Perhaps you are interested in punk rock. Maybe you read that excellent Freaky Trigger piece about punk rock and Young Avengers and thought, "huh." Maybe you've heard a little before but Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie are getting you more interested. In that case, let me introduce you.
Please.
I'll dispense with the backstory: Nubile white men with guitars a good half century ago figured out you didn't need talent to play music, you just needed anger and momentum.
Punk rock's major contribution to music's history (aside from a reminder
to get out before you start to suck) is the idea that an aspiring
artist does not require someone else's imprimatur to make music. If
someone isn't making the music you want to hear, you are now deputized
to make it yourself.
Seriously. If you've got a song in your heart: Write it. Now. This very minute. Stop reading. Go. Do it. Now. Do it.
There's connective tissue between punk rock and comics, if you know where to look. Most obviously, Patrick Kindlon and Matthew Rosenberg, to name two, have released some of my favorite music ever. Mike Cavallaro, known to the Eastern Seaboard as Johnny X from Sticks And Stones, Becky Cloonan, Rick Remender, Jen Van Meter and ad infinitum. Gillen and McKelvie's history with music and a member of punk's extended family, Britpop, is suggested by the above image. It's called Phonogram, there's two volumes and Volume Two, The Singles Club, forced me to confront my fear of dancing. It presented better arguments for dancing than my reasons not to dance.
This is not a history, but a survey. Five songs, cast widely to get a taste in your mouth. If you like it, come back next week. If not, you're only out the time you took to listen to five songs. These aren't my five favorite punk rock songs in the world, but these are five songs which all suggest many of the cardinal directions punk rock moves in. You may hopefully find something you like.
The songs hopefully suggest the focus, the lens, the catalyst and the fuel. There's a Romanticism to punk that I find still useful as I age. There's other parts to punk, the branded nihilism, the clear-eyed hopelessness, but those are doors to go through later on. I still need to get you through this one first.
Like all surveys, it's necessarily incomplete. Emo is a longer story than I have time for and oh God I'm rambling. Five songs. Play loud.
Until I figure out how to embed playlists into Blogger, just go here.
I listened to a lot of music in 2012, but these twelve songs most often and most obsessively. Play loud.
Copper Fields by Blacklisted. The band takes their stage magic v. real magic as motif for relationship and executes on it perfectly. The vocalist is no magician and the love between the two people wasn't conjured up whether from the depths of our psyche or a sleeve or hat. It's also one of Blacklisted's best songs, new or otherwise, and stands taller, I think than most of the incredible Heavier Than Heaven or No One Deserves.
"More like suicide king / less like ace of hearts."
Drag My Body by Hot Water Music. I believe this is the best song they've ever written. I didn't bother listening to Exister because of how good this song was. It's not like Hot Water Music is going to top it until the next record. Another pinnacle from a band known for incredible highs and breathtaking views.
"Something's rattling my bones!"
Bag by White Lung. They might dislike choruses. I love 'em and in one of my favorite Deranged records to come out in years, a chorus means something. I listened to this record in transit, but especially during the NATO Summit. It was music that made me feel ashamed for not protesting.
"I'm about to / warn you"
Desert Lily by Make Do And Mend. I must have heard this guitar line somewhere before. Maybe in another life? One before, or one yet to come? I'd say this thing cuts, but it isn't meant to cut. It's meant to soothe and ameliorate. It does that. So it's a ballad about finally being home from tour and with your lover, and it might be the only one on this list. It's one song on the record that sounds the least like their guiding star, Hot Water Music. I want, desperately, to hear where they go after this.
"I've earned my share of home..."
Patriot-Hostage Calm. It's a mid to late album stunner. It's almost acapella, mostly four voices and if the Futureheads hadn't already done an entire record acapella, I'd stare slack-jawed. But, it's executed well and surprise counts for a lot. It might have my favorite lyric on the entire record. It's about American history and the disappointments that come from knowing where that progress comes from and what it entailed.
"And drunk with pride / you hurt / you stole but I still carried you home / from the jungles to the deserts / to the trenches' reddened snow..."
Here Comes My Man-The Gaslight Anthem. Brian Fallon's lyrics tend to find easy crutches for purchase. Blood is spilled on the page. Black as a raven. Women are drugs. You get the idea. Despite that, I connected with Here Comes My Man in a way that I haven't connected with Gaslight Anthem song since I first heard Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis when I was in Pennsylvania. As an aside, that's a Planes Mistaken For Stars shirt that the drummer wears. Oh yes.
"Singing oh sha la la..."
The Obituaries-The Menzingers. So the Menzingers are pessimistic. They've got every right to be. They know intimately how far good songs will take them, and they also know intimately how those same songs can't pay them rent. But. Some kid will hear this song and know that the Menzingers aren't insulting their intelligence or talking down to them. With this, they become the heroes they always aimed for.
"I will fuck this up, I fucking know it..."
Constellations-Enter Shikari. The rest of the record is hit or miss, but the final track on A Flash Flood Of Colour is a game-winning home run. I'm not terribly interested in their sound generally, but this song is something fantastic. If it doesn't make you look up at the sky and smile, well, there might be nothing for you. It's the most traditional song on the record, by a wide margin. Maybe that's why I like it? It's easier to digest.
"with forgiveness as our torch and imagination our sword..."
Maple Boy-No Trigger. This song feels too good to be true. The rush of melody. The rush of speed. I'm sad the rest of Tycoon isn't as good, but between this and Checkmate, it was a brilliant, but not quite blinding ray of sunlight in the miserable winter.
"But now in its place / a legacy of full grown trees!"
Sunset On 32nd (live)-Strike Anywhere. Acoustic record. Live. It comes off of a record that has two parts, one part that's almost a BBC live session, it's clear and it's pretty. The other is from a benefit for the IWW and it's billed as more raucous, and it is, but there's almost no crowd singing, which is what you go to a raucous Strike Anywhere gig for. Except, of course, for one song and that one song is Sunset On 32nd. In this one song, you understand why this part of the record exists.
"and when they pinned you to the floor / did you say / 'officer I am not resisting you?'"
Self Immolation Family-Self Defense Family. It goes a indulgent by the end, the riff gets a little long in the tooth. But still. They need an editor, it's true, but until minute five, the six minute song is majestic and frankly, I didn't know the band that wrote Eddie Antar could do that. Maybe they can do anything...
I suppose this is as good a time as any to announce Subsidized Sincerity is going to a Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday schedule. I'm still going to think of it as Monday, Wednesday, Friday but there's less, say noise, on the internet Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, so I hope it will sit better in the immediate future.
I've been rough on the Dresden Files recently. Admittedly, the third book (Grave Peril) seemed to lean hard on the “darkness is bad, light is good” that's kind of simplistic. There was a guy from the Church (Michael) who has 2.5 kids, works as a carpenter, who carries a sword that may be a nail in the cross of Jesus and a priest that's old, reliable and apparently, churches are safe havens for the people suffering from vampire or demon attacks.
And yes, I'm going to contrast it again with the most recent book by China Mieville that I read. It's called King Rat and apparently, it was his first. It shows. He uses the word impossible too much in describing the titular characters abilities, but what stood out to me was how both books looked at darkness.
In the Dresden Files, the darkness is something to feared. Vampires or fairies or whatever lurk there. In King Rat, the darkness is sheltering. The darkness is useful. The darkness is home.
In the Dresden Files, purity is a thing from which power can be drawn and is spoken well of. There's pure white flame which Michael calls on to battle the dark, dangerous vampires. (At one point, a vampiress, in order to flirt with Michael, touches his arm. She erupts into a “white flame,” and is thrown off of him.) In King Rat, purity is abhorrent. “Purity is a negative state, and contrary to nature.”
I've read fourfive six Dresden Files books in rapid succession. Mieville's work, less so. Bottom line: Mieville is fucking complicated. Butcher is not. And that's only a partial knock against Butcher. I've laughed far more often at what Butcher puts in front of me.
In Summer Knight alone, we're talking about a book where the police lieutenant takes a chainsaw to the back of a troll's knee (an old Chicago tradition) and then to the head of a plant monster, a book where the day is saved by tiny pixies with box cutters flying out of a vase screaming “In the Name of the Pizza Lord, Charge!”, a book where Harry Dresden throws a cup of cold water on his erection to break out of Fey trickery, it's a book where, here a neutral party to the character describes how everyone else sees the character and it's fucking funny because more of it is true than false.
I love that moment.
I resent Butcher's attempts at epic because I like the magic PI story and I dislike conventionally epic storylines, a three way violent orgy between wizards and fairies and vampires. I like Mieville's attempts at epic because, motherfucker, they feel epic. You've got goddamn squid gods fighting mortals for control of reality using their imaginations as their weapons.
Now that's what I call epic.
Tonight it's Ballots/Stones by Hostage Calm. The recurring lyric is this, and it's a doozy: "Did you cast your ballot or a stone?"
Hello, Young Avengers fandom.
