Mixtapemotions

  • "Swamp" by Mike Mains & the Branches [Content Warning: Discussion of Suicide], Wednesday, May 8, 2024 (repost)

    Closing 2019’s heart-wrenching When We Were in Love, “Swamp” perhaps sums up Mike Mains & the Branches‘ third album in a single song: love, depression, and religion. Like the songs “Breathing Underwater” and “Around the Corner,”   Mike Mains gave an intimate insight into his writing process on Labeled. Mains talked about earlier Tooth & Nail releases from mewithoutYou and As Cities Burn,   which helped to inspire him to write darker Christian songs and push the genre of Christian Rock lyrically to open an honest conversation about mental health, depression, and questioning one’s faith.

    YOU HAD ME AT MERLOT. “Swamp” is the conclusion and the title-bearer of the album. Mike Mains asks his wife, bandmate Shannon Briggs Bolanowski-Mains, “Do you remember when we were in love?” On the Labeled podcast interview, Mains talks about “Swamp” being about a fear that his wife were to leave him. Mains wrote “Swamp” after spending time in therapy and in couple’s counseling, when things were starting to pick up. The first line from the song was what his wife wrote on a Valentine’s card. While things seem to be getting better, Mains imagines that all the progress the couple made was for naught, and Shannon becomes fed up with him and leaves anyway. In this dark fantasy, after leaving Mike, Shannon finds a man who is everything that Mike is not: a fearless, strong Christian who satisfies her every need. Continuing the narrative Mains talks about in “Breathing Underwater,” “Swamp” sees the singer graphically imagining his suicide by “pull[ing] the garage door shut and let[ting] the engine run.” 

    DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE IN LOVE? Speaking directly about “Swamp” in the interview, Mains quotes the song “Poison Oak” by Bright Eyes: “I’m drunk as hell on a piano bench/ And when I press the keys, it all gets reversed /The sound of loneliness makes me happier.” Mains says, “I wish it wasn’t, but it’s so true, but I love sad songs and they do make me really happy because they remind me that I’m not alone.” Interestingly, “Swamp” subverts the Christian art trope of writing a song in a minor key but ending on a major chord. “Swamp” ends with the lines: “Every day feels like waking up in the swamp/ Every day feels like waking up at the bottom.” Not only does the song end with that line and the sad, wandering piano, but the album ends with that line. Mains could have ended the album with “Around the Corner,” a song that could put the grief in a positive context, but instead, “Swamp” is a song about processing the grief and it’s our realization that we are not alone when a day just flat out sucks. Some days you don’t want to be told that everything is going to be okay. And that’s okay. Also, mental health is not always as simple as illness and recovery. And that’s not a spiritual illness, just reality. “Swamp” ends the Christian Rock record we all needed back in the ’90s, but wasn’t released until 2019. Better late than never.

  • “Death with Dignity” (Live) by Sufjan Stevens, Tuesday, May 7, 2024 (repost)

    Sufjan Stevens‘ 2015 album Carrie & Lowell is a heartbreaking album in which the singer-songwriter deals with the death of his mother. The opening track, “Death with Dignity,” is the beginning of an album that chronicles Stevens’ grieving process and the real and imaginary conversations between Stevens and his estranged mother. Carrie & Lowell was a rare peak into the personal life of the elusive singer, and unfortunately, grief was necessary to make a personal project. 

    WHAT IS THAT SONG YOU SING FOR THE DEAD? Earlier this month, Sufjan Stevens revealed an album borne out of another tragedy. And while I have yet to dig into Javelin and grieve anew with Sufjan, this time for his late partner who died last April, I feel that “Death with Dignity” would get me ready to digest this incredibly sad album. The song with its wispy plucked guitar in five chorus-less verses introduces folklore and Biblical imagery to memorialize his mother. While the song is specifically about Carrie, Sufjan’s schizophrenic, negligent mother, there’s enough universality to make the listener empathize and feel whatever grief is in their soul. Perhaps that’s why the song was selected for the emotional premiere of NBC‘s This Is Us.  The song both conveys joy and sorrow–the upbeat picking in a major scale pairs well with the cinematography of the show–Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore) in the ’70s conceiving and their triplets on a sunny morning, the warm autumn morning sunbeams peaking in through the shutters. The sadness is also conveyed when the family doctor convinces Jack and Rebecca to say something about  “life handing you the sourest of lemons and using them to make something that resembles lemonade.” 

    AMETHYST AND FLOWERS ON THE TABLE. 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 unremorsful? 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 are 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.

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

    Live version:

  • “GODS” by League of Legends and NewJeans, Monday, May 6, 2024

    Around 2015, I started hearing an answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” that would have made the same teachers that I told “I want to be a rock guitarist” come out of retirement and give my current students detention. These students didn’t want to grow up and be musicians or professional athletes. They told me that they wanted to be a “pro-gamer.” It took me a while to realize that a pro-gamer wasn’t a mispronunciation of a programmer. A pro-gamer is a professional game player. And while there are pro-gamers who play card and in-person role-playing games, and sometimes professional gamblers are also categorized as progamers, my students were only concerned with video games. Beginning around 2000, electronic sport, or esport, competitions became a global phenomenon. No longer were video games something to play with friends after school; they had become a billion dollar industry, and winning an esports competition could be a profitable career. 


    ONE MORE STEP; YOU’RE IMMORTAL NOW. One of the biggest esports is League of Legends. The game was first developed as a modification of a Warcraft III expansion pack before becoming a standalone game in 2009. The game originally was notorious for its “toxic online community.” According to a 2020 survey conducted by the Anti- Defamation League, a New York-based Jewish NGO, 76% of players had experienced in-game harassment. The developers have put in place a code of ethics and a system to report players who violate it. Furthermore, the developers have put in place an algorithm that censors profanity and other forms of abuse. League of Legends is one of the most addictive video games today with gamerant.com listing it as the second-most addictive game as of September 2023.  Also last year, the game reported an average of over 10 million concurrent players, according to The Spike. Most of the players of the free-to-play game are just hobbyists, but some aspire to be professional players. League of Legends holds 12 regional leagues, and in 2016 held a larger combined viewership and attendance than the NBA, the World Cup, and the Stanley Cup.  


    THEY’RE GONNA CRUMBLE ONE BY ONE. NewJeans was asked to sing the theme to the 2023 League of Legends World Championship held in Seoul and Busan, South Korea in October and November. According to the theme song “GODS” genius page, the song references several features of the game, which is based on horror elements and medieval sorcery, and the players and the competition itself. The K-pop group sings the song completely in English. The song is interesting for its apparent usage of Christian terminology.  Usually, the idea of “playing god” is talked about negatively. In Jurassic Park Dr. Ian Malcolm scolds park founder John Hammond for “playing god” when he creates a park of dinosaurs that end up killing several of the humans on the island. But in today’s song, playing god is a form of in-game boasting. In the context of a game and a tournament, the song seems to be fun, but in almost any other context, the song feels like uncomfortable hubris. Maybe it’s just my Christian upbringing, but this kind of bragging makes me feel like the fall is coming to answer to this kind of pride.


    Read the lyrics on Genius.



  • “Tides” by As Cities Burn, Sunday, May 5, 2024

     

    In 2005, As Cities Burn released their intense post-hardcore debut, Son, I Loved You at Your Darkest. The record was recorded with legendary producer Matt Goldman, former Norma Jean frontman, and then-frontman of The Chariot, Josh Scogin. The band gained acclaim after the album’s Solid State release and their touring. After touring for a year, in 2006, the band announced that they would break up, but they decided to stay together after seeing the fans’ disappointment at the announcement. The band continued touring, though their bassist Pascal Barone left the band and Robert Chisolm of Jonezetta joined the tour to finish up before the band headed to the studio to record their sophomore album, Come Now Sleep. 


    NOT ESTRANGED TO REGRET. The stylistic differences between Son, I Loved You at Your Darkest and Come Now Sleep shocked listeners. The band’s leader TJ Bonnette had departed to spend more time with his wife. The touring lifestyle had been incompatible with his marriage. Without a lead “screamer,” the band turned to guitarist/clean vocalist, TJ’s younger brother Cody to front the band. Fans were shocked by the change in the band’s style and lack of screaming, but the band was able to take their fanbase on their new path. In retrospective reviews and discourse, Come Now Sleep carried fans through the band’s stylistic change and even brought new fans of a more alternative rock and less grating vocal style than TJ’s at times shrill scream. Come Now Sleep had only a clean vocalist, but it replaced the harsh vocals with lyrical intensity, which made the album not only distinct from their first album but from every other Christian Rock album released in its era.


    LEAVE YOUR BAD LIMBS BEHIND. None of the songs on Come Now Sleep sound like Christian Rock songs. Every song is encapsulated with honesty and doubt. The ethereal opener “Contact” questions whether the speaker hears the voice of God or if it’s “really my own [voice] / Bouncing off the ceiling back to me.” The lead single “Empire” is maybe the most Christian radio ready, though it deals with self- righteousness and the conundrum of those who grow up “good” in the church. Few songs in the Christian Rock cannon explore this perspective in earnest. “The Hoard” talks about grace and the “good boys who keep their livers clean / And smoke out of their lungs.” The other album tracks work between a dichotomy of ambient musings and hard rock heart-wrenchers before ending on the nearly 13-minute closer, “Timothy,” a song about the suicide of the band’s friend Timothy Jordan II, a touring member of The All-American Rejects and the keyboardist for Jonezetta before their debut popularity. Today’s song “Tides,” along with the album’s preceding track “New Sun,” has more of the rock formula but includes ambient guitar elements. It’s one of the least lyrically accessible tracks on the album. Whereas many of the other tracks are mostly about boys and the “sins of the flesh” pulling boys away from the church, “Tides” and “New Sun” are much more metaphorical. In “New Sun,” the lady is either dead or a symbol for sex. In “New Sun,” the speaker claims: “soon she’ll be my new sun,” and in “Tides,” he claims: “she’s now my new sun.” But as “Tides” goes on, the speaker states: “Automated exchanges make us not lovers / But feigners, we are only strangers.” Whereas whoever this woman is is interpreted as the “sun,” the moon in the song is not defined, though the song is more about the moon than the sun as the song is called “Tides.” The song ends with the speaker saying: “leave your bad limbs behind / For they are conduits . . . To our hearts.” When Josh Taylor, a reviewer of JesusFreaks Hideout.com gave the album 4.5 stars out of 5, he admitted: “Honestly, I’m fairly hesitant to say much of anything final about the lyrical content of Come Now Sleep because, in the same way that Son, I Loved You at Your Darkest rewarded you with repeated listens, Come Now Sleep deepens in meaning and substance with each and every listen.” I must admit that, while I’ve sat with the more sardonic, straightforward songs on the album, the pair of “New Sun” and “Tides” still have an obscured meaning to me. Maybe I have to sleep on it.


  • “Island” (Float Away) by The Starting Line, Saturday, May 4, 2024 (repost)

    In Western North Carolina, we had two modern rock radio stations. From upstate South Carolina there was 93.3 “ The Planet,” an Active Rock radio station that played lots of ‘90s rock and neo-90s rock. They loved grunge and post-grunge. They played Nickelback, Seether, P.O.D., Flyleaf, Puddle of Mudd, and that kind of music. Then there was Charlotte’s 106.5 “The End,” an Alternative rock station. While playing much of the same music, they also featured some newer groups, such as Silversun Pickups, Thirty Seconds to Mars, and the occasional The Almost or Saosin song. The Starting Line was one of those emerging bands that was starting to be picked up on radio. The first single, “Island,” from the band’s third and final (latest) LP, Direction, was a kind of break out for the band to mainstream alternative rock. The band had toured on their two previous albums and built up a fan base thanks to venues like the Vans Warped Tour, but some band members grew tired of touring, while others got involved with other projects. 

    WAITING TOO LONG FOR A SHIP TO COME. I wasn’t fond of other Starting Line albums, but the songs on Direction had a lot going on. Whether it was the summery campfire sounding song “Something Left to Give,” the too-old-for-my-youth song “21,” or the tongue-in-cheek “Birds,” Direction was on of my favorite summer of ‘09 albums. “Island” is a great example of layers in alternative rock. Based on what lead singer/bassist Kenny Vasoli calls a “pretty-ugly chord,” the song builds with some interesting drumming and with some Calypso-sounding elements. The song talks of the urge to “sail away” with a loved one and leave their old lives behind. The music video finds the band shipwrecked on an island that seems to have suffered a hurricane. In one scene, there’s a guitar case and in another the band gear is floating out to sea. The video version differs from the album version in that the video ends on a fade out, whereas the album version ends with a more dramatic drumming and chorus. 

    Tornado damage near Ringgold, GA, 
    April 27, 2011: source.

    IT SEEMS THAT THINGS ARE GETTING BETTER. This line was my mantra in college for a while. However, whenever I uttered it, it seemed the opposite happened—from credits not adding up to housing falling through. There was even the April 27, 2011–ten years ago yesterday— tornado outbreak that devastated the community the semester before my student teaching. Looking back at this song, I certainly missed the point. The message of the song is that life is hard and you rarely catch a break. Some days things start off pretty good, like waking up fully rested before your alarm and listening to a good song. The sun is shining and you realize there’s not too much pressing this day. However, quickly problems start piling up, and everything starts resolving the exact opposite way. A few fruitless missions too many and you wind up angry with the world, with the old man who’s not wearing a mask, with the department store for having a crappy selection, and you just want to be home–those are the times when you need to “keep a hold on and don’t let go.”

     

       

  • “The Sound" by Further Seems Forever + Angsty Aughts Update, Friday, April 3, 2024

    Today, I will update my Angsty Aughts playlist. Rather than solely focusing on Emo, I decided to expand to the angsty sounds of Nu Metal, post-grunge, and even pop that touched on that high school nerve of some of us growing up in the ’00s. There are certainly some great angsty songs from the ’90s and the ’10s, but today we focus on the ’00s. So if you’re ready, throw up your fist and enjoy the music of youth culture from the turn of the millennium! 

  • “Mood Rings” by Relient K, Thursday, May 2, 2024

    In 2022, Relient K’s official account posted a comment on TikToker Kirby MacKenzie’s video pointing out the problematic lyric to the band’s 2003 once fan favorite, “Mood Rings.” The video’s caption reads “Therapy isn’t enough[.] I need Christian punk band Relient K to apologize for this song from 2003.” Relient K wrote back: “We had a lot of growing and learning to do, still do!” While some Christian bands have doubled down on problematic messaging regarding issues of homo/transphobia, nationalism, and sexism; Relient K has taken the stance with many of their deconstructionist listeners at not taking their joke songs too seriously. A song like “Mood Rings” transported into the 2020s feels completely out of place. But in 2003, was part of a sexist zeitgeist that existed both in the cultures of pop-punk and in evangelical youth culture.


    AND I’VE CONTRIVED SOME SORT OF A PLAN TO HELP MY FELLOW MAN. “Mood Rings” is the second track on Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right . . . But Three Do. The quirky album is mostly filled with tracks that don’t make a theological point, at least until later in the tracklist. But when lead singer Matt Thiessen isn’t making statements about God, he’s talking about relationships. Relient K’s lyrics in retrospect feel like trashy teen magazine column advice that no mature adult would heed. But to the millennial teens listening to Thiessen crafted a worldview about sex and gender based on stereotypes. “Mood Rings” was an especially damaging song as it showed an emotionally immature speaker reducing girls to their emotions. The song’s speaker comes up with a plan to “get emotional girls to all wear mood rings.”  In the song’s bridge, the speaker interprets what the different colors of the mood ring mean. Of course, mood ring readings are based on body temperature, and there is no scientific evidence that a person’s mood can be read based on the ring’s color. If “Mood Rings was just one of the scores of problematic jams from the angsty aughts, we probably would only talk about it along with other damaging songs like Paramore’s “Misery Business” and 30h!3’s “DONTTRUSTME” are a couple of examples of sexist lyrics that seem out of place in the 2020s. The biggest problem with Relient K’s “Mood Rings” is how the lyrics were a baptized version of sexism, particularly for Christian youth groups. 


    SHE SAID TO ME THAT SHE’S SO STRESSED OUT THAT IT’S SOOTHING. For some youth groups, the ‘90s and ‘00s youth pastor sermon illustrations citing episodes of Home Improvement and the fundamental misunderstanding     between husband and wife Tim and Jill Taylor were commonplace. Rather than youth leaders teaching a path to understanding and compromise, boys were taught women’s minds were “a complex infrastructure,” inscrutable to a simple male. To make the misunderstanding even worse, Relient K lent their name to a book titled The Complex Infrastructure Known as the Female Mind: According to Relient K, the name taken from the final lines of “Mood Rings.” Rather than categorizing the moods of women, the book categorizes girls based on characteristics, for example, “The Overachiever” and “The Homecoming Queen.” The band later stated that the writer Mark Nichols wrote the book and sent it to the band for an endorsement. Just as the band apologized for “Mood Rings,” guitarist Matthew Hoopes apologized for the book based on “Mood Rings.” Sexism in the church has been harmful to all. I’m inclined to say that Relient K’s participation was youthful inexperience thanks to a culture that perpetuated it. With maturity, the members of the band could see how harmful their participation in it was. And how ridiculous were all those arguments in youth group? “Mood Rings” claims that changing one’s emotions drastically (as teenagers often do) is feminine. Boys never do that. Girls are too emotional because of their hormonal imbalances, that’s why one can never be president. They can never have access to the nuclear codes! I think of the youth group leaders and Christian school teachers who said this and who probably voted for the most emotionally unstable president in American history, who just happens to be male. So, while “Mood Rings” is a toxic song, I like that there is a redemption story. Even if it messed us up for twenty years.




     

  • “Embers and Envelopes” by Mae, Wednesday, May 1 2024 (repost)

    Every band tackled the Covid-19 pandemic in different ways. Many bands are selling live-stream tickets. Some have decided to give free concerts on social networking. Cleared from the time-consuming task of driving across the country, setting up equipment, and tearing down only to drive to the next city, musicians have been able to produce music in new ways. It doesn’t hurt that all of their equipment and professional microphones are in their basements. Two years ago, Emery produced a show on their  Twitch channel, in which they played their songs. They often had guest vocalists from other bands, such as Hawthorne Heights, Silverstein, and Dave Elkins of Mae. Emery reimagined some of their songs and the guest vocalist’s band’s songs too. The collaboration of “Embers and Envelopes” was a beautifully updated take on Mae’s first single. 

    TO WRITE THIS DOWN AS MEANS TO RECONCILE. The word “reconcile” is an awkward term to put in a song. But the lead single from Mae’s Destination: Beautiful, “Embers and Envelops” talks about an uncomfortable letter the speaker of the song writes, hoping to “patch things up” between him and the listener. On the first season of Labeled, Mae’s lyricist and singer Dave Elkins talked about a mis-understanding with some of his former church, inspiring several songs on Destination: Beautiful. “Embers and Envelops” is about the singer making the first move in reconciliation. Destination: Beautiful isn’t the only record in which Mae talks about forgiveness and reconciliation. On their latest record, Multisensory Aesthetic Experience, the track “Let It Die” likens forgiveness to a seed that must die for new life to bloom. It’s possibly lyrically even a little clunkier than “Embers and Envelopes,” but it is the melody that makes Mae, Mae. 

    I KNOW YOU HAVE SACRIFICED TIME, LIFE, LOVE.  This year, Mae is celebrating twenty years since the release of their debut record, Destination: Beautiful. In 2003, I was a sophomore in high school and I was shelling out tons of lawn-mowing money on new records. It was stressful to walk into a record store and see what new records were in stores on Tuesdays. It was also a huge year for music, seeing debuts from Evanescence, Anberlin, and Copeland to name a few. Switchfoot released their breakthrough The Beautiful Letdown. Thrice released The Artist in the Ambulance.  Linkin Park released Meteora. It was a transitional year in Christian Rock from the overtly religious sounds of bands like Pillar and Sanctus Real to Vans Warped Tour bands taking the mainstream on Christian Rock radio. Tooth & Nail Records was transitioning from punk to emo as bands like Slick Shoes started leaving the label. It was the last huzzah for bands like Newsboys and Audio Adrenaline on Christian Rock radio before those bands became CCM groups. I’m sure that I’ll be looking more into the year of 2003 later this year.

    Read “Embers and Envelopes” by Mae on Genius



     

  • “Sun (Acoustic)” by Mae, Tuesday, April 30, 2024 (repost)

    Between their debut album  Destination: Beautiful and their fan-favorite sophomore record The Everglow, Mae released  Destination: B-Sides, which includes live and acoustic renderings of some of the standout tracks, songs that didn’t make it to the record, and demos that would make it onto The Everglow. The chorus of “Sun” contains the the lyrics  “Destination Beautiful,” making “Sun” like the title track of the album, and one of the the most memorable tracks in the middle of the album, and it has one of the finest melodies on the album after “Embers and Envelops” and “All Deliberate Speed.”

    IF YOU’RE WILLING, LET IT GO. In a 2018 two-part episode of Labeled (now available only to Patreon subscribers), Mae’s lead singer Dave Elkins talked about the inspiration for the songs on Destination: Beautiful. Many of the tracks had to do with a disagreement between Elkins and members of his church. Elkins wrote many of the songs, including the first track “Embers and Envelops” in hopes of repairing the broken relationship. “Sun” also talks about this misunderstanding. The lyrics on the band’s debut album are vague and arguably immature compared to the subject matter in their more recent efforts, sticking to lines like “something happened.” No one is incriminated, and the song can be applied to the listeners’ own lives and is problems. Mae would eventually reject Christian marketing, and their recent efforts deal with band members’ deconstruction journeys and explorations into art, science, and hallucinogens.  The songs on Destination: Beautiful remind me of a time when my whole world relied on the opinion of someone at church. And listening back to the album, it seems that’s where the frustrations lie. And then listening to how far beyond that Mae has come, reminds me of how we all grow in self-acceptance as we get older. That search for approval seems trivial now, even though at the time, it meant the world to us.

    WAITING FOR THE RAIN TO STOP. “Sun” is the soundtrack to the moody weather of April showers, when days start out clear, only to cloud up and surprise us with showers, or a cloudy morning that clears for a windy afternoon before a weekend of rain, it’s a month of transitions. When life and the weather are in flux, it’s tempting to think of the time as a waiting period—waiting for things to settle down, “waiting for the rain to stop.” You’re waiting for “Destination beautiful.” But you go through enough of these waiting periods and you start to realize that this is your life. What’s the ultimate destination of the weather? Unless climate change obliterates seasons altogether, the weather is a cycle that will repeat throughout our lives, creating a kind of liturgy of rituals and practices. Yes, we may be working toward something, but becoming that someone doesn’t mean that you were never that person all along. It’s best to just try to enjoy whatever it brings. What’s the ultimate destination of a life but the grave? Best to make the moments count and enjoy the rainy days around the corner. 
    Studio Acoustic:
    Live Acoustic:
    Destination Beautiful original version:

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • “Months and Years” by Abandon Kansas, Monday, April 29, 2024 + Rain Mix Update

    Here’s an update on my  Rain Mix. April is winding down and today is a dreary day. Here’s a playlist to celebrate the gloomy seasons. Enjoy this playlist with a book or a hot beverage on a misty afternoon. Pretty soon it will be too hot to enjoy the rain. The songs in this playlist are loosely connected to rain. For example, today’s song begins with: “Momentum is hard to gain in this kind of rain.” Other songs just feel rainy. Either way, enjoy!