And I'm always looking over my shoulder, and each new day, I get another year older
Songs to cope to
Since its release on Oct. 11, I’ve been absorbed in Chat Pile’s Cool World, a brutally beautiful statement “about war and violence, and how we all are under some form of violence in our lives, whether it be imposed by the state or fellow citizens,” bassist Austin “Stin” Tackett told The Guardian. “Being alive is kind of painful, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way.”
The album is heavy and disorienting, appropriately punishing for the band’s “sludge metal” descriptor. The opening bars of “Frownland” — good lord, that bass — are bone-rattling, one of the best songs, metal or otherwise, this year.
But then Nov. 5 happened, which popped a pin in the balloon of optimism. I took a little bit of a mental retreat. Being on Twitter in the days leading up to and on the day of the election really scrambled my brain.
I put Chat Pile on pause and found comfort in the mellower corners of my brain. But since I don’t garden, knit or meditate (at least not very well), I gravitated to songs that could reset my blood pressure and silence the inner chatter.
Here they are, in no particular order.
Fontaines D.C.: Favourite
I probably didn’t need Apple Music to tell me Romance — the new album from Fontaines D.C. — was my most-listened-to record of the year, but I like to have the irrefutable proof anyway. (And for the record, I was way into them before Barack Obama.)
I had the good fortune to see Fontaines for the first time in Phoenix in late September, the moment when everything about the album crystallized for me. Singer Grian Chatten is the kind of charismatic showman we could use more of— he prowls and stomps around the stage, twirling around the mic stand like a tetherball.
“Favourite” takes a swing for band’s the next step of stardom. Curiously sequenced as the album closer, they’ve called it "our favorite tune that we’ve ever written." In contrast to the taut, panicky “Starburster” at the front of the record, “Favourite” gets swept up in wistful nostalgia.
Did you know
Cities on return are often strange?
Yeah, and now
Every time you blink, you feel it change
Bassist Conor Deegan expounded on Instagram about the inspiration behind the video to match the song’s sentimental nature:
“I would like this video to serve as a way of honouring our friendships, and moving from that, the relationships we hold dear. Our mothers, fathers, siblings, aunties and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, and friends. Those who we still have, and those we have sadly lost.”
MJ Lenderman: She’s Leaving You
There’d been so much hype about Lenderman and his 2024 album, Manning Fireworks, that my skepticism got the best of me initially. But I’ve since submitted, and I’m here to tell you, with tail between my legs and swallowed pride, this is a great album.
I can’t pretend to find the deeper meaning in some of his seemingly nonsensical wordplay — “Every Catholic knows he could've been pope / Kahlua shooter, DUI scooter” — though to be fair I’m not trying real hard either.
What astounds me is that he’s only 25. And I’ve never felt older than when he told Uncut that bands like My Morning Jacket and Band of Horses really stuck with him when his dad would play them in the family van.
Those influences are pretty obvious. More apparent to me are the echoes of Jay Farrar’s voice in Lenderman — the son of Son Volt.
Tim Heidecker: Well’s Running Dry
Wrote a little bit about this one in August, but it’s worth revisiting here. Heidecker is facing a moment of isolation — staring down a bout of writer’s block (although you gotta admit, writing a wonderful song about struggling to write is a feat on its own).
We’ve heard a lot in the past few years about the loneliness epidemic, and on this track, Heidecker doesn’t suffer alone. He finds artistic refuge in the comfort of his band and the community of friendship. We’ll all need that for the next four years.
Kevin Morby: Random Act of Kindness
It’s nearly impossible for me to single out just one Kevin Morby song. His entire discography swaddles me like an emotional support blanket. There are few (or maybe none at all) musicians that I’ve felt as passionate about in recent years as Morby.
His 2022 album, This is a Photograph, is a modern classic, his own Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It’s an album I’ve wanted to write about, but I’m too afraid I won’t do it justice.
“Random Act of Kindness” isn’t my favorite track on the album (that could change tomorrow, though), but in this context, it feels the most appropriate. When the single was released, Morby had this to say about the song:
“It’s a song about the menacing nature of the sun rising during a dark time in one’s life only to further illuminate their pain and suffering – and how during these periods it is often the selfless acts of strangers that keeps a person going.”
Shut me up, if you can
Shut me up, take my hand
Shut me up, be a friend
Through a random act of kindness
Bill Fay: Be Not So Fearful
Like a lot of people, I was introduced to this song and Bill Fay via Jeff Tweedy and the 2002 Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. From what I can tell, the cover is still in somewhat regular rotation during Wilco shows.
Perhaps subconsciously, this track wriggled its way back into my mind in the past couple of weeks. It’s a sparse, lovely song, released on Fay’s eponymous 1970 debut. His back story is pretty fascinating — an artist nearly lost to the dustbin of time but resurrected thanks to support from modern musicians like Wilco and The War on Drugs. Fay has gone on to record three albums in the 2000s.
He also has repaid the favor, covering Wilco’s “Jesus, Etc.” on his 2012 album Life is People.
Band of Horses: Monsters
You could make a case that “The Funeral” is one of the defining indie rock tracks of the 2000s, the sprawling centerpiece of Band of Horses’ debut album Everything All the Time. It showed up in movies, TV shows, commercials and was even sampled for a rap track.
Everything All the Time will always be one of those Important Albums for me. It was released in 2006, around the time I started music blogging, and I love to be the guy who said I saw Band of Horses at a small-ish blues/roots club in Phoenix (twice!) before they really took off.
Understandably, “The Funeral” attracts the most attention, but Everything is so much more than one song. “Monsters” is the penultimate track, a song whose lyrics seems to have presciently characterized our current climate of divisiveness and hostility.
And hatred for all others
When awful people they surround you
Well ain't they just like monsters
They come to feed on us
But there is, at the end as always, a glimmer of hope.
Though to say we got much hope
If I am lost it's only for a little while
Elbow: One Day Like This
I have to end on this one because it is impossible to not feel something — anything — after listening to this song. Even the ice-cold surface of my emotionally repressed half Irish/half Jewish insides slowly melt on this one.
In one of the most life-affirming moments I’ve experienced, I saw Elbow at the Wiltern in Los Angeles in 2009, when singer Guy Garvey brought two kids out of the audience to join him on stage to sing/conduct. It is just one of those songs that inspires a sense of purpose, demands a sing-along and exudes warmth and joy.
So throw those curtains wide
One day like this a year would see me right
Those lucky kids have a quite a story to share with their children. Lucky us to have this song for a lifetime.