"There's No Place Like My Room"
Music & trauma in a global pandemic + new Gossip, boygenius, Allie X
It’s getting colder in November. You can tell Chicago is chilly by the way the dead trees stand lifeless and upright lining the streets. The puffy coats and scarves of your neighbors keep getting thicker until nearly every inch of their red skin is protected. It’s probably a matter of days until black snow lines the grids of all of the streets you feel like you just walked wearing shorts and a tanktop on the way to meet your friends at the beach.
This is why I moved back, the changing seasons. LA’s consistently perfect weather was a dream, don’t get me wrong. Other times, it was a mocking smile when all you wanted do was curl up on the couch under a grey sky while you recharged from the daily horror shows of life.
Maybe it’s the January month I was born, maybe it’s the mark of a new year, maybe it’s both. All I know is every fall, I reflect. When the seasons change, so do my musical preferences. There are specific albums I reach for when the temperature drops. Some artists are so entwined with these feelings that I avoid over-listening to them during other seasons. That bucket includes Sufjan Stevens, Patty Griffin, Laura Marling, certain Tori Amos records, and many more melancholy soundtracks. When it gets even colder, Bjork’s Vespertine and Aimee Mann’s One More Drifter In The Snow thaw off and become close companions.
A more recent addition to this pantheon is Phoebe Bridgers. After pouring my cold brew and chocolate milk and crawling back into bed to ease into the day, I let my mind scan these embedded songs. On this day, Phoebe’s Punisher album emerged at the top of the pool. As soon as the drowned bass and strings of the instrumental opening of “DVD Menu” began, I felt weighted in bed with existential doom like I was three years ago.
Punisher was released on June 18, 2020. This was almost exactly 4 months from what was the true beginning of the pandemic for me, March 12th 2020. That’s when they closed the airports. That’s when news shows started tracking the death toll in the corner of our TVs. That’s when restaurants, bars, and theaters shuttered their doors. That’s when you started to hear about friends of friends catching this new illness we knew nothing about - and when some of us got sick ourselves.
I don’t believe we’ve fully reckoned with that time of our lives. The speed and scale of it is what stirs me most when I allow myself a bit of time travel. We went from just another weekend of going to The Eagle and standing, laughing in close proximity with our friends, to hiding inside and treating social obligations like a bracket. At least in LA, we were fortunate enough to have outdoor spaces where we could hang out six feet apart and get a dose of serotonin before going home to our mini prisons. It’s difficult to imagine not having that escape in the winter months.
There’s a verse in Phoebe’s song “I Know The End,” the fittingly titled closing epic on Punisher, that inspired me to write about this:
When I get back I'll lay around
Then I'll get up and lay back down
Romanticize a quiet life
There's no place like my room
Keep in mind she wrote this song before the pandemic. I wondered if I’d ever see my family again, or if I’d ever get to go back to Chicago. I wondered if my chronic illness would meet its match with a virus the news repeatedly told us was bad for people with diabetes. The lack of variety made the days blend together, yet every day was uncertain. My roommate and I would unleash aggravated screams at random points throughout slow crawl of hours. I was fortunate to be employed and working remotely, so my schedules was a string of virtual meetings only to end with more screen time in the form of video calls with friends and doom scrolling along with the rest of the world, usually while getting as high as I could to mentally escape the reality.
Music was one of the only constants of the pandemic. Along with Phoebe’s album, other records like Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters, Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure? and The Chicks’ Gaslighter became my cherished friends.
I use the word “cherish” specifically due to a recent conversation with my friend Jonathan Fuller. We talked about how we used to use listening booths like the ones at Barnes and Nobles to discover music. You previewed an album, you spent $15 on it, and you brought it home to play on your CD player. Eventually you’d have the ability to transport that to your iPod. Having this physical thing and a limited budget meant the roster of records you played was smaller. There was more of an investment, you took the time to learn all of the lyrics, and you read all of the liner notes.
There was something about pandemic music that connected me with that time and method of music discovery. Remember those mental health walks? How we forced ourselves to go outside and walk around the same radius every day? Those were the records that filled my ears as I wondered if I’d ever hear them at a club with my friends, or be able to experience the songs live in a music venue.
Ultimately, I’m writing about this as a reminder to myself to take time to cherish music. It’s so easy for me to listen to something, casually like it, and then forget to revisit. There are of course songs and albums that are so instant that I can’t remember what life was like before them. Artists invest so much of their time and money into making music. Giving it your dedicated attention and full consideration is all they could humbly ask you for in return.
Maybe you needed this like I did. During this particular trip backwards, I went from feeling the weight of it to feeling the resilience. Those slow motion years of our lives will never be recovered, but the ones we’re currently living remind us that we survived. I’m going to cherish that too.
Ok anyway back to the music.
Here’s what caught my ear this week
Gossip
I never imagined we’d get another Gossip album. Their first since 2012 is called Real Power and it’s out in March. The first offering is a romantic little lo-fi pop rock moment called Crazy Again. I’m so curious to hear how this trio of friends sounds a decade later. This song bodes well.
Allie X
Allie X has released her first EP in 2015 called Collxtion I. It was full of carefully crafted pop anchored by a powerful set of pipes and just enough weird Hot Topic manager to set her apart from the influx of alternative pop acts of the time. She’s continued exploring within the genre since then, weaving in dark soundscapes, stuttering dancefloor soundtracks, and striking visual components. Her fifth studio album Girl With No Face is out this February. So far, Allie plucked the best of her world and put it through a distorted blender. Analog synths with foreboding melodies set her somewhere between Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics and a dash of Kate Bush. Predicting she’s about to release her best album.
boygenius + Sinead O’Connor tribute
In a tribute to Sinead O’Connor, boygenius offers their rendition of an Irish Standard called The Parting Glass, which Sinead also covered in 2002. It’s the perfect choice for their three part harmonies and a beautiful tribute to a legend.