Wait, Drugs CAN'T Fix Everything?

No Dope

Whispertown 2000
Swim
2008

This is one of my favorite songs of the decade. I think, having listened to that list in order on the way to and from upstate New York, "No Dope" may be the biggest leaper. In fact, it's one of my favorite songs ever. It's so, so simple and so, so crushing.

Who hasn't been so heartbroken/ destroyed/ depressed that nothing works? That's all this song is about. But what happens so wonderfully is the way Morgan Nagler's voice embodies the song and the guitar strumming sounds so forlorn. When the glimmering guitar comes in, that, too, seems too depressed to give us much more than a few notes before heading back to bed.

Maybe no set of lines does more so succinctly: "No dope/ No pill/ No drink/ can fill/ can tow/ this ton/ of tears." And it does seem like Nagler chops the line breaks there. Two syllables is all she can force out of her mouth. She's gathering energy. Later, she sings a gorgeous (simple again) line, "No medicine/ or heroin/ can make me go/ sweet blind." Sweet blind, if that is indeed what she says, is just an absolutely amazing phrase. I actually titled a story I've been working on "Sweet Blind" from this. I will swipe it ten times a day. It's that awesome to me.

This is perhaps the most depressing song on earth. EXCEPT, there are those magnificent moments where Nagler's voice lilts upwards, "I'll tell you what" that give just the slightest impression of hope, where that gathered energy has been hiding. She seems to say, Those fucking clouds aren't parting, but well, they've got to some time, right? I mean, for a goddamn second?

--Some notes on Whispertown 2000. Nagler is friends with Blake Sennett of Rilo Kiley, and became friends with Jenny Lewis. Then she started performing under the name-- wait for it-- the whole reason I am writing this small section-- Vagtown 2000.

Outlaw Questions

Country music, like punk rock, usually only attempts to answer a couple of questions: why don't you love me? what am I going to do now that you're gone? how do I really feel about my truck/case of beer/Southern heritage? But the best country asks better questions: how am I going to haul all this pig iron? how long will I love him? what the hell is a rhinestone cowboy?



Tom Ames' Prayer - Steve Earle


Steve Earle, a trader in great subjects (moonshiners, oxycontin, American Taliban fighter John Walker Lynn, among many others) asks a helluva question in "Tom Ames' Prayer": what does an atheist outlaw say when his luck runs out and he's forced to talk to God?

The answer is surprising. Tom Ames' monologue to God is not touching. It eschews sentiment in favor of nihilism and irony. There's no salvation here for our arrogant outlaw. The song requires no explication because the writing is so concise and clear. But just in case: Tom Ames, chicken stealer, horse thief, bank robber, general badass, finds himself cornered by Johnny Law in an alley in Abeline. With limited options he turns to the good Lord for some assistance. He recounts the Lord's previous intervention in his life: after Judge Parker throws the book at him, Tom Ames sits in jail talking to a preacher who is, presumably, giving some kind of end-of-life counseling. The preacher turns his back, Ames puts a shiv to his throat and demands the key from the deputy. As soon as he recounts his last escape, Tom Ames remembers that there is no God, cocks his pistols, spits in the dirt, and puts his faith in his last 4 shells. The ending is more complex than it initially suggests. Does Tom Ames only dismiss God because he recognizes his own prowess as a criminal? Or, does Tom Ames thank Him for sending the preacher who ultimately becomes the vehicle for his escape? The latter seems more interesting to me.



Las Cruces Jail - Two Gallants


Two Gallants, a pair of tremendous noisemakers from San Francisco, pose another great question: what do you say to your horse when you're facing the business end of a noose? Our nameless narrator seems like the first-person narrator from a lost Cormac McCarthy novel: a man for whom murder is as necessary as clothing. He's a poetic about his given trade: "quickest wrist of the chaparral and sage." Whereas Earle's sense of nihilism was touched with irony, 2G's nihilism is down right exhilarating: this is a character who has honestly made peace with his impending death. He wants to recount his own story because that's what criminals do; they're more invested in their crimes than the survivors of the victims. But the most humbling and surprising and moving parts of the song are addressed to his Andalusian horse. He bids the mare goodnight from his lonely jail cell in Las Cruces. He advises her not to believe in her captor's words. They are going to try to reclaim her, but she needs to remember the freedom that she enjoyed with the narrator. He can't respect what will happen to his horse, but he's not sorry that they had their time together. They were a pair, a couple, after all. The song, then, becomes this lovely (if simultaneously horrifying) ode to his freedom that came with his horse. And it's ultimately a tragic story: the narrator is going to die (he doesn't have Tom Ames' arrogance in this regard) and the horse now belongs to those who are putting its rightful owner to death.

Life, Liberty, and what Kanye Hath Wrought

Pursuit of Happiness


Kid Cudi f. MGMT & Ratatat, Man on the Moon: The End of the Day, 2009.


"Tell me what you know about dreamin? Dreamin?"

Ah, the existential questions of hip-hop. There was a day when the biggest question rap could pose was "Has your girlfriend got the butt?" Obviously, lyrics have been political since day one, but actual discussion of feelings? That's a pretty recent trend, one that Kanye has been at the forefront of in terms of making it acceptable (acceptable being a double stand-in for profitable and manly enough). Just like grunge knocked the lid off of the simmering feelings of teenagers in the mid-90s, sweeping away the excess and party/pussy anthems of hair metal (which had already lost their edge when the ballads took over), Kanye (and Eminem) has done the same for hip-hop, making it okay to discuss actual emotional issues.

Which brings us, at last to KiD CuDi, a Kanye protege. His "Pursuit of Happiness" is nothing but feelings.

KiD CuDi stops short of turning the whole thing into a therapist's couch by making it all seem like a condemnation of the listener, an aggressiveness that pays off as he veers from rolling joints to lines like "You don't really care about the trials of tomorrow/ Rather lay awake in a path full of sorrow" (which wouldn't feel out of place in a Metallica song).

It's not poetry; the lyrics aren't amazing. But what is amazing is that he feels comfortable doing it. There's a universality to statements like "I'll be fine once I get it" that keeps it going.

Of course, Ratatat's El-P-influenced beat carries things along more than anything else. It doesn't sound completely like a Ratatat effort until that guitar solo around the three minute mark. MGMT adds their own flavor, singing backup better than a collection of ratty hos would.