A plethora of feelings come with loss: confusion, fear, sadness, anger, relief, shock. And there seems to be no better medium than music to convey the inherent confusion packaged with losing something. Some may ham it on, slathering their songwriting in superficial sentiments. Others, decide to take the surprisingly honest and straightforward route. Armed with an acoustic guitar and supple voice, Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon) crafted the masterpiece Benji, earlier this year, chronicling those who have died, from his childhood to adult life; everyone from strangers, classmates, second cousins and grandmothers. These aren't just an outsider's perspective of stories, as Kozelek deals with his own emotional bloodletting, putting on display the aforementioned sentiments that loss entails. Others, however, put it in more blunt terms, like Cymbals Eat Guitars frontman/guitarist Joseph D'Agostino belts in the opener of his band's third and best record: "I don't wanna die!"
Cymbals Eat Guitars, those perpetually underrated indie rock heavyweights who have been making waves since 2009, are anything but revivalists. They wear their influences on their sleeves, but in a proud manner. D'Agostino, simply put, is a music nerd, who's favorite album of the aughts is Wilco's perfect Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, quickly followed by the indie rock touchstone The Meadowlands, by The Wrens. Their music brings to mind the indie rock heroes of a different time, from Modest mouse to Elliott Smith, but nothing is ever derivative. When "lo-fi" was you and your grandmother's favorite genre, Cymbals Eat Guitars came out the gate swinging with 2009's Why There Are Mountains, that if needed a one word descriptor, would be big. One would be hard pressed to find a single chorus, as songs carried on like long lost deep cuts from Built to Spill's Perfect From Now On (with a Rhodes piano) fronted by Charles Bissell of The Wrens (who ended up working on the record). ",,,And the Hazy Sea" cold clocked listeners as an opener, moving through six different crescendos, each more cathartic than the last. There were jaunty pop numbers, like "Indiana" and "Wind Phoenix (Proper Name)", but the knottier "Cold Spring" and "Share" gave way to the band's sophomore effort, Lenses Alien.
The most fitting one word descriptor for Lenses Alien would be paranoid. Rife with violence and anxiety, Lenses Alien opted for more challenging arrangements, making it even harder to parse D'Agostino's brick-like verbiage. The band's manager told them it was time to make their "Two Weeks" after a stint opening for Grizzly Bear; "Two Weeks" this is not. The characters of Lenses Alien eat dried mushrooms, kill state troopers, are stalked by highway snipers and "fuck each other in the guest rooms".
According to what's been written, every Cymbals Eat Guitars records is incredibly distinct from the next. Lose continues with this trend, tapping into the unknown, basking in its unexplored textures and D'Agostino trades in his vague lyrics recalling suburban malaise for something more personal. Similar to Owen Pallett's excellent In Conflict (also released this year), we as the listener are witness to D'Agostino jumping off the deep end into autobiography, bearing his own experiences to us. The central theme is D'Agostino's best friend, Benjamin High, who passed away at age 19 due to a heart condition.
The period of coping with loss is different for everyone, the gestation period constantly fluctuating. High died before Why There Are Mountains was released, pushed back due to the rerecording of High's parts (he originally sang the chilling refrain of "when the police bring me in" from "Share"). Instead of confronting the sorrow of High's death, D'Agostino disappeared further into his own head on Lenses Alien, and now it's been six years since High's passing. Yet another similar record in sentiment is Superchunk's I Hate Music (D'Agostino has the uncanny ability to recall Mac McCaughan at times), in which McCaughan doesn't focus on the details of a close friend's passing, but reminisces of both the good and bad memories. The most dour points of the record are when D'Agostino gives us a glimpse of his recovering from High's death, in which he finds himself incredibly lonely and isolated. However, there's no moping here, as every song is an eloquently told story.
After the six minute epic, the record moves to the more punchier single, "Warning". The song will most likely be remembered for D'Agostino's recalling of High when he was growing sicker ("looking mighty ghostly just like Bowie on Soul Train"), but the real gut punch comes when D'Agostino remembers getting goosebumps on High's roof, admitting that "friendship is the biggest myth". A sour note alchemy encapsulates indie rock's entire cannon into a svelte three minutes, worthy of being put up against Built to Spill's "The Plan" and Pavement's "Silence Kit".
What follows may be the album's biggest surprise: a harmonica. The cow punk "XR" rushes ahead, pushed even further by D'Agostino's distorted vocals and the squalling harmonica, as we are subject to what D'Agostino considers the record's thesis statement. There was a period of time following High's death, when D'Agostino would get high from the moment he woke up, continuing until he went to sleep once again. A way of coping with the loss in his life led to the "summer benzo blackouts" which "erased [his] identity". The song is somehow able to successfully map the multitude of different emotions: bittersweet reminiscence ("fuck your learner's permit, drive down to Philly with me / see The Wrens in a rec room"), depression ("wanna wake up listening to records / but those old feelings elude me"), realization ("broke my bong on purpose, hit the ceiling with weed"), and what stings the most, the acknowledgement of his begrudging drug habit, that also cites High: "High is just a tingling behind my eyes / got no serotonin left".
Like the Philly rec room in the preceding track, D'Agostino uses location as a way to map out whatever he was feeling at a certain time. The six minute "Place Names" recalls road trips to Cape May and Mystic, while "Child Bride" places us in a Cymbals Eat Guitars show in Orlando. The post-punk stomp of the former finds D'Agostino remarking on High's skin's "hepatitis tint", before descending into a feedback jam, anchored by Matt Whipple's melodic bass. The latter, a lilting ballad with Brian Hamilton's beautiful piano and graceful strings, acts as the record's centerpiece, different from anything the band has ever done before. A disappeared victim of child abuse from D'Agostino's youth shows up at a concert, strung out and explaining how his new girlfriend has turned him onto crack. The realization hits D'Agostino, who still only in his twenties, has led a privileged life and is now the leader of a successful band, has no reason to succumb to the trappings of drugs. The friend offers a hit, before D'Agostino confesses "I can't / my heart would explode".
If you thought the record was dipping into a quieter second half, Hamilton lets out a wailing smear of organ to kick off the gargantuan "Laramie". A lyrical masterpiece, recalling a time when D'Agostino and High got caught in a snowstorm in Laramie, Wyoming, the song moves through multiple movements within its eight minutes. D'Agostino once again confronts his worrisome drug habit in the rollicking second half, singing "all alone with my strip mall memories / chasing the same thrills I was when I was eighteen". As a band that has used location as such a key point of their music, the feeling is all too real when D'Agostino sings "your street's just a place / has no memory at all".
Cymbals Eat Guitars have always felt somewhat out of place when it comes to their regional locations; they identified as a New York band with Why There Are Mountains, despite lyrics citing the Pacific Northwest, and on their newest, they settle comfortably into a New Jersey indebted niche. However, the slice of life portraits of "Chambers" and "Lifenet" hark back to Lenses Alien, with references to Staten Island. An unfinished drug deal in "Chambers" (due to how "the feds closed Silk Road") leads to D'Agostino driving up to Stapleton, remaking how Staten Island is "technically NYC / but dear Christ it gets so lonely". "Chambers" is the closest Cymbals Eat Guitars may get to a pop hit (with shades of post-reunion Superchunk), but the downtuned bass of The Wrens indebted "Lifenet" does away with any notions of the band streamlining their sound. It's always a risk for an artist to make a disarmingly autobiographical album, as references to personal events can easily slip through the fingers of listeners; D'Agostino confronts this in the chorus, as he sings "sorry, you don't know these people / so what could this mean to you?". Little does he know how much meaning Lose can convey, from its opener, to the last gasps of "2 Hip Soul".
Why There Are Mountains ended with a whimper and Lenses Alien ended with a scream, so it makes sense for "2 Hip Soul" to be an appropriation of the two. Whipple and drummer Andrew Dole lock into a rhythmic waltz time, as D'Agostino lets dark guitar cascades mesh with Hamilton's piano playing, washing over the song. One can tell the song will be lyrically dense and brilliant from the utterance of the first line: "I learned to scream / to 'Bone Machine' / my windshield spit / was glistening". D'Agostino then steps outside of himself, pinpointing the exact moment innocence was lost for his group of friends. A rich high school peer, Sesta, gets his due for carving swastikas into trees and breaking into Popcorn Park Zoo to club animals to death with PVC piping, when he falls face first into the firepit at a local campground ("we had to find a new place to drink" D'Agostino intones). In the dirge like portion of the song, D'Agostino chronicles his return to Pinelands High School in a whisper ("months pass, and he's back in class / with a compression sleeve, and a mask") before letting out a scream, from both his guitar and throat, about his stoned blue eyes now "snowed in" from a vicodin habit. D'Agostino croons the unsettling "every rich kid's basement smells the same", before the song reaches its hurtling climax.
For all the shows Cymbals Eat Guitars have been playing in New York City, I've been gone for all but one of them. It felt like a necessity to see them, and I instantly jumped on the opportunity to see an incredibly cathartic show at Soho's Apple store, which concluded with D'Agostino ripping his guitar a new one, before writhing on the floor during the climax of "Laramie". The desire to see Cymbals Eat Guitars live was further affirmation of the kind of band they are. They have filled the shoes of groups like Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, Pavement, 12 Rods, The Dismemberment Plan, and especially The Wrens-- bands that are readily identifiable by their seminal classic records, but seem incapable of repeating said records. The Wrens get a direct reference on "Laramie", as D'Agostino and High have "'I Guess We're Done Duels'" in D'Agostino's car, splitting Kev and Charles' parts (it wouldn't come as a surprise if the "forward 13 months line" is a reference to The Meadowlands' "13 Months In 6 Minutes"), and the comparison comes full circle.
The line between peer and revivalist has always been considerably distinct between the indie rock of the nineties and those who ape from it. A whole generation (mine), must come to terms with the fact that we may never live through some miraculous resurrection of Modest Mouse's heyday, and that can be crushing at times. So Lose comes at the perfect time, ensuring we'll know the songs by hear for the changing of leaves and visibility of breath. The times we play Elliott Smith at dusk, The Dismemberment Plan on train rides home, Sunny Day Real Estate alone in our rooms.When our favorite records make perfect sense, from 12 Rods' Split Personalities to Codeine's The White Birch. It's no doubt these records are classics, considered nearly peerless for the longest time (some recent bands have achieved these ranks, but not many: Titus Andronicus, Japandroids, Fucked Up, Los Campesinos!, The Hotelier). Cymbals Eat Guitars are no longer the inspired ones, but rather peers; the big indie rock band for my generation, and many generations to come.
Cymbals Eat Guitars - Lose
10/10
Recommended Tracks: "Jackson", "Warning", "XR", "Place Names", "Child Bride", "Laramie", "Chambers", "Lifenet", "2 Hip Soul"
No comments:
Post a Comment