Chronicle 2021: The Highlights
Q1 has come and gone. Time to talk about the best it's had to offer (including a possible AOTY?)
Close your eyes. Imagine the greatness of the inevitable scattered across 10 or so releases. I’d say the amount of worthwhile albums that came out in the past 3 months is appropriate, certainly more than I’d expected. It seemed to be destined to be a slow year, yet some things have been in motion, which is good to see. On the personal side, I’ve come to realize I’ve gotten mostly tired of people talking to me and saying a lot of things to me. Which means that, not only in my seeking of older discographies (like Brian Eno, John Fahey, Underworld, etc.), but also in what I gravitate towards when it comes to releases, there’s a lot more instrumental music here than there was last year; a lot more house, a lot more ambient. And if they’re not instrumental, then the words are more scarce, more careful, more detailed and pointing towards something specific.
Q1 Highlights
Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over the Country Club (singer/songwriter)
If you know your Lana, you know what you’re getting. There are hardly any surprises here, even if there are some shocking missteps. Some production effects, like the autotune on “Tulsa Jesus Freak” don’t work, some songs go longer than they should (and most of the shorter ones could afford to be longer), some transitions from verse-to-chorus are too sudden (looking at “Wild at Heart” here)... and Lana once again showing off her true colors does taint this album a bit. Her reaction to criticism regarding her entire conservative schtick is a stark and strong “I’m not gonna change” speech, which is disheartening, given that this routine will have to end at some point, especially when it’s getting to this level of lunacy (chemtrails? Really?), and she seems to be more than content in delivering the same passivity she’s lived in her entire discography.
But then again, that’s always been Lana, and those of us who have been there from Born to Die onwards know the deal. Her songwriting hasn’t changed, and, even if it’s taken a step back from the more musically ambitious predecessor, it’s still tasteful and kind music making. Hell, even when she’s talking about chemtrails in the title track, she finds a way to make it conceptually work - a questioning of her blind acceptance of the world from a place of comfort and privilege, disguised as a waltz. While opening the album with “White Dress”, where she pushes her already weak high range to its most piercing extremes, her fast-paced delivery of “Down in the Men in Music Business Conference” says more about the disdain she has for what came from those men than any of her lyrics would.
And again, if you’re here for the shallow pleasures, they’re here. The soft yet brisk melodies of “Let Me Love You Like a Woman”, the sombre of “Dark But Just a Game”·followed by the forgotten pseudo hippie invitations of “Not All Who Wander Are Lost”, the cute percussion of “Yosemite” where there seems to be some form of questioning (“We did it for the right… reasons?”), the escapism of “Dance Till We Die”. Everything’s still there, for now. If you wanna maintain the positivity, you could claim the closing cover of Joni Mitchell’s “For Free”, which indicates a stronger sense of inner questioning than Lana can deliver, could be a mark for her future, as she tries to find once again that looseness she claims she once had. Let’s hope it goes that way, because I still see the capacity in her to do it. If only those American symbols weren’t so persuasive.
Naked Flames - Binc Rinse Repeat (outsider house)
Oh, but what a thought! Many a misgiving give way to sounds so foreign and distraught, separated by layers upon layers of fur that take us aback, yet we can only explore what still passes through it all. Diagonal beats struggling across a dark blue sky as they celebrate what couldn’t be, and what can be after all. We know the dance moves, but we don’t dance; we struggle along from Point A to Point B with no need for restitution. It’s a vision of what could happen if we don’t get our act together, and a reminder to not be too content with that. A cushion of reaffirmation mixed with character and force. Games that were never played come with their own bootlegged soundtrack, and this is that soundtrack. We get to think in black and white about little moments, but we don’t realize those moments are time bound, and this is that time. Music playing while your head is deep in the sand, and hearing what’s outside makes you wonder just how good and rewarding things could be if you got your head out of it. Take your headphones out, but don’t take them off.
Radio Supernova - Takaisin (shoegaze)
Won’t you look at that? Danceable shoegaze! Music that doesn’t (for the most part) wallow in its own misery and reverb, and moves around, tries shit out. A musical quartet with a sense for pulse and fun, even as they lyrically scratch to look for a sense of purpose (“You’re alive…”). These songs move around as if they were power pop, but with enough rhythmic dexterity that they don’t get trapped in the same 4 major chords. Lead singer Kata Riikonen doesn’t get trapped in the noise surrounding her; in fact, she comes close to leading it! She sings with a sense of poise and charge that’s incredibly refreshing to hear. Not to be confused, though, there is noise here. Nothing is ever too distorted or broken, the sounds are quite clean actually, but they’re full. They have body, they have texture, a very creamy one too, like bathing in a river made of milk. They create a sense of nature colliding with the big pink sky surrounding them (probably due to city pollution), and the contrast makes for a band that’s united in their search for clarity. They don’t find it - in fact, the album ends on a surprisingly sour note, one of giving up at last, but it’s a feeling of surrendering after a very long time. Hearing this album, I can’t hear them sitting around doing nothing for too long, they’ll have to get back at it eventually. And won’t that be a sight.
Maria Arnal i Marcel Bagés - CLAMOR (glitch pop)
Quite the sneaky album. There’s a very clearly intentional progression throughout this project that should make it inconsistent and uneven, but the right rhythm is found so that said inconsistencies end up enhancing the final product. Experimental flamenco artist María Arnal and guitarist Marcel Bagés know how to make an album sound like a whole, if their 2017 debut proved anything. And this one might be just as good, if not better. I wouldn’t blame anyone if they heard the first 3 tracks and thought this would be a plain pop album. Opener “Milagro” has a beautiful, easy going melody that does feel like opening up the musical palette these 2 have built, adding in more electronic elements, but still keeping a core melodic centre. Even the more cutting “Fiera de mí” isn’t that far off from what could be considered a natural progression, and a great one - sensual but with cloudy eyes and sharp synthetic production (and its queer themes are well noted). Not only is it fantastic, but it sets a precedent.
A precedent that will slowly be taken over by the project’s own insecurities. Little by little, the music becomes more frantic, more worried, haunted even, as if it was running from something inevitable. It doesn’t come all at once. First in a capella passages, then in roaring guitars (courtesy, of course, of the wonderful Marcel Bagés, who belongs in the spotlight as much as María, even if she doesn’t sing), then in pulsing beats, then in lyrics that become more ominous with each song (“You can’t run away if the fire is on the inside” -> “You left behind you, behind you, such a star”, like a subliminal message). It’s a record that finds itself crumbling down, giving into the inevitably artificial, that which cannot be saved. The cover art is appropriate; it’s the sound of running away and realizing there are edges to the world, and what lies beyond is darkness. But what’s inside has been contaminated, some twisted spirit has taken over the beautiful.
And of course, it all ends up collapsing once and for all. It was all too good to be true, and the great silence consumes even our main characters. What’s left is glitches, tiny fractured moments that don’t align or coalesce. Mirrors being broken and being turned into ashes. The promises of what could have happened at the start of the album end up being all but discarded and thrown at the seams. Deserted landscapes of holes and figures that couldn’t be revealed, as the wind washes it all away. Tempting to look away, but you can always start the album once again, see what could have been.
Anna B Savage - A Common Turn (singer/songwriter)
Must be hard being a songwriter. Especially nowadays, where the market begs you to be different and stand out, otherwise you sink into obliviousness (even though many acclaimed indie artists are as replaceable and interchangeable as they come). It seems like that pressure has really drilled into Anna B Savage, with this being her debut after a sole EP in 2015. Throughout this very album, she questions her own instincts, personal and artistic, tearing herself limb from limb. And don’t take my word for it, take hers - “Three years and still worried it's a mediocre album/I swear I tear myself limb from limb”, on “Dead Pursuits”. A Common Turn is a stark display of aesthetic anxiety, the result of years and years of trying to build one’s personal image being put to question, as the lack of satisfaction kicks in. The sound of your fingers as you scratch through your entire head.
It’s 47 minutes of questioning upon questioning. Doubting the ulterior motives of what-could-be-interpreted-as affection on “Baby Grand”, which later turns into the frustrated sludge of “A Common Tern”; the meaningless and unfulfilling sexual encounters that indicate a sexuality repressed for far too long on “Chelsea Hotel #3”; the memories of when everything seems to be alright on “BedStuy”, the rejection of her body on “One”.. All these encounters serve to create minute moments of crisis, all portrayed by an unrelenting voice that kicks herself at every turn yet can’t prevent herself from feeling. There’s a vocal delivery here that tells simple moments like someone falling asleep on your shoulder, or legs brushing against each other, or getting mediocre head, with an attitude of resentment and sorrow; glad they existed, but mad that they’re over. She never breaks, possibly because she’s already working on not showing her cracks on the outside.
This translates into the music as well. It seems as though there’s this underlying tension between the guitar picking and the electronic ambiance that sounds intentionally unnatural, as if they weren’t fit for each other, yet had to work together in order to create a whole, yet a whole that’s incomplete. The sound is ragged yet theatrical. On “Two”, Anna slowly hisses, “I will never amount to anything”, followed by one striking chord, one of the few moments of precise harmony in the album, which is quickly followed by an electronic breakdown as she realizes her shortcomings. At every lyrical turn, the music is there to pound or break in her stead. It’s almost as if, imperfect as it is, it’s looking after her. In that sense, there’s a feeling of musical solidarity - the character Anna feeds the music with thoughts and emotions that overwhelm her, so the music may have something to hold on to, and the music, in turn, organizes said thoughts in a way that Anna stays secure. The album doesn’t end on any fulfilling note, or even a moment of despair. Instead, in a moment of acknowledgement: “I want to be strong, and I would like to be fine, and I hate that it’s fueled (even in part) by my own mind”, as she soars like the birds that she’s so passionate about. And she’s not saying all of this just to carry on. Here’s hoping being a songwriter won’t crack her.
Rx Papi - 100 Miles and Walk'in (trap)
This is a walking land of contradictions. Tragedies upon tragedies told like jester jokes by a man who may not realize the full depth of his own words. He raps on the first track, “All a n***a ever needed was a place to rest / Now he got a permanent place to rest”, and if you think that’s absurdly dark, wait until you hear how he performs it. It’s a land of uncanny valley of emotions, as Rx Papi debates within himself and his dark mood and ideas are met with his own way of saying things, which seems to naturally come from a place of constant discomfort. He fumbles his own words, the flow is hardly ever on beat, many rhymes are words rhyming with themselves (not even internal rhymes), and the mood is questionably flimsy, with rarely ever a hook to be found. None of these are bad attributes - they are what make the record, anyway. They bring out a bizarre sense of tragedy and weight to the project, of constant confusion.
Make no mistake, though, Rx Papi knows what he’s doing, even if he doesn’t outright show it. His threats are often so off the wall you’re bound to believe them, his flow leaves no room for thinking (especially when he hardly ever raps 2 lines in a row in 1 take; every bar is getting stomped on by the following line), and his voice is berating and somewhat manic. All of this makes him have an akin sense of logic to what he’s saying: one that doesn’t allow you to question it, since by the time you do, he’s already moved on to another subject (“Walk in this bitch like, what’s going on / I got a good reason why I did you wrong”, or my favorite one, “It’s crazy, my family probably think I’d rob them / They act funny with me, then I’ll be ready to rob them / Don’t get me wrong, that’s my family, I’m not gonna rob them / But if I did rob them, it wouldn’t be a problem / ‘Cause I never did nothing wrong to nobody”. Just writing these words doesn’t do justice to them). He ends up becoming a rare version of a man whose version of reality, warped by very serious trauma and shortcomings, ends up mirroring the vision of those in power almost completely by accident.
In the meantime, he gets surrounded by A-type beats. Whether they be distorted or cloudy, they remain consistent and engaging, even if they only serve as something to keep Papi at it. They’re more likely to make you laugh, simply because of how they seem to keep going even as Rx Papi walks as if he was avoiding bullets or bullet holes and making fun of them. He keeps on walking, sometimes even jumping, to get to no destination in particular. Yet, he knows more about discrimination, the impact of murder, institutional racism and neglect, and the very fear of death than it sounds like at first. The fact that he does it all in such a blatant and blunt way is what may be shocking, it may be what makes us laugh, but it’s also what makes him so powerful. Zero filter. Horizontally, not vertically. Understanding the contradictions of existing.
Elori Saxl - The Blue of Distance (electroacoustic, ambient)
Blues run the game. At least, that’s what the album title, cover art and song titles might have you think. They’re certainly not wrong. Most of this album runs in a watery field where all the hues of the color run alongside some oranges, greys and even blacks. Elori Saxl had this album consist of 2 parts: the first half, recorded in the middle of summer, during “one of the happiest times that [she’s] experienced in [her] life”; and the second half, in the dead of winter, trying and failing to remember how she felt during that summer, during which a distorted version of those emotions came to be. Thus, the first half is pulsing, taking cues from electronic dance music, like a dancefloor without the floor or the dance; a humid, fertile space where there’s a distant sun to guide you back home whenever you need to.
Yet, the waves keep on coming, and they keep driving you back to that shore, as you suddenly realize you’re no longer within that space, but are now inside your own memory, trying to recollect any kind of lingering feeling left. The pulse has been replaced by starker sounds, misty violets that work horizontally; a vestige of what once was, now trying to be satisfied with the memory. That pulse eventually comes back, but now it’s one daring you to look ahead: take a curious peek to what’s beyond you. Oh, wouldn’t you believe it? It’s white. It can be anything.
Grandbrothers - All the Unknown (ambient house)
Mainly a chunk of moving (in the most literal sense) piano melodies that rise above the oceans to hear what could be out there. A lot of interest for rhythm on this thing, since the compositions seem to be running around a field of ever resting comfort. It aims high, but not so high that one has to run around trying not to lose it. In that sense, it’s patient. There’s always room for something else to be found, something that only the listener can provide. There’s a lot of green on this album, possibly because it’s always swirling around for the woods, hoping to see that lost ideal it has never known. The thought of walking down the streets to this, I find terrifying, for what else could I see but that which I don’t have? You see, within this album’s comfort, there’s always a sense of yearning, of a chest wanting to burst yet knowing that, if it were to do that, it could stop everything.
There’s something about the way the city moves that this album understands, especially during that golden hour. If anything, All the Unknown contains the borders of the city, the stopping point between the natural and the artificial; it’s the line holding everything together. It flows without a stopgap, it’s indirect lines as they string along a crowd. People come and go, yet they barely notice it, that which keeps those barriers united. You turn around and you see the missing part of the city - but be careful! Don’t mistake that with the missing part of yourself… although, of course, you could also find that within this album too. Don’t sleep on your birthday, and certainly don’t cry. Grandbrothers will do that for you.
Danny L Harle - Harlecore (hardcore trance)
Time might eventually prove that Danny L Harle was the best producer to come out of PC Music, instead of A.G. Cook. Sure, Cook’s music might be more accessible and less quirky, but he’s demonstrated to not be able to work on a project of his own to save his life. Meanwhile, after showing a much more distanced approach to PC Music’s bubblegum bass bombast, with a much more direct interest in the power of trance music, Danny’s Harlecore is the first PC Music-affiliated project in a long time that may look like a joke, but certainly doesn’t sound like one. Labeling himself as DJ Danny, working alongside DJ Mayhem (Hudosn Mohawke), DJ Ocean (Caroline Polachek) and the always-welcome blue hybrid MC Boing (Lil Data), this becomes a multi artist party that still expects you to take it as a whole.
Danny completely and succinctly understands the power of the naked yearning that comes in trance music, the blacks and blues that form with simple phrases and banging sounds. The songs here shake and scream, like an agitated painter with a blank canvas, brushing it very anxiously. The songs feel like open arms jumping around (bouncing all night, if you will). The sound of a transcendental party. There’s something about a song like MC Boing’s “Boing Beat”, how such a massive voice can stand alongside such a vast yet empty instrumental, as if it were to notice the void even as it classes itself a “a bird that flies on the wings of a bird in the angel's eyes” (couldn’t have said it better myself), or the drama found on MC Boing’s “Piano Song”, an emotional shout where playing the piano could be absolutely anything - until it isn’t (“LISTEN TO MUSIC! LISTEN TO PIANOS!”, he gets a chance to say before he gets taken away. A mantra for sure). There’s something to be said about confident voices in a genre like this.
Which leads to one of the biggest victories of this album: mainly comprised of female vocals, it avoids one of the easiest traps in both trance music and PC Music projects, which is infantilizing them to the point of being easily fetishized. The female vocals here are plenty, and while all of them still display that buoyancy of the heart that comes with the innocence of earnest love and communion - Karina Ramage’s wide-eyed crispiness on “Take My Heart Away” is flooring, in particular -, they always sound piercing and independent. They’re inviting you to the party, and not the way around. They’re the ones in command. That presents a different line of communication that makes these songs cleaner and more wholesome than before. It’s a fantasy, of course it’s a fantasy, but you’re forced to make it work as well. Nothing’s free, or guaranteed at this party. Except, maybe heroin, if the sickeningly good last track tells us anything.
Black Swan - Repetition Hymns (tape music, drone)
No, yeah, I get it, I mean, my emotional catharsis sounds more like urkels screaming unwanted thoughts against a misty wind that’s covering me and a desperate soul sitting in a bench, surrounded by said wind like 2 strangers who have nothing to say to each other yet cuddle up to feel the static of forgotten tapes unheard by the world, but who could rip it apart shall they be played during the right moments. Grey sheets of paper running around like in a forgotten hallway that leads to classrooms where you will only be laughed at and won’t get the satisfaction you desire. The stranger and I don’t have time for melodrama, but we can try to imagine what it would be like to give in to that emotional cliché of escalating notes, like a staircase that leads nowhere but to an empty logo, and we stare at the wind that may or may not be made out of tape and wonder in silence what led us to this position. Outside, we may look and realize there was never anything there, and we were simply living within our own imagination, and nothing could make it come true. No sapphires here, only bleak cycles. I turn to the stranger, they have no face, yet they’re screaming to themselves like their mouth was inside a hole somewhere. I wonder if that will happen to me too, and try to resist fighting it - because after all, what’s the use of moping? - but find it enticing to give into that nothingness for the rest of my life. I’d certainly be a lot more content, since I wouldn’t have to fight myself the whole time. But then again, we must look outside ourselves. And there it is, that surrounding wind, that screaming wind, and as I wonder if it will ever come to attack us, I realize it probably never noticed we were there. There is no stranger. I hold my own hand. I lay on my own shoulder. If only the wind could serve as company. But there is no outside, so I might as well just enjoy the texture, even if I can’t touch it. I wonder what would happen if… Anyway, what was the question?
Playboi Carti - Whole Lotta Red (experimental hip hop)
Technically a 2020 album, but more 2021 than most of the material here. This feels like the perfect transition point to go from one year to another. Whole Lotta Red feels and sounds like a dangerous cancer that’s been building for over the course of what seems like a very long time (a year, perhaps?) being cut open with a knife, and now we’re all forced to deal with it. It’s the consequences of our actions in the form of an ugly creature. There are plenty of melodic instrumental passages, but you can hardly hear them as the mix is so suffocating in its menacing distortion. Like the inside of a skull being screamed at and hit at a wall for an hour. And the worst part is it seems like it was made that way. Carti’s a fed up three-eyed monster on the search for beauty, like a Faustian character, only one that’s not afraid to indulge in the hedonism the devil has set out for him.
Also unlike Faust himself, Carti is able to find moments of release, joy, even entertainment. Plenty of moments like the cute “Teen X”, the playful “Whole Lotta Neon” and the glitchy “Not Playing”, where it seems like Carti might find some kind of contentment. But all those moments are right next to disorienting flashes of whites and blacks like “Punk Monk”, “No Sl33p” or “Stop Breathing”, where, even if he might sound like he’s speaking a completely different language as he flips every word and enunciates every letter as if it was backwards, those are the bits where he tries to show some semblance of vulnerability. Haunting paranoia, the feeling of being chased by the very real night, they can’t be taken for granted - “Ever since my brother died, I been thinking ‘bout homicide”; “When I go to sleep, I dream about murder”. Carti’s been turned into a very dangerous and anxious man, too burnt out to think properly. And the music’s helping him out by being as maniac as possible. He’s got the ability to deconstruct words and turn them into mere and sheer sounds (he even gets Kanye to do this in the fantastic intro of “Go2DaMoon”), but those sounds are a cry for help. Between all the abstract shapes and forms, and the cutting synths that turn into adlibs, there’s a warning sign for all of this. He’s way too high. He’s been losing control. Never too much.
And yet, there’s a lot more than just gloom to be found. By no means is this a depressing album or a downbeat one - if anything, again, it’s about the beauty that can be found within those dark moments. Few artists out there know how to merge their voices into something unrecognizably tonal like Carti, and he exalts and jumps at every chance he gets. Even when he’s losing control, he finds the reds he’s around to be symbols for passion and strength, and he supports himself off them. Syncopated adlibs and voices always in the background to make Carti not feel too alone. He’s got himself to not go insane, and while that might not be enough company to remain sane, it’s something. Delightful danger.
Album of the Year (So Far)
Daniel Knox - Won’t You Take Me With You (singer/songwriter, baroque pop)
The short version is that this is the dissecting of the character of the jester, too eager to be pursued and destroyed by his own habits, admits both real and MIDI strings, pianos and occasionally stirring guitars. But you don’t want the short version, do you? Not when your heart ends up aching. Not when there’s art this profound and striking. Not when the personal is made universal, and the end of a life means the end of the world as we know it. Who is that waiting behind the shadows? Is it oblivion itself? Tell it we send our regards, we’re too busy tying up loose ends.
So, the long version. Daniel Knox is a composer with baroque intentions, escapist lyrical feelings and a unique, warbly voice that admittedly you have to get used to. His music trembles at the sight of complacency, yet quivers at the unique mortality that doesn’t escape anyone, not even him, and he’s quite aware of that. Won’t You Take Me With You, his latest offering and by far his best one, takes musical elements from Angelo Badalamenti and his work on David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, taking in the waltzy compositions but not the melodrama that comes with them, and occasionally harkens back to the whimsy and abstract method of falling apart of said director, albeit without the surreal. The uncanny and the fearful are much more clearly found in the human of our actions this time around. It makes things that much scarier, as we have to wonder what lies beyond our blatant choices.
Like with many Classic albums, the opener is meant to disorientate you, show you an album that doesn’t exist. It sets everything up in media res, as the actions that will be detailed throughout the album have already passed, and what’s left is the memory of them. But “King of the Ball” isn’t about that, it’s about him. A jaunty, playful drinking song that’s nothing like the rest of the album. This is the outside of Daniel Knox - a know-it-all, a take-it-all, a fun man even if he’s singing at nobody in particular. Yet, of course, those contradictions already start to add up: “Feelings mutual, sure it is, boy it is / I want to kiss you and scream and then spit in your eye… / Waving goodbye”, and he sings it all with that warbly vibrato of his that seems designed to annoy, at least a little bit. A cabaret in the middle of nowhere. This is the last time the album will play out on the inside of anything. “Vinegar Hill” already sets you up for something else; a fake, artificial bossa nova track that’s more musically dense than the rest of the album, a melodic rant that seems to be happening in that in-between place between the ball and the streets, one that’s too sober and aware to be considered a drunken ramble. It’s closer to a Destroyer piece, even if it’s more personal and kept to himself than Destroyer could ever be; definitely the most disconcerting piece of the album, and for that one reason, one of the most rewarding ones. Something’s about to go wrong. “Ohhh, shit.”
If you were to care about this album being a fully “cohesive” piece, you’d start it at “Fall Apart”. That’s, ironically, where the album simmers down musically and follows a trail. This is where the veil of those early songs begins to come off. We see what’s truly going on: a man too beat down by his own memories and his own remembrance. What at first looks like trying to pick up the pieces after a break-up begins to feel like something will now forever be missing. That’s where it finally goes outside and sets all its motifs very plainly. The broken thoughts after being in a car, a house that feels outside of yourself, the pleasures of knowing the other person understands your questioning beyond words - all of it falling apart before your own eyes. It plays out, indeed, like a reel playing old footage, as Knox sees others becoming who he is - a man who’s lost his own sense of narrative, or thematic reasoning, making threats that will only bounce back to him.
Slowly, the album starts to realize itself. The narrator is less a figure in the absolute sense, and more of a memory that’s taken consciousness. He tries to make it all come to, but some pieces are missing. “Fool in the Heart”, one of the 2 centerpieces of the album, is not only a master example of desperate storytelling, it’s also the understanding of those shortcomings. The physical longing meets the need to speak in the same language as that who listens, as the mind begins to fade. And the song’s bridge, the piano ballad becomes the center stage for a meeting between the memory and the owner of the forgotten let downs, only to come to forced conclusions and the resolution of it all collapsing. For a powerful passage, Knox loses that shakiness in his voice and sings a confident showdown: “So close your eyes, and die…”. But then, it all disappears. They all lose trace of what they were doing. The memory’s lost track of itself. Who would have thought? I’d quote the striking lyrical passage that comes with said realization, but I think it’s best to discover it yourself, hear it unravel as it finds itself. But don’t forget about the car.
“Girl from Carbondale” announces itself as, indeed, a song about a girl from Carbondale - apparently about Knox’s mother - but it’s not really about her, so much as it is the memory of her. We don’t find out much about her beyond mere facts, we only know as far as he knows, as far as the memory can say. We go back to that ideal of a house that exceeds the protagonist, as he’s not a part of those memories - which brings us to an interesting question: whose memories are these? Who is the dreamer? Who’s begging, “Don’t go, don’t go, don’t stay”? Who is falling apart? Obviously, there’s no direct answer, and looking for one would go against the very existence of these songs, but it’s worth noting what this all is for. The memory is broken, and now can’t help being haunted by its own lack of experience. The second centerpiece on the album, “Look at Me”, is a tragic, minimalist endeavor in realizing that experience; leaving, saying goodbye, climbing into a stranger’s car and escaping what could be. As the track reaches its wrenching crescendo, with 3 voices singing at once, one of them commanding to “kill the anger on your shoulder”, the other one saying farewell, and the final one “always disappearing”, the ideal of memory ends up being crucial. Someone has fallen irreversibly into their own forgotten memories of lost ideals, lost love, lost affection, and they can’t get them back. They’re stuck, and are now wandering around the streets pretending they can do anything about it. All they can do is fade into the night.
The last third of the album is as desolate as any piece of music you’ll hear all year. “I Saw Someone Alone” flows like an interlude, even if it’s 5 minutes long, and is the most straightforward reflection of moments disappearing; the good ones leaving, and the bad and intrusive ones staying. This goes far beyond any singular broken relationship, and is now reaching the scope of that entire person, as they break into pieces, yet hoping that other person just might be there at the end of that road. As lights pass by down that freeway, we go back to that parked car in the middle of the night in the short but hitting “Lights Out”. A melancholic melody, and 3 packs of lyrics that signal the way from heartbreaking effort to self-realization to giving up (“Someone told me, looks can be deceiving / There comes a time when you just stop believing…“). At last, everything seems to be gone.
The closer, “No Horizon”, is the realization of everything else. A cryptic story, a boy being kidnapped at 5 years old by negligent eyes (“I went willingly, or those who’d seen so said”, perhaps living in another memory), only to turn up again in 1999, and finally his body being found at 50 years old. The lyrics seem to signal some kind of relief, a way to start again in another dream world that doesn’t turn into a never-ending nightmare, but the music, so dramatic and pompous like never before, says something else. The drama and the theater, always present, but now amped up, suggest something horribly wrong. A life of forgetting and escaping, being torn to the basics of being forgotten by those who escaped it. They all ran away as it all fell apart, and what’s left is now a sign of missing tales and thoughts that were too broken to be redeemed. A parked car with a man inside of it that never could stay. That old reel burned a long time ago. What year is it? Perhaps if -