Notes on a Life Not Quite Lived

Songs from Mastersystem, Tim Heidecker and Previous Industries

Oh, hey! Been awhile. Thanks for opening your e-mail. I’m still sorting how I want to approach this newsletter (née blog) and that’s caused some writing paralysis/procrastination. I am working through some concepts of perfectionism, self-criticism/compassion and that things don’t always need to be “just so” (yes, I am in my self-help era … and assisted help era).

Anyway, I’m attempting to not create so many self-imposed rules, as it applies here and in other facets of my life. My goal, for now, is to treat this more like my former music blog and less like some Very Important Writerly Discourse. And I hope that will push me into a more regular posting schedule.

So enough of all that … enjoy the music here and tell your friends about to subscribe!

Mastersystem: “Notes on a Life Not Quite Lived”

In the months and, really, years since his passing in 2018, the thought of listening to any of Scott Hutchison's music felt too depressing, too macabre. Celebrity death has never affected me greatly, but inasmuch as the singer/face of a relatively successful indie band from Scotland can be considered a celebrity, Hutchison's suicide moved me in a visceral way.

I had the good fortune to interview Hutchison 10 years prior, in 2008, catching his band, Frightened Rabbit, during its stateside ascent on the strength of the astounding album Midnight Organ Fight. Reading that story again 16 years later is devastating. I don't make a habit of revisiting a lot of what I've written (a somewhat embarrassing and cringe-worthy exercise), and this one is particularly petrifying, considering how I framed the lede.

Alas, I have ever-so-gently returned to Hutchison's work, in bits here and there. Lately, though, I've thrown all my listening energy into what turned out to be his final piece of released music: Dance Music by Mastersystem, which could loosely be described as a supergroup — or just some friends finding camaraderie in rock — consisting of Scott and Grant Hutchison (Frightened Rabbit); Justin Lockey (Editors, Yourcodenameis:milo); and James Lockey (Minor Victories).

The album was released about a month before Hutchison left us, a foreboding farewell -- though anyone who paid attention to Frightened Rabbit lyrics already had a sense of the depths of Hutchison's depression.

His writing on Dance Music is no less soul-baring, painful despair colored with reckless reverb and blistering drumming. The verses that are emotionally crushing in hindsight — how devastating in their prescience. On “Waste of Daylight,” he sings: “I missed the summer / But didn't care / There will always be another / If I make it to next year.”

“Bird is Bored of Flying,” the album’s expansive 6-minute closer, is a farewell. It’s both the most impossible song to listen to (“I've seen all that I care to see / Become what I don't want to be”) and the most beautiful (“Do you wonder why / the bird is bored of flying / still, it sings”). It’s also a full-circle moment, calling back to the album’s opener, “Proper Home,” when Hutchison sings: “I used to want to fly, but now I don't.”

I adore Frightened Rabbit, and they’re at the heart of some of my favorite concert-going memories. But there’s a singular aura and power about Mastersystem. There is only one album, and there will be no more. 9 final songs, 35 final minutes.

Frightened Rabbit will be Hutchison’s legacy, but Mastersystem is a monumental memorial in its own right.

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Tim Heidecker: “Well’s Running Dry”

It wasn’t so long ago I wrote about my adoration of Tim Heidecker’s 2022 album High School. So the news of a new album, Slipping Away (out Oct. 18 on the esteemed Bloodshot Records), is an exciting development over here.

The first single, “Well’s Running Dry,” carries the endearing spirit of High School. It’s a warm ode to the power of friendship in the face of creative struggles and loneliness (writer’s block in this case, literally/lyrically, but you can stretch the metaphor however you’d like).

Over a toe-tapping beat and gentle lilt (he promises “many many other chords on the record”), Heidecker sings: Words don’t come like they did when I was young, and I don’t know why, this well’s running dry.

That’s a lonely place to be. (Could be why there hasn’t been any writing here for, gulp, four months.) But you find inspiration — or it finds you — and in Heidecker’s case, his band, The Very Good Band, offers a soft landing spot for him.

Now I got a band, they can make me sound better, bring the vocals down in the mix
I can hide behind their beautiful playing, all my failings they can fix

As he did on High School, Heidecker gives voice to life’s simple but sometimes mystical qualities. How are we even here but for our friends?

The video for “Well’s Running Dry” wonderfully captures the track’s evolution — from its rough sketches, to the recording, to the post-song celebration. Life-affirming hugs all around.

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Previous Industries: “Dominick’s”

Speaking of friendships, Open Mike Eagle calls Service Merchandise, the new album by Previous Industries (comprised of OME, Video Dave and STILL RIFT), “a celebration of rap music, memories and whiskey but it's also a testament to friendship, brotherhood and survival.”

I’m actually a little nervous to write anything about this because I’m just discovering that Open Mike Eagle is reviewing the reviews, which … hey, turnabout is fair play. (It’s actually less harsh than it sounds, and OME uses it as an opportunity to expound on the creative process … and to talk about comfy shoes.)

But I’ll spare myself and just say this is not a review, per se, and more an appreciation post. I’ve been a longtime fan of Open Mike Eagle, whose catalog has been nothing short of prolific since his 2010 debut full-length Unapologetic Art Rap.

Previous Industries coalesced during the COVID lockdown, but the trio had a history dating to their days in Chicago. And if you're a person of a Certain Age who spent any part of their youth in the Chicagoland area, then the tracklisting (and album title) for Service Merchandise will evoke immediate pangs of nostalgia, for the name-brand recognition and our consumerist ways of old.

On “Roebuck,” we’re transported to the analog experience of Sears catalog shopping, the yearning for a product in the days before one click could bring anything to your doorstep.

STILL RIFT:
No returns, no exchanges
Finger through the pages, no papercuts
Self address stamped got me amped while the selection got me
Waiting for the shipping times with less than prime handling

On “White Hen,” Open Mike Eagle delivers a verse that lands like a gut punch. Are we something more than our past lives, the deserted malls of our mind?

I'm tryin' to build somethin', I'm tunnelin' around
And Brummel and Brown, you stir it up, it's comin' around
I'm tryin' to separate the memories from somethin' profound

Still, the song I’ve returned to over and over is “Dominick’s” (even if my mom was a Jewel devotee). With an earworm of a flute-filled sampled loop — produced by Quelle Chris (who also makes a cameo) — the song hits immediately thanks to STILL RIFT’s opening dagger: Caught up in the riptide / second-hand apartheid.

Then Open Mike Eagle delivers my favorite kind of Open Mike Eagle verse: breathless, runaway bars that plow forward — an unconscious, in-the-zone stream of rhymes.

I be writin' with little bird feathers
And I got the nerve to think that I deserve better
My therapist said "take up space" so I'm probably 'bout to make mistakes

Video Dave offers the perfect complement, his laid-back flow a welcome invite: To hold the world in the palm of my hand is what my plan is.

Like a lot of Open Mike Eagle projects, there’s usually a track that takes hold of my brain like a vice grip before the rest of the album washes over me. “Dominick’s” is that song for me on Service Merchandise, and I feel like I haven’t even begun to fully live in this album (so please, I’m asking kindly, don’t review this post).

(You can buy the album at Bandcamp or Merge Records.)