the image of the Chelsea hotel, a notorious New York City landmark where many celebrities did drugs and hooked up. While the song can come across as a little preachy, Christian has talked about struggles he had on the road in the early days of touring, and how every substance and opportunity was available to emerging rock stars and many bands would get destroyed by drugs. Whether it’s curiosity to try new things or a weak assent because of pressure to fit in, bands would get involved with drugs and often wouldn’t last a long time.
BAD TURNS TO WORSE AND THE WORST TURN INTO HELL. “Godspeed” is perhaps guitarist Joseph Milligan‘s finest guitar work for Anberlin. The Deluxe Edition of Cities includes a DVD “Making of” documentary, which details the band’s writing and recording process with producer Aaron Sprinkle and engineer Randy Torres. While the documentary portrays Stephen Christian as the band’s poet, almost like emo’s answer to U2‘s Bono, Milligan is portrayed as the band’s serious composer, responsible for all of the music on the record. Cities is the band’s fullest potential as a band sticking mostly to its home instruments of guitar, bass, and drums, though keys, synths, strings, and an elaborate choir do heighten these elements in various plays on the record. After Cities, Anberlin embraced more sparse instrumentation and more synths and pop recording technology, and with sparser guitar arrangements on later records, one may forget the shredding genius of “Godspeed.” Drummer Aaron Lunsford of the band As Cities Burn hosted an episode of It’s All Over Podcast about a Tooth & Nail songwriters fantasy draft. Joined with Emery‘s Matt Carter and Devin Shelton, Carter talks about how Milligan is an underrated musical genius in the Tooth & Nail scene, calling him a “student of every Tooth & Nail era,” meaning that he can play most of the guitar riffs from every Tooth & Nail band. “Godspeed” hopes to put Anberlin in the lineage of great rock bands. Unfortunately, rock plummeted in popularity right after Anberlin scored a number one for “Feel Good Drag.” It wasn’t drugs that killed their chances, just poor timing with the record industry.
Dutch DJ Armin van Buuren‘s sixth studio album Embracewas released in 2015. The album topped the Dutch charts and reached number 4 on the Billboard US Dance/ Electronica charts. “Heading Up High” was released as a single in February 2016. The song featured Dutch rock band Kensington. The band had formed in 2005 and had modest success in the Netherlands and Belgium. Like groups like A-ha, Scorpions, and Blindside, Kensington prefers to record songs in English rather than their native tongue. “Heading Up High” reached number 40 on the Dutch charts. It’s a pop song, but it also has clear rock origins. These days, EDM has mostly ignores rock, yet ‘rock bands’ such as Imagine Dragons and Coldplay have incorporated more and more electronic elements to stay relevant. The smokey, rock-vocal style of Eloi Youssef makes for an interesting dance track along with the the synthetic sounding electric guitar.
WHEN YOU’RE HOLDING ONTO ALL THAT YOU CAN’T BE. “Heading Up High” was one of the songs they played at the gym I went to back in 2016. I was stressed and my body was stressed. I had turned 29 in June and by the fall, I started experiencing neck pain frequently, and I think a lot of it was from sitting much longer in the office with poor posture and stress from the worst coworker in all of my teaching years. On top of that, my boyfriend had started his military service, and I was unsure when he would have time to call or meet. After trying to manage the pain with a combination of ibuprofen and alcohol and a Thai massage by sleeping in a nice hotel for the night, I decided to give the gym a try. I went to several gyms in town, but Van Buuren Gym was the closest and the trainers were the friendliest. The membership fee seemed high, but that only caused me to be more committed to the gym. I started going three nights a week, but gradually increased to every day the gym was open. They were always closed on Sundays, which was frustrating. As I was becoming a gym bro, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I was pretty scared of the machines–killing myself or throwing out my back for the rest of my life, so I played it safe. Then one of the trainers, Adam, approached me one day.
IT’S A LONG WAY DOWN. Adam stood in front of me in all of his muscular glory and asked me in a round-about way how I was enjoying the gym and what my goals were. I coyly mentioned health and wanting to feel better before stating that I wanted to have a good body. Then came the sales pitch: “I can help you with your goals. We have a special program at our gym where we monitor your progress and design a program for you.” It turns out that many gyms have a similar program, but it’s never advertised because personal training sessions are much more expensive and the trainer makes tons of money. YouTube videos couldn’t give me the muscle memory I needed, so I signed up and devoted even more of my paycheck to the gym. So I started spending more time at the gym. I memorized the limited playlist: Korean Hip-Hop, forgettable American pop songs, and a few rock songs like today’s song. Set after rep after set. I was fully embracing gym life and my body was looking better, and my taste in music suffered.
Silversun Pickups came at the end of the Indie Rock revolution of the early ’00s. The bromine-colored album jacketed Swoonwas a smash hit on Alternative and Active Rock stations, even gaining the band entry into the Hot 100 on the first and third singles, “Panic Switch” and “The Royal We.” Swoon is a more refined version of the band’s debut, Carnavas, though there was a time when Silversun Pickups seemed to be a desired sound with tracks on Guitar Hero and Rock Band from both Swoon and Carnavas and a Grammy nomination for best new artist. Today, though, the band is relatively obscure, despite continuing to release music, most recently late August’s Physical Thrills.
HOW MANY WAYS DO YOU WANT TO DIE? Swoon starts off with the fast-tempo track “There’s No Secrets This Year” easily recalling the garage rock shoegaze of Silversun Pickups’ first record Carnavas. The track is energetic, and while the lyrics feel a little pointed, the song doesn’t have a very angry tone. The 5:33 track turns full jam session at the end of the song with a few bars of “wall of sound” until the song ends, drums and bass stopping and guitar fading out. Yet, the track isn’t over. After the guitar fades, a pad lays down a chord while the electric guitar returns, gentler. Singer Brian Aubert returns to the track, this time with almost threatening lyrics: “You better make sure you’re looking closely.” An organ synth plays before Aubert clarifies, “Before you fall into your swoon.” This outro for “There’s No Secrets This Year” links the following track, “The Royal We,” creating cohesion. “The Royal We” takes Silversun Pickups out of the garage and add a level of urgency by adding a 16-piece orchestra. The strings punctuate Aubert’s lyrics, heightening the themes of the song and making it sound, for lack of a better word, royal.
TO FEEL SAFE AGAIN, LOOK OVER YOUR SHOULDER. “We are not amused,” Queen Victoria famously said. Pluralis majestatis, or the royal ‘we’ has been in use since the 12th century, meaning God and I, and used as a justification for divine right of kings. But who is we in this song? The verses are told in the first person plural: “We are armed up to the teeth” and “We can laugh about it now.” And by the end of the song, a death note is signed “Love, the Royal We.” There are several interpretations floating around the internet about this song. Perhaps it’s about a fascist politician coming to the fore. Maybe, like “Panic Switch” it’s about Fight Club–esque hallucinations telling you it’s time to cut down on the coffee. Many commenters see drug addiction references, particularly heroin. But whatever Aubert is singing about, the song has a paranoid tone. It’s clear that the speaker of the chorus (and possibly the one that is part of the royal we) is not a stable narrator. “The Royal We” is perhaps about a bad trip in which all the kings horse and all the king men come to make war with their political enemies. Drugs often cause paranoia, which can fuel the conspiracy theorists. I think about what my coworker’s adages, “Paranoia is just the ability to make connections.” Whether those connections are coincidental or planned is another conversation all together. But until then avoid conversations with the courtiers.
Mixtapemotions 