From the archives of incomplete posts

Oh, Malkie. He's been a co-chair to my mental health for many, many years now.  In times of sadness, he lifts me up through commiseration, and in times of happiness he gives me perspective.  

His music has been the hardest for me to describe.  Simply, his albums tend to be guitar-focused pop and acoustic folk with some electronic elements, what you might expect to come out of the greater UK area.  They're catchy songs and Malcolm's Scottish accent comes across as invariant, but central to each song.  His lyrics are dark, often self-deprecating, with occasional funny non-sequiturs.

That's a drastic simplification.  Indeed, there's a brilliant musicianship to all his albums - this is a masterful songwriter, where the songs are catchy, but complex, a blending of styles into unique non-composite forms.  The last two albums Malcolm's put out have been explicitly electronic, a kind of in-depth exploration of form that he mostly danced around for the past two decades with his previous solo and Arab Strap albums.  If anything, these albums seemed to be an expression of boredom and a desire to reclaim what he loved about making music.  I get the impression that if he's not pushing the limits of his music, he's not enjoying it.  Even though he may enjoy having fans, I don't get the impression he's doing this for us.  

Oddly, I find that when I try to describe Malcolm's music that I tend to think more about Malcolm the person, instead of, say, 'Bananas' the album.  There's more in each album than the style or musicianship.  There's a brutal honesty to his expression.  An honest-to-god low-level depression.  The kind that would keep a man from getting too cocky, yet let him remain kind of an asshole.

We might say Malcolm writes pop songs about sadness, but, like a true Scotsman, the sadness comes from within.  There are no grains of salt to the lyrics, but an appreciable self-deprecating wit that helps to keep an even keel.  From the man who brought you "Fuck It, I Love You" comes "Love is a Momentary Lapse in Self-Loathing," with lyrics like, "Fuck off with your happiness" set to an upkey stomping piano.

........

[Edit: I found this unpublished post from 2+ years ago.  I think I never posted it because I never finished it.  The main point was to try to describe this artist that I've been struggling to describe for like a decade.  Hilarious that I didn't finish it.  But I like my writing here, and don't think tacking on some half-assed ending in my current state of mind would do it any justice, so here ya go, here's half an idea.]

[Second edit: I don't know why this starts with Track 10, which is a B-Side, but the player contains the whole album, and I highly suggest starting with Track 1.]

Wanting to see for myself again

I'm supposed to be prepping for an interview, so I thought I'd share this song I absolutely love.

I have a lot of words about Hum, as I've been a fan for 25 years and this is their first album in 20, but I'll have to save that due to the aforementioned lame reason.  Generally, though, this was my favorite release of the last year.  It took me entirely by surprise, having found out about it about a month after its release.

This is a complex album with some really amazing moments, but this song is the first one that really grabbed me.  I'm kind of beyond the point of telling if an album is "good" or not, but for Hum that's kind of irrelevant to me anyway.  This song hit me like I'd unearthed a favorite song of mine from childhood.  It's just so immediately familiar and personal.  It literally feels like it was lifted from Hum in 1995.  

Amazing.

I'm obsessed with this whole thing.

Max Richter - "Richter: On the Nature of Daylight"

Snowblind

...or next May. Whatever. Just sharing music into the void at this point. Clearly don't have much to say lately. Hope y'all passersby are hanging in there.

Or even thriving! Nothing like extended isolation to breathe new life into the introverts and socially awkward among us.  I'm not great at the social stuff and I often work at home anyway, so I'm doing just fine.  Doing some extra gardening, though.  Gonna paint a bench later.  I guess middle age is nigh.

Speaking of the passage of time, here are some songs by a band I really got into this year because they sound like the music I enjoyed at 22 or 23.  That's what this blog is, right?  A few words about mortality and some songs that make me remember when I was young?  Wonder what that means.  No, I don't care what it means, I care if it matters.  It probably doesn't.

Hmm.  Sounds like middle age is going to be existentialist for your friend here.  Time to go stare at a chestnut tree, I guess.

 

 Other songs after the jump.

Gut Feeling (demo)

Here's a demo of a song I like.



I rule at blogging.

Midnight in the garden

Sometimes the evil wins.  Been thinking that a lot lately.  Sometimes the evil wins for a long time.  Sometimes the evil wins the battles.  Sometimes the evil wins for so long that we can't even know a life without evil.  What we call "evil" can be a lot of things.  It can be violence.  Hate.  Depression.  Addiction.  Not holding a door open for someone else.  Trolling on the internet.  Stubbing your toe?

I'm not sure I believe in any sort of otherworldly, non-corporeal Evil that underlies all these different evils.  I'm not sure I believe in an a priori dichotomy of evil and good.  I can't quite get behind the concept of karma.  I do believe to some degree that we get from the world what we put into it, but some get more and some get less, so it's an unjust karma, if at all, and that doesn't seem trustworthy as Spiritual Principle.

Regardless, my orientation to the world, to knowledge, and my ability to obtain knowledge, is one that is inherently value-laden, and that value says that good exists in all and that good can, and does, ultimately overcome evil.

Like evil, I'm not sure I can bracket it, but I do know that good is lots of things.  Good can be given.  Good can be received.  It can be planned.  It can be random.  Good is warmth.  Love.  Happiness.  Freedom.  A kind deed.  A random statement of support from a stranger.  Good is also walking in the park.  Patting a kind dog.  Creating.  Laughing.  Adventure.  New friends.  A long chat.  A cool, humid night at the beach.  Reconnecting.  Feeling accomplished.  A rightful deed.  Acknowledgement.  Prayers.  Hugs.  Beliefs.  Strengths.  Common and uncommon goods.  A baby, or a pet, napping on you.  A flower.  A creek for exploring.  A champion.  A kid who tries hard.  A kid who's lucky.  A memory.  A warm day.  A story.  Truth and justice.

There are a lot of little goods in the day to day.  There are some that take longer.  There are some we may never know.  But it's hard to keep a good unknown.  Good always overwhelms an evil in the long-run.  Think of all the evil we've righted in the decades we've been alive.  Even the struggle itself is a kind of good.  Sometimes, knowing the struggle is good is all that we need to keep going.

It's been a long few days.  I thought about this album and how, without words, it tells me about the magic of exploring in the forest.  I don't have any nearby childhood forests at the moment, but I feel this is a Good to share with the world and that's a pretty similar feeling.

What wondrous love is this?

This was an unexpected gift.  Jason Molina's Songs: Ohia album "The Lioness" is perhaps one of the most influential albums in my life.  I happened upon a few songs in 2000, back when Epitonic was one of the major players on the internet, helping people to find previously unknown musicians and bands.  Sometime later, in 2001, I finally bought 'The Lioness' and from thereon out, his music matched every major life transition, every upswing and downswing in my emotional state, every joy and loss.  For years, I could not listen to The Lioness without becoming overwhelmed by memories.  

A couple months ago, 5 years after Jason's death, Secretly Canadian re-released this album, alongside nearly an album's worth of recordings from the same session, the majority of which had never even been played live, let alone released.  Jason was known for being extremely prolific, often writing and recording or performing songs in the same day.  When playing live, he tended to prefer new songs and would rarely perform songs from his extensive catalogue.  It would not surprise me to learn that he had scrapped more songs than he'd recorded, giving us somewhat of a guarantee that we'll continue to have these occasional leaks of old material.

Many words have been spent by others more talented at writing about music than I am, so I won't reiterate at length how the unreleased songs capture Jason's belief in a dichotomy of love songs; whereas the original Lioness release captured the emotional, the longing, these new songs represent the "work" aspect, the effort of keeping the relationship.  I think that's pretty true.

What surprised me most about this album was the recording of the historic hymnal 'Wondrous Love.'  Jason's faith was always somewhat mysterious, but he held an appreciation for appalachian and southern gospel (evidenced by naming an album after Mahalia Jackson's 'Didn't It Rain'), so his recording of this song isn't a surprise; what's a surprise are the subtle changes he's made to it to reflect his own place in the world.  

Below are the lyrics to one of the original versions (via Wiki), from which most lyrics are descended.  Note the skipping over of half the verses, and the change of the tense of the final verse from present to future.  I've blocked out the lyrics he skipped and bolded Jason's changes:

1.

What wondrous love is this
O my soul! O my soul!
What wondrous love is this!
O my soul!
What wondrous love is this!
That caused the Lord of bliss

to send this precious peace,

To my soul, to my soul!

To send this precious peace

To my soul!

To bare the dreadful curse

for my soul, for my soul

To bare the dreadful curse

for my soul.

2.

When I was sinking down,

Sinking down, sinking down;

When I was sinking down

Sinking down

When I was sinking down,

Beneath God's righteous frown,

Christ laid aside his crown

For my soul, for my soul!

Christ laid aside his crown

For my soul!

3.

Ye winged seraphs fly, 

Bear the news, bear the news!

Ye winged seraphs fly

Bear the news!

--Ye winged seraphs fly, 

like comets through the sky,

fill vast eternity!

With the news, with the news!

Fill vast eternity

With the news!

4.

Ye friends of Zion's king,

join his praise, join his praise;

Ye friends of Zion's king,

join his praise;

Ye friends of Zion's king,

with hearts and voices sing,

and strike each tuneful string

in his praise, in his praise!

and strike each tuneful string

in his praise!

5.

To God and to the Lamb,

I will sing, I will sing;

To God and to the Lamb,

I will sing

--To God and to the Lamb,

who is the great I AM,

while millions join the theme,

I will sing, I will sing!

while millions join the theme,

I will sing!

To God and to the Lamb,

I will sing

6.

And while when from death I'm free,

I'll sing on, I'll sing on,

And while when from death I'm free,

I'll sing on.

and while when from death I'm free, 

I'll sing and joyful be,

and throughout eternity

I'll will sing on, I'll will sing on,

and throughout eternity

I'll will sing on.

While certainly he took a reductionist approach to these lyrics to focus the theme a bit less on the joyous celebration and salvation and a bit more on the evocation of mortality and death, I want to most directly address this last verse--look at this does to the meaning.  The original lyrics state 'while from death I'm free,' it evokes a safety in belief, a notion that 'I will never truly die, for my fate is in heaven, and I will therefore sing the praises of God while I am on earth."  Jason's changes were purposeful and bleaker.  "When from death I'm free, I'll sing on."  This life is finite, this life is struggle, but when I die, my spirit will live on.  Both verses, of course, call into mind the afterlife, but there's a particular pain and permanence to life evoked in Jason's lyrics through these slight changes.

Jason routinely touched on mortality.  One of his most striking early songs was 'Nay 'tis not death,' a song likening drinking to a kind of death of the soul for which one needs repentance.  Both these songs make explicit the kind of brackets on life, existence, and our own actions that we tend not to consider often in our daily lives, as keeping such thoughts prominent can drown out the rest of existence, the joyous celebration and salvation we need to survive.

I'm not writer-enough to end this succinctly, but I will say that it kind of feels like wherever I continue to go, whatever changes occur in my life, I'll still have this continuously updating soundtrack.  It's pretty depressing, honestly, but whenever you align with someone, even just as a fan, it's hard to let them go.  Their perspective can give you pretty important insight, even if it's hard to hear.