Music Roundup 6
Didn’t even get around to writing a primer for this one at the end of the week before last, and time has been a precious resource in the interim, so here’s some words while I have a minute at lunch.
First, my classic album was Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen. I knew the title track, as probably most people do. I knew it got misused by conservatives a lot, who thought, yep, born in the USA, that’s the qualification to be a human being. It is actually, however, about being sent to fight in Vietnam because of a minor legal issue, and then coming back to find there’s no jobs and the VA doesn’t give a shit. Born, indeed, in the USA.
Meanwhile, I also knew that Bruce had a strong influence on Arcade Fire. This is nowhere more evident than on the next track Cover Me, which I’m almost certain corresponds to one particular Arcade Fire track that I’ve not been able to place. This is mainly because I’ve only been listening to new music this year, and the go-to albums are receding a bit.
My first impression of the lyrics of Darlington County was that he was picking up some prostitutes, but maybe he’s just trying to impress some naiive girls with money because he’s from New York? Judge for yourself, but standing on the corner has a certain implication to me.
There’s a lot of downbeat stuff, lyrically, particularly Glory Days. Turns out the passage of time is super depressing. Although this is almost completely countered by No Surrender where he’s old, but you know, still up for it.
The whole thesis of American decay gets summed up at the end, Foreman says "These jobs are going, boys/And they ain't coming back/To your hometown.". And also, I'm thirty-five, we got a boy of our own now, I don’t have a boy and I’m only 35 for another couple of weeks, and I also have a pretty good job in a future-facing industry and, well, this parallel doesn’t really stand up now that I type it.
The new album for last week was The Neon Skyline by Andy Shauf, which I think is my first legitimate released in 2020 album. It’s very small scale, I don’t think it’s even about a breakup per se, it’s more this guy keeps running into his ex at this one bar and kind of feels bad about it. It’s very acoustic-guitar, straightforward-storytelling style. I find his voice a little dweeby from time to time to tell you the truth.
There’s a few nice lyrical flourishes, the whole story of running into Judy again is, I think?, told a little out of order, or maybe he should just stop going to this one bar all the time.
However, there’s one song, not connected to anything at all, about some acquaintance they meet who tells them that her kid drew her a picture and she was too tired to really care and now she feels bad about it. That almost makes me cry. Where’s her album?
And since I’m just typing stuff, my current rota is A Night at the Opera by Queen and The Slow Rush by Tame Impala just because people in work were talking about it while I was scrambling around for something on Monday morning.