Labels: Modest Mouse, mp3, music

A few additional thoughts:

--Lil Beau pointed out that this Arby's must do real well if a
Chinatown bus stops there every hour every day

--It has so definitively hit the point of fall>into>winter, as
evidenced by this week's awful cold and dreariness, coupled with my
desire to listen to Joanna Newsom for the first time since last
February. Of recent years I've listened only to sophomore (superior/
mature/etc) follow-up Ys, but today I put on Milk-eyed Mender, and was
reminded both of its bucolic beauty and impish pretention. Obviously
the album title is a starter, followed by song titles like "'En
Gallop'" and "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie", but I was reminded how
nothing from this record seemed more of a don't-play-this-one-to-gain-
new-fans than "The Inflammatory Writ". Already lesser as one of the
few harpless tracks on MEM, the lyrical content alone is enough to
induce both laughs and groans--beyond said "writ" and the wry of
discussion of it, is Newsom's casual dropping of the Did She Really
Say That? stunner "poetaster". Poetaster! I'm all for encouraging
intellectualism and our mock-pursuit of "forward-movement", but the
neo-Victorian nonsense of this song is so absurd that it could easily
become (or might be already, I guess) a Steampunk procrasturbation
anthem. Only today did I bother looking up the true meaning of
poetaster, and I suppose I'm satisfied to learn it means "writer of
inferior verse". Pleasantly ironic. Love you, Jo-Jo***.

--After Joanna, I was still looking for kind of appropriately dark and
wintry bleak tunes, and ultimately turned to Modest Mouse's 1999
errata comp Building Nothing Out of Something. Beyond "Sleepwalking",
a special night time mood track that will stay with me for evermore, I
was reminded in listening to this record how absolutely no other mess
of music will ever be able to so appropriately encapsulate the
overwhelming prickly life darkness of my extended post-adolescent
depression from Age 17-22. While i was typicaly confused and depressed
from Age 12-15 as well, the 17-22 period in my life stands out as
being the real time where I thought it might be possible enough where
my near-adult brain and its capacity for "analysis"-born Weltschmerz
might actually pull me into absolute End-of-Day darkness. During all
of this time, the tunes of the three '96-99 Modest Mouse releases (and
to a lesser extent, The Moon and Antartica) played over and over in my
various Death's Head Chariots as calls to march like Wagner's
Valkyries or Morricone's "Dollars". But unlike a decision to blast the
inarguably black doom tunes of Nine Inch Nails or Slayer, there was
always just enough ambiguous hope in Modest Mouse so as not to cast me
among the world-is-over goth-wannabes. But, yes it was always
ambiguous at best, and if anything, made me feel like I was The Man in
Cormac McCarthy's The Road, constantly heading "forward" under the
cover of night down a road to who-know's-where, hoping that I might
wind up in Salvation even if I knew I'd probably just find more dark
road. The haunting strangeness of Isaac Brock's yelp-lisp, coupled
with the stark wire-guitar minimalism of the tunes and Brock's
penchant for opaquely existential wasteland lyricism added up to make
a body of work that any thinks-he's-wise future-doubtful teen could
turn play as a soundtrack for forever (for night time as much if not
more than winter). Thankfully, I've found my own place to be now,
where there is sunshine and light (albeit different and less dramatic
than the Salvation I once imagined), but it still feels weird and
powerful to return to the old MM every once in a while.

-----

And please, dear god, let this bus ride end.

NOTES:
***-- The only hanging remotely resembling a pin-up I've ever hung in
my home (certainly this one but possibly any of them) is a cut-out
from a 2006 Arthur magazine of Joanna, currently taped to my
refridgerator door. Hot nerds, please, always, forever. Also, Fuck you
Andy Samberg and Bill Callahan.

Labels: crushes, Joanna Newsom I Love You., memories, Modest Mouse, My Love Of The Imaginary West, quickthoughts, thoughts, words