“Division Day” provides stark contrast to the bleak,
depressive tracks on the “Needle in the Hay” single. After his eponymous second
album, Elliott Smith lightened up a bit. He embraced his pop sensibilities and
started turning out brighter, more upbeat fair like “Division Day.” That’s not
to say he all together abandoned the sad, low key stuff, but the balance of the
two styles on his third album, Either/Or,
makes that record his best. “Division Day” is the missing link between that
record and his major label debut XO,
and is a solid top-ten track from a discography so consistent and excellent
that compiling such a list would be akin to pulling teeth. B-Side “No Name #6”
is a throwback to his earlier records, but has enough skip in its step to keep
anyone from being bummed out. Overall this 7” is a delight.
The primary function of my year end lists is to create a
shopping list for future record shopping. If a record cracks my top ten, I’m
almost always gonna buy it if I can find it for less than $10 used. Laura Stevenson’s
Wheel got a tremendous amount of play
in 2013, so it’s nice to have this beauty in the collection. Stevenson has a
punk rock pedigree, which earns her my ear, and her untrained voice lends an
honesty to these songs that you’ll never find on the albums of the autotuned
darlings of the day. That untrained-ness doesn’t stop Stevenson from belting
out lines, to great emotional effect. Wheel
is a supremely beautiful record, one that I can apparently put on a year after
last hearing it and feel my body flooded with its power. It reminds me so
vividly of the last months we spent in Minneapolis, riding my bike everywhere,
enjoying the serenity of Minnesota in the springtime. I’ve gotta few albums
like that in my arsenal. My Minnesota albums. Ones that, if I listen to too
much I start missing that place to an unbearable degree. Someday soon, Laura Stevenson is going to kick everyone's ass and people will say, "She came out of nowhere! Such greatness!" and I'll be here over exaggeratedly pointing at this record and saying, "This came out like four years ago!"
"Runner" - Brilliant summer jam, highlighting Stevenson's pop-chops, which are excellent, as you can see.
"The Wheel" - But my favorite bits on this record are the quiet, soul-poking ones that serve as a gravitas delivery vehicle.
Let’s just get this out of the way right at the top: We all know that Joanna Gruesome is a terrible band name. It’s funny, sure, but it does a disservice to a really terrific young band. Unlike most of the bands on Slumberland’s roster who seem content to dredge up the label’s pop-tinged shoegazey past, Welsh quintet Joanna Gruesome make their own beautiful mess out of punk, indiepop, and a kitchen sink’s worth of nods to the great hooksmiths of the 90s. Now allow me to undercut that statement by saying that Peanut Butter is the spiritual successor to Black Tambourine’s Complete Recordings. That’s about the highest compliment I can pay, because that album is maybe the most perfect indie-pop record ever recorded. The genre is at its best when the albums stick to a ten-songs, all under three minutes formula, and Joanna Gruesome not only follow that line, but keep the tracks around the two-minute mark. As a result, these songs achieve what is basically the equivalent of the Magic Hour in music: They don’t overstay their welcome and you want to immediately listen to them all over again.
Which is why I want these guys to change their name! You deserve better! I mean, it’s certainly a fitting moniker, considering that this band gives about zero fucks about what anyone thinks, but c’mon! Come to think of it, it’s much better than the uninspired band names currently overpopulating the indie rock landscape. At least it’s funny and has some personality! Speaking of personality, Joanna Gruesome has plenty. The opening track, “Last Year,” leads on as the shouty-post-riot-grrrl Sleater Kinney vibe that seems to be so popular at the moment before pulling the rug out and delivering the sweetest, most satisfying hooks I’ve heard all year. It’s a winning formula, and a beautiful juxtaposition that works throughout the record’s brisk 22 minutes. The band’s energy and love for vintage British twee reminds me of my beloved Los Campesinos! but they bring a darker, grungier edge to the table. The result is the most exciting album I’ve heard all year and the CD is going to stay in my car stereo for at least a month and a half. "Last Year" - The new frontrunner for my favorite song of 2015 by about a mile at this point. If this song doesn't do it for you at least on some tiny level, you have no joy in your heart.
There was a point during my post-radioactive iodine follow-up appointment where I held my head back against the wall, closed my eyes, and asked my endocrinologist, "So what does this mean?" I must have asked him five times, because based on the nature of my full body scans, it was hard to say what the radioactive iodine uptake in the upper mediastinal portion of my chest meant. My impression was that this magical iodine went on a search and destroy mission, annihilating everything thyroid-related that was still operating in my body post-thyroidectomy. It's what I imagined happened after Return of the Jedi. You kill Darth Vader and destroy his new Death Star and basically go around the galaxy doing mop-up work on the remnants of the Empire. But as you know, they're making at least three sequels, so sometimes things are more complicated than you imagine.
The understanding I took away from my endocrinologist is that there are probably masses in my chest containing thyroid cancer that will need to be surgically removed. It could be a false positive, but based on the never ending cycle of "And now here's a new fresh hell for you to manage," I've got my money placed on another round of cracking open my body and pulling out the bad stuff. BUT WHO KNOWS! I have to wait three months before they can perform a CT scan with iodine contrast (so as not to interfere with the hardworking radioactive iodine currently going full (or so I hope) Spanish Inquisition on the infidel cancer cells residing in my neck and thyroid bed. I hope they are doing a number on the cancer in my chest as well, but to what extent we just can't know for sure for three months.
THREE MONTHS. That is a long time for someone who lives on a steady diet of worry. I am very much of the "THERE IS A PROBLEM/FIX THE PROBLEM AS SOON AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE" school. When I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, that fucking bullshit gland was out of my neck a week later. Tom Petty was right: the waiting is the hardest part. Three months is a lot of time to fill my head with worst-case-scenarios. The funny thing is, I don't even know what the worst case scenario is here. It's still thyroid cancer, it's still treatable, but I have the feeling that there's something someone's not telling me. It's just impossible to tell and that doesn't jibe with my general worldview.
After my appointment my endo sent me down to nuclear medicine for a scan of my chest. He kept talking about the false positive having to do with my sweat or other bodily fluids on my skin, and I was confused because I'd had two nuclear medicine scans done the week prior to verify that uptake in my stomach was just remnant radioactive iodine in my gut (it was). "Did you not see the second scan?" I asked. My endo had not. I wasn't surprised. After all, this was the office that made sure my name was misspelled on my goddamn cancer killing pills, so why should I expect anything better from the people in whose hands I chose to place my life. Good grief.
The tech down in radiology puts my mind at ease when he's not overly concerned with the uptake in my chest and thinks the radioactive iodine should do its job. He disclaims his statements with "I'm not an endocrinologist" but it's delivered with a more agreeable bedside manner that puts my mind at ease a little. It takes me out of "THEY'RE GONNA CRACK ME OPEN LIKE A CRAB" mode and puts me in "THEY'RE PROBABLY GONNA CRACK ME OPEN LIKE A CRAB" mode. I trust him because he's been there for 20 years, and because getting a second take on my scans is more valuable to me than having all of my student loans paid off at this point. We'll see in three months and we will go from there.
Readjusting to society after a week in isolation was glorious. Years in customer service have led to a hardening of my spirit, but just going to the new Whole Foods in Olathe with Jenny and Rosie was absolutely joyful. This was before the aforementioned reading of my whole body scan so I was able to enjoy myself. It's incredibly weird spending a week monitoring everything you touch and making sure it doesn't have a chance to touch anything else someone else might handle. Isolation is also incredibly boring. You think you're gonna get down on some solid "me" time but mostly you just end up missing everybody, Holden Caulfield style.
I emerged from my isolation chamber and my daughter was a week older and that was unbearably sad. I've since adjusted to this new baby, but at her age, there's something new every day and after a week there was a lot of catching up to do. I was finally able to return to the family bed, which means a return to waking up three times a night screaming to make sure A.) Rosie is still there B.) I didn't roll on top of her (as the child refuses to sleep in her crib past 2 am and this quasi "family bed" is the only thing that preserves Jenny's sanity). Despite the now constant sense of dread hanging over me like a black raincloud, it is so, so nice returning to the normal stuff.
I thought a lot about professional wrestling when I was in isolation. The new Mountain Goats record Beat the Champ was fresh in my mind, and I spent a lot of time revisiting some of my favorite matches from my adolescence. One I greatly enjoyed rewatching was the empty arena match between the Rock and Mankind for the WWF title. The match was broadcast during halftime of the Super Bowl in 1999, and it's one of the greatest matches you'll ever see. I always loved that outside-of-the-box stuff. Boiler Room Brawls, Hell in a Cell, Tables, Ladders, and Chairs matches, ladder matches, I Quit matches, Iron Man matches, hair matches, you name it. This one is just pure insane joy. The Rock is at his most charismatic, and Mick Foley is as always totally game for letting shit get WEIRD. I mean, there's a whole sequence where they fight down a catered buffet getting food EVERYWHERE! The Rock splashes Mankind with a bowl of picante sauce and then TAKES A CHIP AND SCOOPS SOME OF THE SAUCE FROM FOLEY'S HEAD! Mankind pins the Rock with a forklift to win the title! Even if you're not into wrestling it's a treat. Just plain old fun.
So I went down the rabbit hole and discovered that the empty arena match was sort of championed by Mick Foley associate Terry Funk. I'd known Terry Funk from my WWF watching days. He was an old man, a hardcore legend. In one match I watched he fought some dude named Bruce Walkup in a cage and, upon defeating Walkup, delivered an insane, apocalyptic challenge to Dusty Rhodes that resonated throughout my irradiated body.
Cue at 4:30 for pure insanity.
"I am going to beat him and I am prepared to take care of him. Beat him like a dog. And I promise you that I can take more punishment than any man in the world. And I'm going to take care of Dusty Rhodes if its the last thing I do," he says, smashing his face into the cage halfway through. It's totally unhinged and pure magnificent theater, and it's what I feel like every single day. In this case, cancer is my Dusty Rhodes, but you get the picture. And as much support as I have, fighting cancer is a lot like fighting an empty arena match. Outside I have my family and doctors watching on TV and doing what they can to eliminate the menace, but inside it's just me and the malignancy.
I can see why people go to support groups. It's a brutal and lonely battle, and while I'm well aware that I have a "good cancer," it's still cancer, and it's still bullshit, and it's still a big interruption that has to be dealt with (and paid for, naturally) before my family and I can move on with our lives. I want to do unspeakable things to this cancer. I want to fuck it up with great fury. I want to burn it at the stake. I want to throw it through a field of empty folding chairs and pour hot salsa in its face.
And that's about as depressive as I get. Just kidding, the other day I was feeling so hopeless about everything I laid down in a dark room and listened to The National Sad Mix I keep on my iPhone. Honestly, if they were cutting out whatever is inside of me tomorrow this wouldn't be an issue. It's the not knowing that is brutal for a consummate worry wort like me. My moods are increasingly unhinged, fluctuating between depression and wanting to punch the shit out of something. I'm quicker to anger than I've ever been, but also somehow capable of taking care of my child without breaking kayfabe. It's a WEIRD PLACE TO BE.
Mikal Cronin is writing the
best Carl Newman songs since 2004. That isn’t a slight to either artist. Newman
and the New Pornographers have matured since their power-pop heyday, and Cronin
is there to carry the torch and deliver the hookiest, most satisfying alt-pop
since “Sing Me Spanish Techno.” I was late to Cronin’s coming out party with
his brainmeltingly blissful 2013 sophomore effort MCII, and mostly I’m just glad I caught the boat at all. I just
read an article that says you stop discovering new music at 33! And that it is
accelerated for parents! And I TOTALLY AGREE WITH THAT ARTICLE. I lack the
drive to comprehend the new and the interesting.
Fortunately, Cronin’s tunes
are so within my wheelhouse it’s no effort at all to enjoy his music. His third
album (and second on Merge, which is the best home these songs could have)
incorporates big, orchestral flourishes and you can practically feel the
ambition radiating off this thing. The whole back-half is a five-song suite
that breaks from the good-time pop mold and features Cronin laying it all on
the line. It’s a huge, diversely arranged song cycle that has the feel and flow
(and occasionally orchestrated) of a Neutral Milk Hotel record. It’s beautiful
and heartfelt departure that has my pop-loser soul yearning for more Mikal
Cronin. "Turn Around"
In the immortal words of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, "Isolation/ Isolation/ Isolation." A week ago I had convinced myself it wouldn't be so bad! Hey! I'll get to catch up on all those video games! I'll have time to work on creative projects! Sure it'll be lonely and I'll miss my wife and child, but it's better than being in the hospital! Three days after taking the magical radioactive iodine pills, I feel like shit. I can't tell if it's the treatment, which didn't mention anything about feeling like a gross slug with no appetite for the first few days. I can't tell if it's my body chemistry reacting violently to my severely hypothyroid husk finally getting that sweet, sweet taste of the thyroid horomone delivery vehicle Synthroid. I can't tell if it's my allergies going haywire living in a room that hasn't been dusted and properly cleaned since I was last living in it ten years ago (for reference, I dug some stuff out of some boxes in this room last week and was feeling like crap and hacking up gunk for the next three days). I blame myself for that. It's a chickens coming home to roost scenario. Regardless, here is how I've been spending my days:
The Isolation Chamber. Feeling like Desmond from Lost in his hatch.
My two favorite posters.
My most prized movie posters from my years working at AMC Studio 30.
Wake up at 6:30 AM because my body clock is set for a one-year-old girlchild sitting up in bed going "hi, hi, hi" or "daDA, daDa, daDa" at that godforsaken hour. I groan and lay there realizing I have to get up and pee so as to facilitate the radioactive iodine leaving my worthless body and crawling out of bed feels like a victory. Refilling the two medical-grade sippy cups in the bathroom sink feels like an honest to god triumph.
This is basically the worst.
Go back to bed until Jenny and Rosie Facetime me at 9:30. Rosie greets me with "daDa!" and the conversation is spent with Rosie in control of the phone which is hilarious, sweet, full of frequent pauses, and new things Rosie is doing that I'm not there to see first hand. It's nice that technology makes it possible to at least be somewhat connected to my family, but mostly these conversations just make me want to be home. Fuck the solitude, fuck the "being able to work on creative pursuits." I want to groggily make breakfast for my daughter and complain about having to get up before 7:00 am and I want to watch my kid stomp around her playroom and try to keep her from choking on stuff and from falling off the things she now insists on climbing on top of.
Seriously, it sucks not being able to snug this baby
Go back to bed or get up. Friday and Saturday I went back to sleep because of the general exhaustion. Friday was my last day of the low-iodine diet and no Synthroid. I don't think it's possible to appreciate your little thyroid gland until you have it cut out from your body and can see what happens when you're not replacing the hormones it emits. The thyroid is responsible for your metabolism, which plays your energy levels like a puppet on a string, and regulates stuff like your body temperature. Even with the modest AC running, I've been freezing cold. The longer you go without it, the more your body sinks into a hypothyroid state, the more exhausted and lethargic you feel. Friday was spent in bed, drifting in and out of restless sleep, and not wanting to eat anything.Saturday I was able to start pumping my body full of thyroid hormone but I still spent the whole day in bed sleeping and watching TV.
SIGH
Not even good TV, mind you. I have a whole backlog of shows I planned on burning through. I'm watching A.) Live Sports and B.) Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. The former is acceptable, as I'm a red-blooded American man and my parents have an excellent cable package. The latter is bizarre and telling of just how shitty I've been feeling. On Friday I was so excited to be able to eat all those foods I've been craving the last two weeks, and I settled for watching that frosted-tipped clown Guy Fieri going around eating ridiculously tasty-looking food. "All I wanna do is watch that idiot eat french fries, and it's glorious." The worst thing about that show isn't Guy's stupid one-liners (of which there are so, so many, most of which are actually really entertaining if you come at them the right way), but the lack of enthusiasm he presents when he finally gets to dig in to a fancy-ass grilled cheese sandwich. "Mmm, good job. The truffle oil is a nice touch. You're killin' it boss," he says with all the excitement of a talking toy having its string pulled. LOOK AT THAT GODDAMN GRILLED CHEESE GUY! THAT TEXAS TOAST IS LIKE AN INCH THICK! THERE IS GRUYERE ON THAT SHIT! DIP IT IN THE TOMATO BISQUE YOU FOOL! LET ME LIVE! I think he's just burnt out. One of the episodes was from 2007 and he was way more excited about these greasy-spoon classics. He's graduated from grody truck stops to places I want to look-up next time I go to Chicago or St. Louis, but he's probably eaten so much of this awesomely rich food the dream has become a nightmare. Either way, I watched maybe two-and-a-half hours of that show on Friday.
My mom is a great cook but looking at this makes me wanna hurl
And then had absolutely no appetite on Saturday. For lunch I thought about eating leftover grilled chicken and green beans and almost threw up. All I do is drink water and eat Jolly Ranchers. Do you love Jolly Ranchers? Yeah, try eating two an hour for three days. On Friday I fell off. I couldn't do it anymore. One of my teeth became intensely sensitive from all the Jolly Ranchers. It hurt to brush them. Now most of my teeth are super sensitive and I hate everything. There is literally a ziploc bag full of these sitting a foot away from me and looking at the bag is making me nauseous. So are the matzo crackers, unsalted almonds, and unsalted tortilla chips sitting within my sight-line.
Disgusting. I hate these forever now.
The Devil's Candy
Yesterday I got to eat real food for the first time in two weeks. I should clarify that the food I was eating on my low-iodine diet is "real food" in the sense that the meals were simple, healthy, and delicious. The sort of food a normal human being should be eating on a regular basis. But I would drive by Schlotsky's and be like "Damn Schlotsky's sounds good right now," which is literally something nobody has ever said ever. Jenny would talk to me and I'd imagine her head turning into a BBQ sandwich. I was dreaming about Joes KC's Z-Man. On Saturday, I got one for dinner and I could barely appreciate it. The hunger had gone. I still ate it, but it was a workmanlike affair. That afternoon I enjoyed orange chicken from Panda Express, another deep craving from my low-iodine days, because I am disgusting and nothing satisfies like mall Chinese food. This morning I feel a bit better, but I'm still not hungry. I wanted all these pornographic food-eating experiences and now I'm eating because I know I have to. Dad brought me a sausage, egg and cheese english muffin sandwich from Starbucks and hey, that was pretty good, but I'm still not hungry.
Look at this feast! I'll have at it again before my isolation is done, that's for damn sure. Although I will say, it was takeout, the sandwich was cold, and I'mma make the moms take me after my full body scan so I can experience this in its natural habitat.
The star anise flavor in the eggroll was gross, but the rest was incredible.
Although Indian food sounds really good. And maybe because I've been watching the NBA Playoffs. Have you heard of this Steph Curry guy? He's pretty good! And he makes me seriously consider pulling the cancer card and making my dad go out and get me some Chicken Tikka Masala from Korma Sutra. I don't think my parents have ever had Indian food, and I don't think they're gonna start now.
But let's talk about the Golden State Warriors, man. I don't watch the NBA, but this team is super fun. It's great to see a juggernaut full of young dudes just tearing it up doing insane shit. They're playing the New Orleans Anthony Davises, so it's entertaining on both sides of the ball. See how my judgment has been impaired! Has the radiation settled in my brain?! Triple D and NBA? What have I become!
I've also been watching a lot of soccer, because it's on. The FA Cup Semifinals were on yesterday and today and I watched both of those matches with a surprising amount of attention. Mostly because I was curled up in bed and didn't have the energy to get distracted by my phone, but still! It led to a lot of navel gazing about American attention spans not being able to deal with the hypnotic, seemingly boring pace of a soccer game. I thought that might be changing after World Cup Fever swept the land, but nobody cares about the MLS unless they live in KC or Portland or Seattle or one of these other poor cities with a lack of professional sporting options. Naturally I've been watching the Royals, which is as close as I've been to normal. It's like hitting the reset button on my brain. I spent an hour managing my Fantasy Baseball team this morning, and I'm writing this long diary entry, so I'm hoping this is a sign of things to come. That maybe I'll write that concept album about Radioiodine Ablation Blues that I was planning on writing, or maybe I'll do a covers album choosing songs from the band posters in my room.
Oh yeah, some hockey too because why not.
I wonder what it would feel like for Anthony Davis to slap me in the face. His arms are so long, one of them starts in a different time zone and you have an hour to kill before his hand actually hits your face and knocks your eyeballs out of your head. Sometimes it looks like he's gonna accidentally dunk the top of the backboard.
They keep cutting to Steph Curry's family in the stands. They are the most attractive family I have ever seen.
I mean, just straight up beautiful people.
There are THREE Radiohead posters in this room. They're small advertisements for Kid A and Hail to the Thief. It's confusing because I never really loved Radiohead the way I loved Fat Wreck Chords punk rock, This Kid A one is really cool though. Should I record this covers album (I brought my four-track and guitar and recording gear for some reason), at least it would be fun to figure out how to tackle a track from The Streets A Grand Don't Come for Free. I have four more days to kill, so anything could happen! Odds are I'll sleep until I have to go back to work on Friday, however.
Still Cool
There is literally a wall of books I have no desire to read. Hoping the lethargy subsides and I can dig in to some of these books. This is the minor league farm system of my book collection. The good ones are all back home in boxes. The ones on these shelves are the ones I'm invariably going to take back to Half Price Books whenever it comes time to get my collection in order.
Most likely all casualties when it comes time to cull. The hazards of working at a used bookstore for 5 years.
I finally played some video games last night! I'm nearing Dragon Age: Inquisitions endgame and I can't wait for this game to be over. I only discovered that you can skip through all the chatting with the X button halfway through! THIS WOULD HAVE SAVED SO MUCH TIME. There's just too much damn lore. And I know some people eat that shit up, but I just wanna battle demons, and even that got pretty boring after a while. But even after an hour of that, I stopped, put on sports, and went to sleep.
I thought being radioactive might be interesting. You have this idea like, "Oh my pee will be neon!" or "Oh I'll glow when the lights go out!" but no, it's just like normal except you feel like shit (and even then, I can't verify that the general shitty-feeling-ness is linked). The danger is that nothing is different. But if I like, chewed on one of Rosie's toys and she chewed on that toy, she could ingest that radiation and it would start eating away at her thyroid. That's the scariest shit in the world. I hate that I even have to go upstairs to shower. I can tend to spit when I talk, so talking to my parents on my way up and down, I think, what if a fleck of spit gets on her food tray and she eats off the tray and then my baby can't grow because I fucked up her thyroid! I'm gonna drop $60 on a new Xbox One controller because what if she finds her way to it and the sweat from my palms has irradiated the thing? It's crazy having to be so mindful of one's bodily fluids. Something I clearly wasn't as a high schooler, evidenced on the fact that my basement bathroom is absolutely disgusting. I love my wife for a lot of reasons, and one of those reasons is that she challenges me to be a cleaner, less disgusting man.
Naturally, my name is misspelled on the lead container holding my cancer treatment. Wouldn't have it any other way.
Bottoms Up!
Fortunately, after today 95% of the excess radioactive iodine will have been excreted from my body and I'll only have to worry about the beta and gamma rays emanating from my neck (where most of the work is being done on the offending thyroid cells, although I'll find out of it's anywhere else during my full body scan on Thursday).
Just realized I've been watching the replay of Game 1 of the Warriors/Pelicans from yesterday. This is how out of it I am.
And there you go. Don't get thyroid cancer, although I don't know if there's anything you can do to prevent it. I think about that a lot. Was there anything I could have done? Was there a radioactive event in Kansas that was covered up by the government that they'll only declassify 50 years from now? I really don't know. The nuclear medicine guys seemed super confident I'd only need one treatment and that it works 80% of the time. There's a 30% chance of recurrence later in life, at which point I guess I just get another treatment.
Bathroom mural illustrating my maudlin teenage years. No light at the end of the tunnel, just terror! Naturally!
My collection of autographed baseballs!
I think this is a very telling insignia of my upbringing.
There are rules for bathroom usage with this treatment.
At least I have a porch!
This hole was either made by hurling a baseball at the wall or
practicing my golf skills. No lie. I forget. Probably baseball. The salty
pencilling looks like the work of my brother or some other brute.
The day after I was
diagnosed with thyroid cancer, John Darnielle announced the new
Mountain Goats record. I took it as a silver lining and immediately
ordered the deluxe edition, no questions asked. I remember something
about the color of the vinyl: one gold, the color of the championship
belt. One green, the color of the money made. Holding the records now
and having spent significant time with this beautiful record, it's
bittersweet. There's the glory mixed with the fact that pro wrestling
is a job done by hired professionals to sell it as reality.
What JD does so well
here is drive home the fact that while the outcomes may be scripted,
wrestling isn't fake. It's an industry populated by real people
making the most of their chosen profession. These are tales from a
time when heels might still get the shit beat out of them in the
parking lot. Years before the nod and the wink of the WWE and
wrestling's acceptance as a sort of people's theater.
I'm sure every
review of Beat the Champ has
featured the writer's own personal history with professional
wrestling, because I'm sure most of us have one. If you were a child,
there was no doubt a phase where you and your brother practice frog
spashes and suplexes on oversized stuffed animals (and each other) on
your parents bed when they were at work. We
made gimmicks modeled after our heroes: Stone Cold Steve Austin, the
Undertaker, Edge, and all three faces of Mick Foley who might as well
have represented the Holy Trinity in those days: Mankind, Dude Love,
and Cactus Jack. The father, the son, and the hardcore holy ghost.
The gods of the Attitude Era. We fiercely despised Ted Turner's WCW
and tuned in diligently every week to Monday Night Raw even though
our tuning in didn't influence the ratings of the Monday Night Wars.
This will all sound like white noise to those who suffered through
more highbrow childhoods reading books while being raised by parents
who took them to museums on weekends, but for me, there were a solid
three years where I lived and died by wrestling.
I'm
writing this from my childhood bedroom in the basement of my parents
house where I am staying in isolation due to the radioactive iodine
therapy that will allegedly wipe out the rest of the thyroid cells in
my body. There's a notebook buried down here that contains the
complete kayfabe history and lineage of the matches, feuds, and title
changes amongst the giant tub of WWF wrestling figures now sitting in
the laundry room. I printed images of belts off the internet and
superglued them to pieces of felt affixed with tiny pieces of velcro.
I hand painted the Jakks Pacific figures when their gimmicks changed.
I was SERIOUS about this shit. At 12 years old, I thoughtfully booked
my own federation in the Hrabe Basement Territory. I told stories,
crafted drama, and had insane matches. I made my dad take me to the
hardware store to buy chicken wire so I could build a Hell in a Cell
(complete with a trap door in the roof to recreate Mankind getting
choke slammed through the damn cage and onto the mat below). I cut
the hell out of myself building it and every time I played with it,
but every major “Pay Per View” in my lineage had to have a hell
in the cell match. My Luna action figure featured “real” hair,
which ended up getting singed off in a no holds barred no
disqualification match for the women's title. Other wrestlers were
blown up with firecrackers. Thrown off the deck. Nearly cooked alive
in a “Grill Match.” It was an insane fantasy playground, and it's
the main reason I fell in love with storytelling. It's why I love
books and movies and why I write. It facilitated a creative awakening
and though I no longer follow “sports entertainment,” as it is
called these days, I take offense anytime someone throws shade on
wrestling.
John
Darnielle understands this, and it's why these amazing character
studies are some of his best work in a body that has consisted of
solidly great work consistently since 1999. There
are a lot of ballads to pair up with a lot of heartbreak, and the
quietest moments—as on the showstopping “Unmasked” or the heart
wrenching closer “Hair Match”--leave you breathless. Then there
are the big, rollicking tributes to Chavo Guerrero Sr and Bull Ramos
that really capture the larger-than-life legacies of these regular
dudes who meant so much to so many people. Especially Darnielle, who
in “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” notes in regard to his abusive
stepfather: “You let me down but Chavo never once did/ You called
him names to try to get beneath my skin/ Now your ashes are scattered
on the wind.” Fuckin' A.
Some
of the songs get violent, like the surprisingly joyous “Foreign
Object” which is about stabbing someone in the eye with the titular
object, and the brief, fist pumping “Choked Out” where the
subject absolutely glamorizes his hardcore style and issues
no-bullshit statements like “Everybody's got their limits/Nobody's
found mine.” And then like the genius he is, Darnielle twists that
line on the next track (and the album's finest song) “Heel Turn 2.”
“You found my breaking point, congratulations” proclaims the
beloved babyface actively turning the crowds cheers in to hissing
boos. It's full of quiet
desperation, sadness, and bittersweet satisfaction. Beat
the Champ is maybe the most
goddamn bittersweet album I've ever heard, based on the fact that
I've used that word like four times and that word runs through my
head every time I play the album.
I
only had a chance to listen the record on vinyl once before going
into isolation, but it was a wonderful experience. I was running
around the house, baby in arms, trying to get everything ready for my
extended leave from the household (read: getting my gaming consoles
packaged up for transport). Thyroid cancer is a highly beatable
cancer and Beat the Champ
has helped my attitude tremendously these last few months. Whenever I
started feeling uneasy about facing mortality, I just put on “The
Legend of Chavo Guerrero” or “The Ballad of Bull Ramos” or
“Werewolf Gimmick” and said fuck cancer. When the doctor brought
out the radioactive iodine in a lead container this afternoon, I
thought of it like a folding
chair or a foreign object. It
might not make it a fair fight, but when
you get ambushed all bets are off. I felt like Ric Flair talking
trash when I muttered, “Cancer, kiss my ass” before I threw back
the radioactive iodine pills, no doubt embarrassing myself in front
of the doctors but feeling goddamn great about having so much power
put in my hands after months of feeling powerless.
Beat the Champ isn't
Tallahassee or The
Sunset Tree and some of the
melodies feel cribbed from All Eternals Deck and
Transcendental Youth, but
it's probably the best songwriting you're going to find anywhere in
2015 and I love this album more than words can adequately express
because it was the album I needed.
Katie Crutchfield wasted no time capitalizing on the
breakout success of her sophomore effort as Waxahatchee—2013’s excellent Cerulean Salt. That album was full of
concentrated ramshackle indie-pop. Perfect hooks locked in sub-three-minute
shells that begged relistening the way a junkie begs you to let you have just
this next one free because they’ll get you the money in three days, they
promise. It was one of those albums where I AGONIZED over which track would
make my year end list, because half the songs on that album were show-stopping
standouts and the other half were these subtle, soulful gems that helped
Crutchfield crowbar the album under your skin.
Coming off an album that was effectively vulnerability
personified, leadoff track “Breathless” sounds like a flexing muscle. A beefy
drone of feedback carries through the track’s four minutes, which is
practically an epic by Crutchfield’s standards. It’s a slow burner, relying on
the underlying feedback tones to drag you into what is effectively everything
the follow up to a breakout success should be: confident, assured, and willing
to jump off the cliff.
Listening to Ivy Tripp
in the car, I could practically taste a 90s Merge Records vibe. I couldn’t
remember who put it out, but when I arrived at my destination and had a chance
to check it made perfect sense. Merge is like a time capsule, preserving bygone
traditions of indie rock. Ivy Tripp
is a fair bit more put together than its predecessor, and though it’s maybe
three tracks too long I still found myself putting it on when I didn’t know
what else to put on.
I know the whole “50 States
Project” was a “joke,” but Sufjan Stevens had me fooled. If you asked me ten
years ago what his 2015 release would be like, I’d have guessed he’d be
releasing “Maine Squeeze” or “Utah-t Me How to Love” or “Get Down on the Dance
Flor-ida,” not reverting to the blindingly gorgeous and hushed banjo-heavy folk
of his 2004 album Seven Swans. It’s
more surprising still considering his last full-length—2010’s The Age of Adz—was an experimental,
electronic drenched epic that sounded like Stevens totally tearing down
everything he’d built himself up to be. And I suppose that’s what happened. Carrie & Lowell is a return to the
sound that made his name, but it’s also his most powerful piece of work.
Inspired by the death of his mother, the songs are at times painfully raw and
intensely personal. Ok, it’s all intensely personal. There’s no room to
breathe, and that’s part of Carrie &
Lowell’s power. The songwriting is of a strength that dispels the notion
Stevens’ peaked on Illinois’ finest
moments and illustrates that his best work may be yet to come. As great and
heartwrenching as the songwriting is, the music here is truly outstanding. Sure
it’s quiet and beautiful like Seven Swans,
but it’s run through a filter of ten years of dabbling in minimalism,
electronics, and hip-hop. It truly feels like the sum of years of hard work. It
takes a delicate touch to pull off an album this intense, and for all of
Stevens’ scope and grandeur on previous projects, this one feels like a
legitimate masterpiece.
Listen to Carrie & Lowell in its entirety at NPR. Ideally in a quiet place, alone, after nightfall for maximum effect.
I swear, once a week I sit and quietly reflect upon all the
music I love that I’m not listening to. I’d never heard of Bomb the Music
Industry! until I took a flyer on frontman Jeff Rosenstock’s latest solo record
after seeing his name pop up on Facebook. After an exhausting decade of trying
to keep up with everything, my new year’s resolution was to quit reading music
reviews in an effort to put a stop to the little voice inside my head that
plays when I listen to music (“It only got a 5.4 on Pitchfork, hmm”). I’m a
much happier person. And it makes way more sense getting clued in by people I
actually like and trust. So there you go. Jeff Rosenstock’s name pops up in my
Facebook feed and I A.) Know I need to get all of those Bomb the Music
Industry! albums B.) Found another dude who totally nails that poppy bedroom punk
sound that is maybe my favorite sound and C.) all of a sudden have a valid
album of the year contender.
We Cool? is a
messy and urgent examination of that late 20s/early 30s unhappiness (“Nothing
makes me happy/ I’m like a shitty child”) and general ennui. A sort of “Well OK
what now.” It’s not exactly uncharted territory, but Rosenstock has so much fun
with the subject matter and the songs it makes for a fun journey down this well
trod path. A poppier Andrew Jackson Jihad was an immediate touchstone and
wouldn’t you know it, they’re cohorts (and tour mates, who just played Lawrence
last night and were I still a member of that unattached late 20s/early 30s crowd
I would have been there hell/highwater style). The epic power pop of early
Weezer are also present, but its honestly more akin to Weezer acolytes Ozma who
had a sweeter, synthier vibe. Either way, We
Cool? is insanely catchy and infinitely relistenable and it’s sneakily
become my go-to record for 2015. Bad day? Put on “Hall of Fame” in the car and
make everything better. Feeling pissed off at everything? That drunken Ben
Folds-y piano and chant-a-long chorus on “Nausea” does the trick.
I’m thinking We Cool? is
exactly what I was looking for and I’m glad I stumbled across it (and
Rosenstock’s own Quote Unquote records which offers free downloads of the
labels albums and asks only for donations). When you go through the motions of
modern music and hype and label spin on a regular basis, finding a pocket of
that pure, amazing, unaffected DIY spirit is like finding a woman you want to
spend the rest of your life with. So pure and good and right. For someone (like
myself) particularly susceptible to that aforementioned spin, hype, and bias,
this music feels like home.
