Thanks for the kind words people have sent about my break-up. Somehow it really helps to be consoled by relative strangers. I don’t really want to turn this blog into a glorified livejournal, so I’ll try not to get too emo on y’all, but part of why I love music so much is because of its emotional impact and the way it becomes a part of my life.
And for the last three years, all music has pretty much been about one person. So I’m not going to be able to not talk about it to some extent. That said, another part of why I love music is the way it can universalize emotions. So my own personal life details don’t really matter–it’s the feeling they embody. Meaning: I may talk about my own sadness, but I hope it doesn’t sound completely solipsistic and that you can find ways to relate.
Anyways, I’m still not really feeling in the mood to write too much, but even getting started on doing something here is a nice distraction. So here are a couple songs I’ve been listening to in the last few days.
A Pillar of Salt – The Thermals
I wrote about The Thermals way back in the earliest days of this blog. Snotty, charming, and raucous punk rock at its finest. They’ve got a new album The Body, The Blood, The Machine which is due out later this month. Their description of it theme: “The lyrics envision a United States governed by a fascist Christian state, and focus on the need (and means) to escape.” This is the first song out, and it’s definitely reminiscent of their earlier work, but a bit more tuneful, even melodic. I thought their second record was inferior to the first, but if The Body, The Blood, The Machine is anything like this song, it could be their best yet.
As for the pillar of salt metaphor, it brings to mind a story from one of my favorite books: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. He is talking about Lot’s wife looking back at the ruined cities of Sodom and Gomorrah:
He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.
So it goes.
Those were vile people in both those cities, as is well known. The world was better off without them. And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.
So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes.
What does it mean? Well, for me it’s always been about the importance of the day-to-day, about the connections between people, and about those brave enough to love even when there is no reward. It’s better to be Lot’s wife looking back through salty eyes than the Deity that destroyed those cities because of a higher ideal.
It is easy to decide that we have been wronged, that others are evil and must be destroyed, that whatever is different is terrible. But we should not take God’s path: responding to that perceived difference with violence, even to the point of punishing she who simply felt sorry for them. Vengeance is appealing, but love and kindness are what makes us good, what makes existence worthwhile.
Evening Gown – Alejandro Escovedo
I’ve never listened to as much Alejandro Escovedo as I felt like I ought to. Hopefully, I will be able to rectify that in the next few months, starting with his new album The Boxing Mirror. But in the meantime, here is one song of his (a Rolling Stones cover) that I absolutely adore. I used to listen to it a lot a few years ago, but it got lost in the computer switch of aught-four, and I forgot about it. I only rediscovered it about a week ago and have been loving it again. Beautiful, melancholy, and lonesome.
It’s available on the Down to the Promised Land compilation from Bloodshot Records.
Also, head over to I Am Fuels, You Are Friends to hear “Purple Parallelogram” a great little Lemonheads song written by Evan Dando and Noel Gallagher.