Mixtapemotions

  • "The Sound" by Further Seems Forever, Saturday, April 24, 2021

    I’ve talked about Labeled podcast quite a bit. Their tagline: “The stories, rumors, and legends of Tooth & Nail Records,” certainly applied to their pilot episode: “Further Seems Forever: A Tale of Three Singers.” Further Seems Forever is a band that is seen as a landmark band in ’00s emo and Christian Rock, paving the way for the bands that have stuck around, such as Anberlin, Emery, and The Classic Crime, to name a few. However, FSF’s turbulent relationships with lead singers kept the band a bit of a legend for hipster music fans and a bit of a bands’ band, rather than a prolific force. The musicians of a Christian hardcore band, Strongarm, formed with emotional singer-songwriter Chris Carrabba, who left after the release of the band’s first release to release music under the moniker of Dashboard Confessional. The band found singer Jason Gleason to replace Carrabba, but Gleason left the band by the recording of the band’s third album.

     
    IF I HAD AN OCEAN TO COMPLIMENT THE SKY. My grandfather sent my family a gift back in ’98 or ’99–a lifetime subscription to the Sky Angel satellite service, a network of religious programming channels. Most of the programming was as awful as you’d imagine. Church 24/7, but in 2001, a new music programming station appeared which played Christian Rock, Hip-Hop, Metal, and Alternative music. TVU and their sister radio station RadioU was the music I was raised on in my high school years. TVU was a place where old low budget Tooth & Nail videos could be mixed with Jennifer Knapp and P.O.D. and scary metal videos. In 2001, Further Seems Forever released the video for “Snowbirds and Townies.” I found the singing a bit annoying, the “girlfriend” pretty average looking, the lead singer’s hairstyle annoying. But then “The Sound” was released.

    THIS IS A BURNING OF A DREAM. There are some songs that get deeper the more you study the lyrics, and then there are songs that sound like they were written by a 19 year old, trying to be deep. I haven’t been able to find great lyrical depth in Further Seems Forever. Their lyrics play on the impressions they leave, but ultimately there are so many images, the listener may wonder what the song is all about. My first impressions of the song are from the video. I loved it. The scenes of an empty city and mostly lead singer Jason Gleason singing on an empty bus and the other band members shown alone in a parking garage or a building late at night with the lights on showed a kind o f loneliness. This was contrasted to the band playing an energetic performance in a big room. Jason seemed so cool, yet emotional and deep. And he wore really tight pants and had a good body. I wouldn’t admit it at the time, but I had developed a crush on the guy.

    https://genius.com/Further-seems-forever-the-sound-lyrics

  • “Holding Onto You” by Jonezetta, Friday, April 23, 2021

     

    Cruel to Be Young was one of my college albums. I wrote a bit about the two Jonezetta albums back in January.  Rather than being an ’80s/Killers sounding album, the band went ’70s/laid back, hippy sounding music. According to Randy Torres episode of Labeled, the inspiration behind this album was The Shins, which was another college favorite of mine. While Aaron Sprinkle and Randy Torres may have had a great time making this record, it may have been the demise of Jonezetta as fans were expecting something catchy and dancy. Interestingly my college friends liked this album, but not their debut, but my hometown friends, loved Popularity and couldn’t get into Cruel to Be Young. Jonezetta’s follow up album reminds me of my youth–being 21 years old at its release, and how cruel it was to be a young Seventh-day Adventist.


    ALL THE DIFFERENT REASONS WHY YOU SLEEP ALONE. I’ve railed on purity culture so much without giving any person anecdotes. I speak from experience when I speak about how dangerous the teaching is. The opening line of this song when I heard it back in 2008 made me think about “all the different reasons why [I slept] alone. I was 21, in a Christian college, and trying to take my faith very seriously. I was pretty introverted and didn’t know a lot of people. I had insecurities about being a transfer student, about not being Adventist or too Adventist. I found myself studying in a major that was about 70% women. I saw my friends dating, and I thought I wanted that too. But every time I asked a girl out…it was like she would say that i was more like a friend. Or we would go out and the chemistry was nonexistent. I imagined myself 30 with a beautiful wife and 2.5 kids, but i never tell you HOW I got there. How we would have “Christian dated” and fulfilled God’s plan for our lives. The closer I got to it, the more frightening it seemed. The solution until 2014 was keep faithful and wait for God to keep working on my heart.

    EVERYONE IS CATCHING ON, I’M BEARLY HANGING ON. Purity culture tells us to examine our hearts and look for the broken pieces within ourselves. If we find those broken pieces, that is obviously the flaw. For so long I blamed my loneliness on those broken pieces. I would hear teaching, like “if you aren’t meeting the right person, take time to work on your relationship with God. Then he will send the right person.” How many times I tried that. It only led to bitterness. At those times I could lay my broken pieces on my dorm room bunkbed. There was the trauma of my parents marriage. The yelling, the coldness, the being away for weeks on end, the toxic bickering. Then there was the fact that all the girls God had in mind were not attractive to me, and the ones that were were out of my league. There was the fact that I would be in serious debt for ten years after graduating college. But of course there was the fact that I had been ruining God’s plan for my life with pornography. I had perverted my taste, I thought. Then there was the one piece I was afraid to admit. Ultimately, I believed, I was in control of my destiny–follow God’s plan for my life or follow my own desires. The problem with “God’s plan” (as interpreted by Evangelical, True Love Waits, Adventist, add any flavor to the mix) was that it made no account for sexual urges. So you’ve got young men either 1) getting married far too early or 2) living in constant shame, barely hanging on. Barely hanging on.

  • “Burn Out Blues” by Washed Out, Thursday, April 22, 2021

     

    In case you missed it, the summer of 2009 was called the summer of chillwave. Chillwave is a kind of electronic music that borrows from ‘80s nostalgia to produce a mellow, psychedelic music that aims to relax the listener. The genre uses lo-fi, a musical technique that takes what sounds like musical or sound mistakes and incorporates it into the sound, kind of like noise pop, but in a more subliminal, relaxing way. If you were to search for Chillwave, you’d definitely come across Washed Out. Their song “Feel It All Around” was released in July 2009, before the EP Life of Leisure in September 2009. The song and EP are said to be the best example of Chillwave. “Feel It All Around” was used as the opening theme for the show Portlandia, and when family members started watching Portlandia, the entire family was turned on to Washed Out, which is very rare for my family. Even my mom was listening to Life of Leisure. 

    JUST UNWIND. In the fashion of a true millennial music story, Earnest Weatherly Greene, Jr., better known by his stage name, Washed Out, turned to creating and producing music full time in his parents’ basement after unsuccessfully obtaining employment in his field: library science. So far, nothing has topped Life of Leisure. I’ve listened to a few other Washed Out tracks, particularly on Within and Without and Paracosm. Today’s song “Burn Out Blues” comes from Mister Mellow, which takes the indie musician in a totally different direction. “Burn Out Blues” is not pleasant to listen to, and I wouldn’t have chosen it. I would have skipped it. The next track on the record is somewhat more annoying. I would have completely cast off this record, except I set the song to my morning alarm this week, and I forced myself to listen to it. I watched the music video. I read the lyrics. Lyrics for Washed Out are usually simple, but then I got it. This song is a reminder how much we need to find our quiet time.

    IT’S ALL BEHIND YOU. Washed Out’s music and lyrics work as a kind of hypnotism, almost the way that meditation works. Nothing particular stands out as far as lyrics and many tracks fit in a playlist between other songs that seem to be more of a highlight. The melodies might make you think about something while you’re driving. I listened to one of Washed Out’s songs a lot when I was riding my bike. So one would think that Washed Out would continue to make this mellow music that it lyrically forgettable and musically inoffensive, but isn’t it the stressed out that need meditation the most? Once you get past the jarring intro, you can get into the melody and be struck by the message. It’s a coffee break rather than a weekend acid trip. It’s a micro-dose of relaxation before being pulled into the next thing. It’s a two-minute break between four classes in a row. It teaches you to enjoy just a moment before it’s gone. Breathe. Now focus on the next thing. Don’t burn out. You’re in this for the long haul.

  • “Like Steps in a Dance” by Anchor & Braille, Wednesday, April 21, 2021

     

    Anchor & Braille has been Anberlin‘s lead singer Stephen Christian‘s side project for a while. Some of Anberlin’s songs started out as Anchor & Braille songs. In 2009, Christian collaborated with Aaron Marsh and a few other hometown musicians including Louis DeFabrizio of Gasoline Heart and released A&B’s debut record Felt, an album that feels like if Christian were the lead singer of Copeland somewhere between their In Motion and Eat, Sleep, 

    Repeat releases. Anchor and Braille’s sound would very greatly over their occasional four albums as well as the make up of the ‘band’ would just become Stephen Christian collaborating in the studio with other musicians. I have yet to listen to 2020’s Tension from start to finish, but of the three albums, Felt feels the best. You can tell that it’s the same singer of Cities and Never Take Friendship Personal struggling relationships. 


    SHE MAKES THREATS I HOPE THAT SHE SEES THROUGH. Felt was an album that appeared in Junior year of college (one of them 🙂 around a month or so before New Surrender was released. The album was great studying music. Christian seems to make statements of faith with tracks like “Rust” (The Story of Mary Agnosia), “Introspect,” and “Sleep. When We Die,” and it was fun to see what a less-censored Stephen Christian might say. Ultimately, the album seems to be about loneliness and breakups. 
    Christian seems to lose the ability to write about these subjects in his follow up The Quiet Life as well as Anberlin’s Dark is the Way, Light Is a Place. Even though Anberlin’s Vital sees an improvement in Christian’s writing, he relies too much on cliches to talk around his subject matter. This is also present on the third Anchor & Braille record, Songs for the Late Night Drive Home.

    SING TO ME EVERY NIGHT AND I’LL MAKE YOU THE HAPPIEST MAN ALIVE. Anchor and Braille performed at Cornerstone in 2011. It was really just Anberlin playing in a tent. Anberlin had played an average show (“Feel Good Drag” as an encore?), headlining the main stage after Blindside had sub-headlined. The band rushed over to a small tent to play Anchor & Braille songs. Christian explained that “Like Steps in a Dance” was the radio hit of the album if the album were to have a radio hit. It’s one of the most fun and accessible songs on the album. Christian doesn’t explore the range of his voice as much on this song. The mechanical beat and the piano and guitar make the song quirky and memorable. As for the lyrics, it’s a veiled toxic relationship. If Christian writes about healthy relationships, he often runs into cliched lyrics. After completing this song and many one or two others, Anchor & Braille finished their set. My sister and I were able to get an autograph of Stephen’s novel The Orphaned Anything’s Memoir of a Lesser Known and we got a picture together. And that was the last time I saw Anberlin/Anchor & Braille in concert.

  • “Disappearing World” by Fair, Thursday, April 20, 2021

     

    In the story of Tooth & Nail Records, which became the definitive Christian Rock label in the early ‘00s, Aaron Sprinkle became the main producer for record after record for the label. Sprinkle is not only responsible for producing records, he also stylized bands and artists who would have otherwise been nothing alike. So, when he we wasn’t busy launching successful bands into the scene, what was he doing in his free time? Sprinkle recorded a number of solo records and two with his band, Fair. Sprinkle’s solo efforts were never as successful as the bands he recorded, and life in the studio took a toll on the musical genius.


    WHERE IS IT THAT YOUR PEACE COMES FROM? “Disappearing World” was the only hit from this 2010 album named after the title track.. Whenever Fair–three of Sprinkle’s friends from his previous band, Poor Old Lu–put out a project, it was a limited release. One single to Christian radio, maybe a video, maybe a couple of local shows. And then it’s back to the studio for Sprinkle. On Season 1 of Labeled (now behind a paywall), Sprinkle talked about how destructive the studio life was for him. He worked around the clock on Tooth & Nail albums. This was the time when Tooth & Nail was signing everyone and sending slightly more than half of the bands to record an album with Aaron. This led to alcohol addiction and burnout. What’s more is that the crash of the music industry forced Sprinkle to work on smaller budgets and reduce the size of his team. He had to make the same great record on a fraction of the budget. Sprinkle broke with Tooth & Nail and retreated to Nashville to pursue other areas in the music industry, producing only records he chose to produce–Anberlin, Acceptance, New Found Glory, Story of the Year, are just a few of his passion projects. As for his own music, he turned to composition. His instrumental series inspired by the Northeast coast is quite nice. 


    I FOUND IT IN A DISAPPEARING WORLD. Every year the earth seems to spin a little faster. I think about Brandon Ebel and Aaron Sprinkle and all who saw the rise and fall of the music industry. They recorded on cassettes and then CDs. There they promoted bands at big festivals and tours and sold tons of merch. Then everything went online to streaming and customers stopped buying music. A couple months ago, I was listening to Taylor Swift‘s Evermore and one song got me to thinking, “What if Aaron Sprinkle produced this album? What would he do differently?” Sadly, what could have been an upward trajectory for Sprinkle ended tragically with the death of rock music. What mainstream music could sound like with the talents of Aaron Sprinkle producing it? It truly is a disappearing world. 

  • “Bang, Bang” (My Baby Shot Me Down) by Daniela Andrade, Monday, April 19, 2021

     

    This is the story of three women and how they interpreted their interpretation of a dream pop classic. The version I chose is a cover, which resembles a cover of this song. Until today, I thought that this song was a Nancy Sinatra original. Played in the opening scene of Kill Bill Vol. 1, the Bride is shot and left for dead outside a dusty El Paso chapel. This scene kicks off an other delicious installment of Tarantino‘s brand of gratuitous violence and overall badassery that the filmmaker is known for. However, if we’re looking for the original tune, think a little more sixties psychedelia with more instrumentation. Finally, the version that goes to the YouTube playlist, by a YouTube-famous Canadian-Honduran singer, Daniela Andrade. This song with its simple song structure and easy lyrics, packs a lot of heat.

    I WAS FIVE AND HE WAS SIX. Written by her husband, Sonny Bono, “Bang Bang” (My Baby Shot Me Down) was one of Cher’sfirst hits, and her first platinum single. Now, there are actually very few Cher songs that I know. In 1999, the year that I really started listening to the radio, her song “Believe” was the number one hit of the year. It was one of the first songs to use auto-tune, and it’s truly an artifact of the day. The other song that comes to mind is her duet with her husband “I Got You Babe,” which was a more folk hippie song. Cher was a person my parents knew, practically a wholesome figure–I think–from the sixties and then somewhere along the way discovered corsets, acting in inspiration movies about children with disfiguration, and made a hilarious appearance in 2003’s Stuck on You, playing a self-indulgent version of herself, at one point offering Matt Damon’s character a handkerchief with Cher embroidered on it. Cher is a pioneering woman in music, who cultivated the career that she wanted. Her ex-husband, record execs, nobody was going to stop her. They tried to shoot her down, but like the Bride in Kill Bill, she has proven quite resilient.

    SEASONS CAME AND CHANGED THE TIME. The daughter of a legend, Nancy Sinatra rose to fame on her own volition. Sinatra was everything Lana Del Rey has built her career trying to emulate. The sparse guitar reminiscent of an old 007 film (Sinatra would go on to sing the theme for You Only Live Twice), the reverb meets the lyrics and makes the song much more haunting than Cher’s original version. When YouTube singer-songwriter Daniela Andrade covered the song, she channels Sinatra’s version more than Cher’s, only in Andrade’s version, it’s a keyboard/organ effect. I happened across Andrade a few years ago when I was on a kick to find the best covers by YouTubers. Her versions of “Feel Good Inc.” and “Summertime Sadness” were pretty great, too. The singer has gone on to have a rich career in her own songwriting, exploring themes in her Latin-American heritage, moving from Honduras to Canada at a young age, and a strict spiritual upbringing in which her Seventh-day Adventist mother restricted secular music from their home. But her early YouTube covers show her fans some of her influences. 
    Cher 1966 version:

    Cher’s 1987 rock version featuring Jon Bon Jovi on guitar:
    Nancy Sinatra version:
    Daniella Andrade version:

  • "Hero" by Family of the Year, Sunday, April 18, 2021

    The 2014 film Boyhood was a highly acclaimed film with an incredible Rotten Tomatoes score, yet nobody talks about it anymore. The film was shot over the course of 12 years from 2001 to 2013 using the same actors and feels like a piece of turn-of-the-century Americana, a kind of early 2000s rendering of a Norman Rockwell painting of the imperfect white, working-class American family. The film not only explores boyhood and coming of age, but also parenthood and the complications of raising a family while trying to better oneself and the struggles of co-parenting through a divorce. The events and pop culture throughout the years are woven into the human themes. The soundtrack for the film is a combination of famed indie artists of the early ’00s and popular music of the time. Seamlessly joining the soundtrack was virtually unknown folk-rock band Family of the Year, with their song “Hero.”

    I DON’T WANT TO BE YOUR HERO. “Hero” appears in the movie toward the end when Mason, Jr., played by Ellar Coltrane, is driving his old pickup down the Texas highway. He is now 18 years old, graduated, and become himself. This comes after a scene with his mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette). She wonders, “What was it all for?” when she reflects on the hardships of parenthood. She had raised her kids and wonders what’s next for her. She tells her son, “The next big event is my fucking funeral.” She had kept her family a paycheck away from eviction at some points, but ultimately raised a successful family, yet she wonders what it was all for. Family of the Year’s “Hero” serves as a reflection on the themes of the movie. The song talks about the conflict between wanting stability and wanting something greater than what you have right now. You long to be allowed to leave, but you still hold down a job to keep the girl around. 

    I’M A KID LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. Watching Mason’s family struggle in the late early 2000s reminded me of growing up in a family who lived paycheck to paycheck in the ’90s to ’06 when I graduated high school. I remember church pantry handouts and hand-me-downs from cousins. Clinton-era social programs let us go to the doctor when we needed to, and our moldy old house had me sick quite a bit a kid. My dad worked as a logger in New York until the payment was so bad that he decided to go to truck driving school. When my dad became an over-the-road truck driver we started making more money, but we didn’t have health insurance. We prayed we didn’t get sick or injured, and thank God nothing bad happened. My mom would eventually go to nursing school and go to work when I was in high school. I’m very proud of what my family did, but I remember talks with my dad that echoed what Olivia said in Boyhood. What is it all for? The existential question that haunts us with every passing year. What is it all for? “Hero” tells us “Everyone deserves a change to walk with everyone else” but what does that mean? Boyhood, life, marriage, divorce, the economic depression–rituals of the American Dream. Everyone deserves it, but isn’t it all just vanity and vexation of the spirit?
    Trailer for Boyhood:

    Music Video (original cut):

    Music Video (Boyhood cut): 

  • “Holy Water” by The Classic Crime, Saturday, April 17, 2021

     

    When Emery‘s Matt Carter and Toby Morrell started their blog BadChristian in 2013, they started out as a Calvinist alternative to what was considered Good Christian theology which carried over to religious entertainment and eventually led to exploring other world views, theories, and discussions often considered taboo to church folks. The blog turned into a podcast, a listeners’ community, and even a record label, which released albums by Emery, Kings Kaleidoscope, Abandon Kansas, Sherwood, House of Heroes, Lowercase Noises, and today’s band, The Classic Crime, whose frontman Matt McDonald is a friend of the show and former podcaster. The albums released on the BadChristian label showed an alliance in Christian Rock. No longer was Focus on the Family or the Family Christian Bookstore (RIP) going to determine what was holy and what was profane. 


    EVERY DROP OF HOLY WATER COMES FROM THE OCEAN. The evolution of The Classic Crime is quite fascinating, as told on the Labeled podcast. Signed just before the crash of the music industry, they were one of the bands that Tooth & Nail was promoting for the general market. They weren’t supposed to be a Christian band; however, as Matt McDonald explains, someone messed up. When their debut album Albatross was released, iTunes classified the album as Christian Rock. That was the beginning of the end for the band’s hope for general market success. Eventually, McDonald embraced his voice in the Christian Rock community, but the band, in the sense of a five-person unit, ended with their final Tooth & Nail release, Vagabonds. How to Be Human, The Classic Crime’s sixth studio album explores a lot of controversial ground–if you consider it a Christian record. Two songs, including this one, use profanity. This song also suggests a kind of theistic evolution, and it calls into question what is sacred?

    EVERY ATOM IN MY BODY COMES FROM EXPLODING STAR BILLIONS OF YEARS AGO. I grew up reading Genesis as historical fact. I was taught about Adam naming all of the animals, Noah building an Ark, people living for 900 years, and God’s promise never to flood the earth again with the promise of a rainbow. This was basic Adventist teachings, and it was further reinforced by my Baptist education. For Adventists, it also helped that Ellen White’s prophetic commentaries on the Bible denounced Darwin’s theory of evolution and confirmed that yes, God created the earth, and yes, it was about 6,000 years ago. I thought all Christians believed this and were in some sort of cultural war against secularism. However, later I learned about other theories of Creationism, and more importantly, why they were wrong. I had heard about what David Bazan was saying, doubting the historicity of the Bible, but it wasn’t until I read an interview (now I can’t find it) where it seems that someone is trying to provoke Anberlin’s Stephen Christian, wondering how he can be a Christian and believe in young earth creationism. Christian responds to the interviewer that he actually tends to believe in theistic evolution. Then around that time, there was a huge controversy that several Adventist colleges were teaching evolution. My college was one of the most conservative ones, so they pushed back on it and made sure that ALL graduates understood the importance of a six-day creation narrative. If the six-day creation story was false or myth, what does that say about the rest of the Bible? What does that say about Christ’s death and resurrection? What does that say about the Sabbath? What does that say about what we are devoting our lives to? If you unravel one thread in the fabric of faith, it will all come apart and leave you with atheism or nihilism. The funny thing is, the more I play around with these questions of faith, interpretation of scripture/history/myth, the more nuanced I see the world. And that’s far from being nihilistic. To be continued.

  • “Death with Dignity” (Live) by Sufjan Stevens, Friday, April 16, 2021

     

    In 2015, Sufjan Stevens released his saddest album. The songs on Carrie & Lowell give listeners insight into the folk singer’s upbringing and his process of dealing with the grief of losing an abusive parent. Stevens’ mother Carrie had passed away in 2012 from cancer, and “Death with Dignity,” the album opener, finds the lyricist struggling for the words to tell the story. He says “I don’t know where to begin,” showing how something deeply personal is hardest to talk about. The song structure is unique in that there is no chorus, but rather five verses–this is a fact I never noticed in all the times I listened to the song before I wrote about it last year. “Death with Dignity” is best in the context of the entire album, but if you don’t have the time to dive into the depths of sorrow, the song is a sweet twinge of sadness to throw into an otherwise happy playlist. 

    AMETHYST AND FLOWERS ON THE TABLE. I was on the fence about the 2016 pilot of This Is Us. The time-jumping drama was just confusing. Mandy Moore and Milo Ventimiglia in the past and Smallville’s Green Arrow in the present. However, the big reveal at the end of the episode where you learn (spoiler alert) that the third triplet had died, and Rebecca and Jack decide to adopt Randall who had been left at the fire station, and the doctor saying some cliche line about “life handing you the sourest of lemons and using them to make lemonade” all delivered to the tune of “Death with Dignity,” I was sold on the drama. As for the song, Stevens, for being as he is in his lyrics, shies away from celebrity spotlight. He offers little details into his personal life with the exception of this record. We know that his mother Carrie was a substance abuser and struggled with schizophrenia. We know that Lowell Brams was her second husband, and he was present during Stevens’ formative years. Lowell would go on to do some musical projects with Stevens after this album, but it was the death of his mother and the need for closure that drives this album. The second track on Carrie & Lowell get explicit about the abuse, but “Death with Dignity” merely paints the setting–Stevens’ life in Oregon, the death, the abuse, and the forgiveness. 
    WHAT IS THAT SONG YOU SING FOR THE DEAD? Forgiveness is somewhat of a dirty word. I grew up with a fear of not forgiving. The pastor said in a sermon that if there is anyone you’ve not forgiven, you can’t go to heaven with the bitterness in your heart. At that time, I wondered if we should forgive the person who is unremorseful? How do we make sure that we’re not taken advantage of again? Thinking back on that, I realize how many vulnerable people were in the congregation; people suffering from truly evil things done to them. Forgiveness is a process, and it can’t be forced. Carrie & Lowell is a beautiful portrayal of forgiveness as it naturally happens. Learning to forgive your parents for the mistakes they made when raising you is always a process, and when there is clear signs of abuse, forgiveness may be impossible. I’m in no position to say that a victim must confront his or her abuser with forgiveness. I think that anyone who forces forgiveness on a victim adds another layer to the abuse. Music, church, scripture, and poetry are no substitute for mental health professionals, and it’s criminal how pastors have assumed that role. However, just as an album like Carrie & Lowell helped Stevens deal with his grief, so can art and religion be a supplement to our healing.

  • “Panic Switch” by Silversun Pickups, Thursday, April 15, 2021

     

    Shoegaze is a sub-genre of rock music that employs heavy distorted guitars to create what is called a “wall of sound.” Shoegaze came out of psychedelic rock and often creates a hypnotic effect. Not every group that uses “the wall of sound” is necessarily a shoegazer act, but some bands that have famously used this effect are Oasis, The Verve, and the Smashing Pumpkins. The etymology of  “shoegazing” is said to be a description of the guitarists of these bands because they mostly stared at their shoes. While music critics don’t often place Silversun Pickups in the subgenre of Shoegaze, what else would you classify their 2009 hypnotic hit “Panic Switch“?

    IT’S NEVER WORTH MY TIME. Silversun Pickups topped the Alternative Rock chart with this song. Released in 2009, their sophomore album Swoon challenged my 2001 Corolla’s stereo in all the right ways between home and school. The band drew controversy when they were nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist, despite the fact that their first album Carnavas had garnered a lot of attention. Swoon, however, was their breakout album. Swoon was released on the edge of a transition in the music industry. It was a time when the deeper register voices and post-grunge rock was on a decline and Alternative was implementing new ideas about style. Silversun Pickups’ following records dropped the “wall of sound” for poppier, electronic elements. But songs like “Panic Switch” and “The Royal We” are fun reminder of the kinds of aggressive rock that used to top the charts.

    WHEN YOU SEE YOURSELF IN A CROWDED ROOM. Sometimes choosing my song of the day takes a long process of listening to lots of songs, while other times the song chooses itself. I woke up before my alarm after having a dream in which I was listening to this song. When I went to bed, this song wasn’t on my mind, and I haven’t listened to it for awhile. What’s even stranger is this morning I saw that ten years ago yesterday (but still the 14th in America), Swoon had been released. What a clandestine pick for today! “Panic Switch” is a song about sleeplessness and anxiety. The up-tempo rhythm and crunching bass line helps to give a simulation of a panic attack. The lyrics ask what do you do when you enter the crowded room? How do you defuse the anxiety? Where’s the panic switch? How do I get out of this one? This reminds me of last Wednesday when I was so flustered that I couldn’t make it to class on time. It’s always the worry that you won’t find the panic switch in time. What then?