This week I bring you mostly just a random collection of songs I've been listening to a lot over the past week. My new-found free time has mostly manifested itself as going on a lot of nice long walks, and though a good proportion of the time I've been listening to Fern Brady's memoir Strong Female Character, I've also been working on a banging new playlist to enjoy while out, rather than breaking up my enjoyment of nature etc with fucking around on my phone to skip songs that aren't the vibe right now. It's working great for me, although when I tried it on my brother he complained that it was a) depressing and b) that he hated Neutral Milk Hotel. Clearly me and him have rather different taste in music because I found all the songs quite calming, joyful, and uplifting!
The first song I've been obsessed with is Chappell Roan's The Subway. Rather unfortunately, this song has not actually been released yet, which has been hampering me somewhat. However, she's performed it live a good number of times now, and you can still enjoy it through people's dodgy uploads to Spotify, or elsewhere if you are so inclined. In an interview discussing the song, she said that she just felt like it was a song that worked best and was most fun live, and given people liked it so much in that modality she worried that a studio version wouldn't live up to expectations for fans, or be quite so good. I do understand this argument, but in that case... please at least release a live version, I would like to more easily add it to my playlists. Anyway, the song is a fairly simple one, but it also hits really really hard. The melody has a nostalgia to it, and a slight fuzz from the quality of the live audio. The first time I heard it, it already sounded like a song I'd heard a hundred times before, and I think that works really well with the subject matter of the song. By far the strongest part of the song is the coda at the end, that incessantly swam it's way around my head in loops all week long. But, you need the rest of the song to build up to it, to make the climax feel worth it. As the song crescendos and then fades away, Roan sings, "She's got, she's got a way... She got, she got away". It's clever, it's fun, and you want to yell it wherever you are. I can see why it's so great live!
The next song I want to talk about and have been listening to loads is The Nether (Face to Face) by Tapir!. This one's a really great song to listen to while you're out and about and enjoying hanging out with some sheep or whatever. Now I'm thinking about it, maybe my brother is partially right. Because when I go to describe why I like this song, part of it is the mix of contentedness and sadness it makes me feel. Some of that, unavoidably, is my sadness over Tapir! disbanding. I actually was pretty shocked by how much this affected me, and I don't really know why! But I was really sad about it for a couple of weeks. I understand why they broke up, and it makes sense, and I support them and hope for more interesting projects from the band members in the future. Maybe that's part of it --- knowing that there's a good reason that it's over. That works well with this song, too. I like the way it stops, and then starts again. I like the plinky sounds of guitars. I like the staid pace that it plods along at. I like the bit where they break away from singing and just kind of state the lyrics at you. It's a good one.
Recently, I've also been enjoying some of Gerard Way's back catalogue. It's fun to go back and (re)discover songs they put out in 2014 that mostly went past my notice because I was busy being sad about My Chemical Romance breaking up or whatever. Hesitant Alien has a load of bangers on it, but the track that's been looping round and round in my head as of late is How It's Going to Be. I'm going to talk about it from a musical perspective, and then a lyrical one. Musically, it's easy to identify a big chunk of why I love it --- the drums are fucking fantastic! I go on and on about it, but it really does make a lot of songs for me. Here, they sound almost like a march, with their layered bum ba-da-bum bum rolling through the track. There's a lot of space, too, in the track where it's not dominated by singing. Way's voice floats over the music, sometimes fading into a choral background, and sometimes centred, punctuated by the heavy first beat of the 4/4 rhythm. There's a screeching static that opens the track, and then again weaves in and out of the music, adding this dissonant layer that stops it from feeling to perfect, that layer of grunge that I need to really love a track. Everything about it feels intricately layered, and that's part of why I can listen to it over and over and find something new in it everytime to enjoy. The only points I'm docking is that it's not very sing-along-able but it's not Way's fault they've got a gorgeous voice. Lyrically, I think the images are gorgeous and complex, and there's a lot to sink your teeth into. Generally, I care about how songs sound first, and what they say second --- but what they say is an important component that throws them over the line, as we'll see especially with my next and final track. Way sings about the weird experience of living past twenty-five when you didn't expect to, acheiving your dreams and not knowing where to go next. They sing about the uncertainty of the future, asking, "Can you tell me what it's like?/ Or how it's going to be?" I think, also, this is balanced by the lyrics earlier, which read, "I never really wanted more/ Than what I ever really needed after all/ Someone that hates to see me go." I guess that something that I resonate with too --- the uncertainty about where to go next, about what you're supposed to do with a future that you weren't sure you'd have. But, also, realising that there's a contentedness and solidness in your simple life & community. It's obvious, but when you're in it, it's easy to forget that it's not about the goals and dreams of where you want to get to, but being happy with what you've got and having people that love you.
Finally, let's talk about my song of the week. I fear poor Peter will not be enjoying much me bringing back country music yet again to the song of the week circuit, but sue me, I like it. And, if you're Peter, I'm hoping you will listen to this song anyway because it's great. We're talking about Long Violent History from Tyler Childers. He's a fantastic artist, and has been putting out bangers since his 2011 album Bottles and Bibles, which discusses his experiences of small-town America, and exploitation of the working class. Long Violent History (the album, this time) came out in 2020, and is mostly an instrumental album that makes really great background music. But, of course, it's all about this track. I think you'll understand why I've chosen it right from the opening lyrics, which read, "It's the worst that it's been since the last time it happened/ It's happening again right in front of our eyes." This week, a lot of my conversations with my friends have centred around terrorism, as we discussed the government's moves to proscribe Palestine Action, and their condmenation of both Bob Vylan and Kneecap at Glastonbury. At the end of the song, Childers sings, "Would that be the start of a long, violent history/ of tuckin' our tails as we try to abide?" With fair frequency, I hear complaints from people that music shouldn't be political. Which is of course stupid because a) everything is political and b) music has always been political. I discussed in a previous song of the week the role of music in resistance to Brasil's military regime through the 60s and 70s. It's always been a powerful tool of information, resistance, and community-building. Childers reminds us that inaction and acceptance is violence, and sometimes that's something we need to hear. And of course, it helps, that on top of all of that, the song is fantastic to listen too, as well.
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