“The Hearttaker” – Americana

“The Hearttaker” has an altogether ’50s vibe in the chord progression with some crazy, space jazz synths layered in. The addition of the synths adds a texture you don’t hear in previous sf59 songs. It also frees up the guitars to do more than just carry the song. The rhythm guitars and bass are chunkier and feel like more an extension of the drums. By contrast, the lead guitar sounds as big and open as canyons.

The music during the verses have dissonance. There is a tension here. This tension is resolved in the major chords of the chorus. This switch matches what is being expressed in the lyrics. What is present throughout the song is this relentless, determined rhythm, always plodding forward and inevitable. This also matches the lyrics. Let’s take a look at them. In the verse, we have:

If you lead you know
It’s hard to be until you go
You know it’s hard
To know or just believe

I can take this song in two different directions as far as interpretation goes. I think there is the obvious interpretation of living as a Christian. I’m not talking about the “omg, Christians are persecuted!” that is so popular when people get riled up because Starbucks doesn’t have a Christian image on their Christmas cups. I’m talking about the authentic path of living by faith and humility day in and day out. It is hard to believe. It is hard to live by faith in a world that rewards self-centeredness. You feel out of place and out of time as a way of being. In that constant reality, it is easy to doubt.

Another interpretation would be that this is about being creative. When I write of being creative, I’m talking about any situation where you create something from within yourself where there was nothing before. It is not limited to music, art or writing. It could be when you are at work and you think of a new way to do things that makes life easier. It could be falling in love. It could be having and raising children. When you take what is inside of you and put it out there in the world, you are creating.

And it is an anxiety-laden task, creation is. No wonder God had to take a day to rest after creating the world. Doubt is the constant companion of innovation. When you are doing something no one has done before, when there is no template to follow, doubt will follow in lock step. Will anyone understand what I’m doing? What if I am going down the wrong path? Will this mean anything to anyone? What if I fail? What if I give up? If you get it right, it could be glorious. If you mess it up, you may get the crushing isolation of knowing that no one gets who you are and what you are made of.

With both potential interpretations, one may ask what is the point of doing any of this. We get an answer in the chorus:

Because the hearttaker
Makes it easier just believe

In the Christian or religious interpretation of this song, you live by faith because of God. Your doubts are answered in God. The feeling out of place and out of time in the world is because you find a place in God. You are in time with God. Knowing this abates the doubt, at least for awhile. It is a continual process. I think this is why the verse with all its tension is repeated after the first chorus. Living in faith is the continual moving from states of doubt and anxiety to affirmation and connectedness. You continue to live through it because God continues to take your heart.

As for the creative interpretation, it is something I have been pondering in relation to this blog. Like, what am I even trying to do here? This thing that I’ve hammered together is a weird mash-up of musical analysis, psychology, theology and personal narrative – sometimes the stories are funny, sometimes they are crushing, sometimes they are both simultaneously. People don’t usually write music reviews in this way. They keep more distance from themselves and the subject matter. But here I am, just throwing it all out there without much of a plan or an objective. Sometimes my writing frustrates me. Sometimes it surprises me by saying something I didn’t anticipate consciously. It is a mix.

There is anxiety and doubt that goes with this. Will anyone get what I am saying? Will it mean anything to anyone? Will this end up being just another thing to add to the long list of things I’ve failed at in my life? The strongest answer I have for all of the above is “maybe”.

So why keep doing it? I love music; I love this band. I have lots of thoughts about it and I have to do something with these thoughts or they will keep bouncing around in my head like a pinball. I’m understanding these songs in a deeper way because I’m taking the time to listen to them and write about them. That pulls me forward. I am also understanding myself in a deeper way because I’m taking the time to listen to myself and write it down. There is a kind of erotica to that process. At the end of the day, the one who takes my heart may just be me.

“The Voyager” – Americana

I’m excited to start on Americana. It remains one of my go to albums. If you were to ask me what my top 5 sf59, my answer would vary by the hour. First of all, I hate quantitative lists where a numerical ranking is given to describe something that is not numerical at all. Even if I did decide to play along with the numbers game, I would struggle. I would try to divide it up into different categories: top 5 for production quality, top 5 for songwriting, top 5 for guitar tones, etc . . . My mind could not settle long enough to come up with an answer.

There’s really only one ranking criterion that matters to me: what albums do I put on when I feel like hearing some Starflyer. As much as I love Silver and Gold, they don’t rank so high here. Gold probably makes it in about 4.38% of the time; Silver is at a 0.63%. Americana comes in at a healthy 14. 91%. (And in case you think those numbers there contradict my previous paragraph, percentage of time listened actually is numerical. Yeah, I’m ideologically pure when it comes to my statistical methods.)

Americana was the beginning of a shift in how important sf59 was for me. By the time I bought this album, I was in college and had my own car, a red ’91 Toyota Tercel with a stick shift. I had a lot of fun in that old car. I saved up money from pizza delivery tips to put in my own aftermarket sound system. You kids may not know this, but if you wanted good sound in your car in ’90s, you had to make so by force of will. It wouldn’t come to you that way.

I bought some really nice Blaupunkt speakers off Crutchfield that had magnets so big I had to install them with risers because they wouldn’t fit in the door frames. I had a JVC dual CD and cassette player (upgraded to a 12 disc changer in later years). The crowning glory of my system was a 100 watt bass tube I installed in the trunk, angled in such a way that it reverberated through the car and into the skulls of anyone within a 10 ft radius of me. Now to be clear, I wasn’t no wanger who cruised the Kroger parking lot on Friday nights. My system was classy and had no embarrassing door or trunk buzz. I spent many a Saturday afternoon working on that setup to ensure its auditory purity.

I’m putting so much effort in describing this because it was a big part of the shift in sf59’s importance to me. I would put on this album with that system and I could feel my marrow buzz in time with the guitars and the bass in unison (there’s few things in life that I love more than heavy rhythm and bass in unison). sf59 became a full body experience. Things that I could not hear in the layers of sound before I could now feel from head to toe. It was close to a religious experience.

In this song, we have the same guitar chainsaw effect that we heard in “When No One Calls” except now there is more anger and way more cockiness. The vocals are stronger. The lead guitar keeps pulling you in different directions, bending notes, going off beat. It just won’t let you be still. The organ in this song just slays me. It reminds me of one of my other favorite bands, The Black Crowes. I’m a southern rock girl and a church organ going out of bounds is the way to my heart.

This song is a sort of sequel to “When No One Calls”. I suspect it is about the same person. It’s dealing with the same behavior but now the singer is good and pissed about it. I know there was some changing of personnel in the band around this time and I suspect that to be an inspiration on many of the songs on Americana. But I don’t want to get into that to much because that’s not what I’m here for. I try not to tie myself down to interpretations that match what we know to be true about JM and the life of the band. On one hand I feel it is intrusive to do so and on the other, it limits my writing. I want to write what I hear in the lyrics and what I feel in the music.

The lyrics of this song remind me of my relationship with a person with Borderline Personality Disorder. One of the hallmarks of BPD is referred to as “push me, pull me” behavior (you keep pulling me). They pull you in, telling you they all but worship you (you don’t worship me) only to push you away once they feel that they have you on the line (you leave me out). When you question this behavior, they gaslight you and make you doubt your own feelings and experience (left me with the doubt). And they cancel on all your plans. There’s always a reason given for why they just couldn’t come through for you (things never happen, because, because, because).

The singer has figured out the game though. He warns that they are about to get left behind, they don’t know who they are up against (I’m the voyager, watch out). Once the person begins their “push me” behavior again (you keep pushing me), the singer sets his boundaries and walks away (just leave me out, leave me out). He knows he’ll be better off without them and tells them as much (things will all work out with the voyager, watch out).

What is different with the singer in Americana as opposed to what we heard in Silver and Gold is that the singer knows his worth now. He can discern what is happening while it is happening and respond to it in the moment instead of trying to make sense of it in the aftermath of a broken relationship. This opener proudly proclaims that the singer has grown up now and he ain’t going to put up with shitty behavior anymore.

“Le Vainqueur” – Le Vainqueur

The punch – counterpunch rhythm of the drums at the beginning of the songs lets you know that this song is something different. This song is confrontational. The wall of layered guitars jumps in. They are as thick as the muggy air on a summer Louisiana night. Impenetrable. The lead guitar rapidly phases in and out with feedback that can barely be contained. I don’t know what tuning this song is in but it sounds like all the strings are dropping it like it’s hot.

Just as the vocals come in, the wall of guitars gives way to a quieter, more atmospheric sound. But there is still as much tension here; it did not release its grip because the volume decreased. The tension is in the vocals too and in the words that are being said. The lead guitar meanders around in the background. As the vocals in the verse fade down, the wall of guitars jumps back in and are as relentless as they were in the intro. The loud-quiet-loud arc of the song never lets you get too comfortable in one place before pulling you into another.

At 3:12, the bridge comes in. It is another one of those quiet atmospheric moments. The lead guitar comes with a hollow tone and reverb. It reminds me of guitar riffs on blues songs as it sounds like it is saying something and what it is saying was not entirely planned out in advance. It sounds something like your voice might in the waning moments of a verbal fight when the fireworks seem to be over with but you turn and say, “But, you know, I just find it funny that….”, and you are back at it.

Suddenly, the wall of guitars are back at it too, this time even more insistent. Now the lead guitar has a thicker tone and it rides on the crest of a tidal wave of feedback. Then there is silence. They say that before a tidal wave hits, the ocean recedes as the tidal wave draws all the water into itself, increasing its size and force before it meets land. And so it is here. At 4:22, we hear a female voice saying, “Let’s go!” It is rare to hear a female voice in a sf59 song so I find it notable that there is one here. Just like it was women who first proclaimed the resurrection of Christ, it is a woman here who calls us into the final and most powerful part of this song.

The punch – counterpunch of the drums come in to herald the crashing of the tidal wave of the guitars on the shore. The rhythm guitars pound out the guitar progression as the blistering lead soars over feedback. Just when you think there’s no where else for this song to go, the guitar and bass in unison play a series of punctuated notes. High – low. Half step up – low. Whole step up – low. Then a descending line to the song’s final resounding resolution chord.

What is at the heart of the lyrics is the singer’s struggle with following God’s will but feeling it all the same. The singer knows that Christ will conquer all and will bring the only kind of healing that will make it better. It makes me think on one of my favorite theories on the atonement of Christ. I’ve been chewing on the idea of atonement for a few decades now. I still do not know how it works, but I have a few ideas.

The atonement theory I hear most often in these parts is the ransom theory. This theory rests in the idea that’s God’s vengeance at our sins is great and must be absolved. Rather than pour that vengeance on us, He sends his Son, a part of Himself, to take that vengeance so that we would not have to. I do not care for this theory. It makes God seem small and petty.

I read an amazing psychological study on the process of making amends in broken relationships. In the purely mortal realm, the way that relationships may be healed after a breach has occurred is this: both the victim and the one who broke the relationship must be willing to come together. There has to be genuine accountability and responsibility for the one who did the breaking and genuine compassion and forgiveness by the victim. This is the only ground upon which the relationship can be healed and trust may grow again. This is were atonement, or “at-one-ment” may occur; what is broken shall be made whole again. If only one person in the relationship is willing to engage in this work, the relationship will remain broken. The victim cannot heal the relationship with someone who refuses to be accountable for their actions. The one who did the breaking cannot reconcile with someone who has no compassion or forgiveness.

I’ve thought about how this same dynamic may play out in the spiritual realm. If we feel that we have broken our relationship with God, we have to find a way back to healing through His compassion and forgiveness. Maybe God sent Christ as a sacrifice not because His vengeance needed to be absolved but because He knew that we needed to know that there was a path toward healing in compassion and forgiveness. If we did not know that path was there, we would forever feel that relationship is broken and imbalanced.

But there is another theory of atonement that I like. It is often referred to as Christus Victor, or “Christ the Victor”. This theory claims that the intent of Christ’s sacrifice was to fight and conquer evil. You’ll see this idea in some of the fictional writings of C.S. Lewis and Madelaine L’Engle. The idea here is that Satan (or whatever name you wish to use for evil) held us as slaves because we had given ourselves over to sin. Christ offers His death in payment for our release from bondage. Satan takes the bait not realizing that since Christ is part of God, He is unconquerable.

And so it is that that Christ is the conqueror. He is Invictus. He conquers all that would hold us down and separate us from knowingly living in the boundless love of God. Nothing shall prevail against us while we are under His protection, not even ourselves. The lyrics of the song seem to point to the second coming of Christ as time that He will conquer. I tend to think it has already happened. For me to be able to describe that distinction, I would have to go into theories about the timelessness of God and this post would become much longer.

For right now though, it is enough for me to know that all that would hold me down in this life – the pain, rejection, grief and brokenness – Christ conquers. And the healing makes it better and better and better.

“When No One Calls (It Will be Alright)” – Le Vainqueur

I know I said I would skip EPs but I’m doing this one because I think it is an important bridge between Gold and Americana and also because I want to learn how to spell Le Vainqueur without having to look it up all the time. However, I’m only doing this EP partially; I’m not reviewing the radio edit of “Le Vainqueur” and I’m skipping “Starflyer 2000” because I’m going to do “Leigh and Me” at a later date.

Le Vainqueur is the beginning point of some characteristics of sf59 songs that I love so much in later albums. This song starts out dark, moody and discordant. The rhythm guitars are slow and determined and sound a lot like chainsaws. Something is being cut down here (I have some theories on what this may be but we will get to that more in Americana). It reminds me of some Saturday mornings when I was a kid when Daddy decided that some trees on the property had to go. I would hear that chainsaw droning outside for hours; sometimes steady, sometimes punctuated in short bursts when he revved the chainsaw up or when he was sawing through a branch. I would go outside to help him put the sticks and branches in piles, although most of my time was spent climbing and playing on the branches of the newly fallen tree.

I have to confess that this is one of those songs that I had no clue what the lyrics were in the verse until I had to sit down and write about the song. Interpreting sf59 lyrics in the mid-90’s was always a gamble because you couldn’t just Google that shit back then. I would guess at them, make up some of my own, or just forget about the lyrics altogether and just melt into the melody. As it stands, I have no clue what the first verse is about. I’ve had a couple of days to ponder it and still no illumination there.

But picking up on the bridge and the outro, I know those lyrics and have had occasion to live them out. It reminds me of a close relationship I had which fell apart. We were best friends and saw each other everyday for years. At some point, it became apparent to me that I was putting in most of the effort in the relationship. I stayed silent about this for awhile, not knowing what else to do. I even tried bringing this up a few times to explain how I felt but nothing changed in the relationship dynamic.

Now I am a scientifically minded person. If I cannot find an answer to something in conventional ways, I will test it out. And so I did a little experiment. I stopped chasing after this relationship and decided that I would reciprocate what was given to me and little more. I didn’t do this in a cruel way. If she offered to do something with me, I would accept and we would have a good time. Later on I would offer the same to her as she had previously offered to me.

The end result was that the relationship fell apart within a few months. This tells me that it was mostly my energy and effort that was propping up the relationship the whole time and without my effort there to brace the weight of it, what was left of the foundation crumbled and the whole thing came down.

She moved out of state a few months later. The night before she moved away, I asked her if she wanted to remain in contact. I did this in part because I wanted to hear her clearly state her intentions. She said that she did want to remain in contact. In the year since then I have made some small effort to be in contact but she has only called once and that was only because her mother made her do it (there’s a long story attached to that which involves an antique dresser and a tank-top wearing professional body builder showing up at my door unexpectedly).

When I love, I love fiercely. I have always been this way. I have trouble understanding when others do not love the same way. Sometimes the dissonance between what I believe love should be and how other people act can be overwhelming. But what can you do when this dissonance drones on in your head for hours like a chainsaw felling a tree? Do you climb the branches of what is dead on the ground, trying to know and understand something that was previously out of reach?

You hang, you ride on. You keep on going knowing that it will be alright. Even when they do not call, it will be alright. What ain’t growing is dead and there is no point carrying what is dead on your back. You will be better off without that burden. And it will be alright.

“One Shot Juanita” – Gold

From the crackle of the vinyl at the beginning, this song had my heart. Much like I spent Side A of this album waiting for “You’re Mean” to play, I spent Side B waiting for Juanita. If you haven’t figured it out already, I’m a sucker for sf59 slow jams and this one stands among the best of them.

This song drips confidence in its composition. It breaks so many rules of conventional songwriting wisdom. From the whispery vocals, the subtlety of the drums, to the chiming, interwoven guitars, this song is ironically bold. This songs is as smooth as a ball bearing when songs are supposed to have more texture. Conventional wisdom says that you need to give the listener more to keep their attention – a little more grit in the vocals, more of an edge in the lead guitar and, by God, more drum fills. You definitely don’t give them 3 minutes of slow instrumental meandering and you most certainly don’t do all of this as an album closer. In its way, this song is more punk than your high school Green Day phase because it challenges the conventional wisdom.

I always appreciated One Shot Juanita as a character. I felt like she could be my first cousin. My aunt’s nickname is “One Blow Wanda”. She earned this nickname at a young age because it didn’t matter who you were: man, woman or child – she could take you down in one blow. I experienced this myself on multiple occasions. I always marveled at her skill at taking a deep curve in her Pontiac towncar with the heel of one hand on the steering wheel while smacking all of us kids in the backseat (there were usually at least three of us) with the other hand when we were acting up. She would get us all with one swipe without looking back, regardless of our height differences. One blow. And we would settle down after that. Her skills weren’t limited to just driving and dealing punishment multitasking. Oh no. She could throw a shoe at a cascading line of children running down a hall and somehow manage to hit all of us. The shoe would hit the first kid and bounce off him to hit the second. It would then bounce off the second, ricochet off the wall and hit the third. One blow. You didn’t mess with this woman and expect to make it out unscathed.

I suppose I also see myself in Juanita too. Her name is so close to my own. I also have a reputation for being someone you don’t mess with. My brother has always referred to me as “Dirty Harry” because someone could come up to me with the worst bully threat and I would dare them to carry it out. It’s not that I get in fights on a regular basis and I doubt that I have the physical process and shoe throwing skills of my aunt. My prowess is mostly in the debate arena. If you want to argue with me about anything, from politics to religion or Star Wars lore, you better bring your A game.

One thing I know about being a woman living in the one blow/one shot dynamic is that you shake men to their core whether you intend to or not. I think that men in general don’t know what to do with feminine strength. It baffles them. There are some men (#notallmen) who can’t get over it , much like the singer still thinks about One Shot Juanita. Maybe it’s the refusal of submission that perplexes them so. Maybe they don’t know what to do with a woman they can’t control. They think about you when you aren’t around. They get drunk and call you up, telling you that you were the only one, you hung the moon and stars – now why don’t you just behave the way you are expected to?

I find it interesting that my brother refers to me as Dirty Harry. It is as if he can only think of strength in masculine terms. This reminds me of something I read about Mario Puzo’s concept of Don Corleone, the Godfather. The Godfather was the pinnacle of masculine strength. He could order the death of men with a quiet nod and fix the results of the World Series or the US Senate based on his whims. He did not have to shout, brandish guns or pound his fists to get what he wanted. Everyone knew what he was capable of and he didn’t need to engage in saber-rattling to bend people to his will. The character was based on Puzo’s grandmother, a strong, Italian woman who ruled over a massive family with unquestioned authority. Puzo said that whenever he wrote Don Corleone’s dialogue, he always heard it in his grandmother’s voice.

I think the thing that is different about feminine strength is that is is simultaneously resolute and gentle. One Blow Wanda could take us kids down without effort but she also made us homemade chocolate pudding, cared for us and watched over us. If you pick a fight with me you might, in the words of Missy Elliott, get burnt like toast, but I’ll still love you. I’ll still talk with you and laugh with you as soon as you stop acting like an ass as if nothing happened at all. It is the same kind of quality we find in this song. On an album closer, where you would expect them to go balls to the wall, we find a contemplative, gentle ballad that is bolder than anything else on this album. God bless Juanita.

“Do You Ever Feel That Way?” – Gold

I had to take some time off before writing this one. It came up on me like a ninja the first time I sat down to write about this song and took me down for awhile. Let me explain. The melody and of this song is all light and fun, a complete Ward and June Cleaver picture of the perfect home and perfect family where there’s never any issues except when the well meaning Beaver stumbles into a life lesson or that rascally Eddie Haskell shows up. As the lyrics questioned if I ever felt that way, I realized that I did not, in fact, feel that way, nor had I ever. I had to re-evaluate my concept on home and that took some time. But considering that I like to chew on weighty concepts for a good decade or so before making a decision, I think this is a relatively fast turn around time. You will be glad to know that I will spare you most of my ruminations on this topic.

I think JM carries those ideas of the idyllic family home and the difference between the ideal and actual experience is the source of much of the tension in his music. This song is JM at his most idyllic. But there is still tension and isolation here. After all, he is repeatedly asking if others feel the same as he does. If he’s having to ask, it means it’s not real in any kind of substantial way in front of him. Maybe the difference between me and JM is that I never had the ideal of the perfect family home to begin with. That’s what happens when you are born into a family built like a landslide.

I remember at a very young age, I had a fascination with drawing pictures of homes. The homes did not have the obligatory stick figure family standing in a row like ducks on a horizon line of grass. Thinking back on this now, I find this detail to be odd. It is as if I thought that if you had the ideal house, the family part of it would fall in line automatically. After my mom got a subscription to Southern Living magazine, my drawings advanced to architectural blueprints of how I wanted to build my house when I grew up. But I didn’t just think about the future, oh no. I also drew out plans for ambitious tree houses and forts I intended to build with old scraps of wood and metal my dad left at various places on the property.

I remember when I was in college, two of the three concrete steps leading up to the front door of my parent’s house had broken into the pieces and there were holes where one’s foot should go. I asked my mom why they did not get new steps because it was such a death trap and she said that they couldn’t afford it and they just learned how to step at weird angles to avoid the gaps. This complacency didn’t sit well with me. I drew up plans for a wooden porch bought the supplies with tips I had earned delivering pizza on nights and weekends. I remember I bought 12′ planks and sawed them to smaller sizes because it was cheaper to do it that way and it was all I could afford. After I finished the project, my mom stared at the porch and then at me in amazement and asked how I knew how to do such things. I replied, “I don’t know how to do it. I just did it.” She still ponders my response to this day.

After moving out of the parent’s house and in with various partners and friends, I spent the years trying to hammer out a home with those people. There were times when I felt like I’d found it – the home I was yearning for, but it was always fleeting. I’ve spent the last year living alone for the first time in my life and I think I am closer to having the home I always wanted. Part of that is not having to deal with other peoples’ shit all the time. I have my own space. The other part of it taking with whatever I can afford or whatever scraps I find along the way, designing something with it and hammering it together to make a space that is mine. I don’t know how to make a home. I just did it.

Still though, I yearn for something that’s not here. C.S. Lewis frequently talked about how those who yearn for the love of God will always long for something, someplace that they can not find in this mortal realm. His most beautiful expression of this is in Till We Have Faces when the young princess Psyche tells stories of how she will one day have a husband who will build her a castle made of gold and amber on a mountain. When she finally finds what she is yearning for, the reality of it is so much greater than anything she could have imagined.

And so it is that even though I am more at home in my space and with myself than ever before, I am still always yearning for someone or someplace that’s not here. I suspect I always will be and I’m mostly ok with that. Do you ever feel that way?

“Indiana” – Gold

This song has a gentleness to it that is unique in the early sf59 era. There is some distortion in parts and there is that scorching lead guitar tone but there are moments that are almost quiet by sf59 standards. Probably my favorite part of the song are those measures just before the outro where the guitars are reduced to that almost shapeless guitar with the chorus pedal and a rhythm guitar with the clean tone that softly hits the highlights of the melody.

The lyrics also offer some gentleness that is unique for the songs written in this time. As we have seen in several previous songs, the singer has a preoccupation with the other guy who takes the woman he loves away from him. There was bitterness about this other guy and certainly some bile for the woman who goes to him. It has been a fixation, really, with as many songs that have played out this dynamic thus far. This song is different. Instead of bile, we get this:

I don’t care about the boy
Throw your head up, hit the road
I won’t feel the wedding mourn
If you stay the same

She is leaving and getting married. What would have been the worst case scenario to the singer on Silver has become reality. But things are different here because the singer accepts it. He has let go of his animosity for the other guy. He has stopped trying to keep the girl, to hold her in place where she is his possession. He tells her to throw her head up and go much like a filly will throw her head up and kick her heels before running across a field. He has released her. He is content that she will remain who she is, the person he loved even if he cannot hold on to her anymore.

This is maturity in part. The other part, I think, is forgiveness, although the lyrics do not state that explicitly. When we are hurt by another and we hold on to that hurt and do not forgive, we are chained to the acts that hurt us. As long as we fixate on our expectations for who the person who hurt us should be and how they should act, we remain chained to those unmet expectations and we are stuck in the mess created there.

The way out of this is to find compassion and forgiveness. Through compassion we find a way to see beyond the hurt to the person we love, the person who may have loved us, no matter how flawed that love may have been in practice. Even if what the person did to you was super fucked up, you can see those fucked up actions occurring within the context of all of who that person is, all that person has experienced which may have lead them to make the decisions they did, flawed as they are.

Love has a timeless quality to it. When you can get back to love, you find a way to transcend the temporal reality of pain and rejection. And it is in this that you not only release those who have hurt you, you break the chains that bind you to that hurt. That is why there is gentleness here. The defenses, all the ways that we try to protect ourselves from being hurt, aren’t needed anymore. The singer has found his way back to something that is greater than any pain.

“Somewhere When Your Heart Glowed the Hope” – Gold

This song is a nice reprieve from the last three heavy songs we have discussed. The tempo is upbeat and the spirit is light. The muted guitar chords in line with the bass in the verse allow the lead guitar to grab your attention and it gives the wall of sound guitars that come in on the chorus more impact. You can tell that JM is becoming more confident in his songwriting. I think part of the intent of the overload of sound that is characteristic of Silver is that it allows the songwriter plenty of places to hide. There is no hiding here. You can hear this particularly in the extended outro. There is an idea in pop music circles that music without lyrics to prop it up is gratuitous and should be avoided unless stoners are your customer base. The outro defies this logic and makes no attempts to justify itself with lyrics or flashy guitar tricks. It’s a solid, contemplative, repetitive melody that doesn’t have to prove itself to you, dammit.

The lyrics make me think that this might be the reply of the person the singer addressed in “When You Feel the Mess”; you know, the one that just couldn’t understand the singer because they didn’t feel “the mess” too. In this song, the singer is compassionate, patient and reminds us that there is more to life than “the mess”. There is hope. Maybe it is JM singing to soothe himself. No one understands hope quite as well as someone who struggles with darkness. Yet another option is that it is the voice of the Holy Spirit, calming you (as she always is) and coaxing you out of the small deaths you have chosen for yourself.

This reminds me of my outfit for church yesterday. It was Pentecost Sunday and I wanted to wear something appropriately thematic. I chose a bright red t-shirt which has a line drawing of the face of the Christian theologian Kierkegaard and above his head it says “DREAD”. The picture of Kierkegaard looks like Hans Christian Anderson as played by Danny Kaye in the Disney movie. I keep hoping that someone will think that’s who it is and will ask me why “DREAD” is above his head so that I can describe to them the inherent dread in The Little Mermaid story, which he wrote (if you do not know what the elements of dread are in that story, just ask your local LGBT person).

But back to the matter at hand. I chose that shirt first of all because the bright red was, I thought, symbolic of the fire of the Holy Spirit. It occurred to me as I was standing in front of the church serving communion that the people coming up to be served might feel a bit of cognitive dissonance that they were faced with a message of dread as they took their Pentecost communion. But it was too late for a wardrobe change at that point.

I stood there contemplating why that had not occurred to me before I showed up at church. I think it is this. I cannot be aware of the light of the Holy Spirit unless I am aware of the darkness within me. I cannot be aware of the darkness within me without the light of the Holy Spirit which comes in so many forms both within and without me. Both elements are required for me to perceive and make sense of either. For me, there is no dissonance in recognizing that the darkness and the light coexist.

I feel it is the same with sf59 songs. For every three songs about mopey, sad boy stuff, there is a song like this that cuts through all the muck and reminds you that there is more than the loneliness and pain. There is hope. That’s what the fire of the Holy Spirit is about. Fire not only consumes, it also purifies. It burns out what is old so that new may grow in its place.

Back in the day, I know that some Christian music listeners had issues with sf59 because the songs weren’t all “woohoo Jesus!” all the time. They dove into the darkness and allowed the shadow to be heard and known. And for that, sf59’s way of writing Christian music is more impacting to me than anything the CCM music industry ever pushed out into the market.

“When You Feel the Mess” – Gold

Now we are closing out the Mess trilogy. I call it thus because, obviously, the word “mess” is used liberally in these songs and they are played in order. The less obvious reason is something I’m curious about. As one of the readers pointed out earlier, we can just assume that the entire Gold album is about JM breaking up with Leigh Nash of Sixpence None the Richer. It is interesting to note that their This Beautiful Mess LP was released the same year as Gold – 1995. This gets my X-Files loving, “everything is connected” brain working and I wonder if these songs were a sort of coded message that’s out in the open for all to see but for few to comprehend.

Speaking of not comprehending, I’m mostly at a loss with these lyrics. I can usually find at least one line in a song that I can hang my hat on and work with but not so much with this one. We have a singer who is well acquainted with feeling “the mess” and someone else who doesn’t understand that way of being and, therefore, doesn’t know the singer well. We are told that “it’s easy when you know”. What’s easy? Is it understanding who the singer is? Do we have to share the same “mess” states to be able to understand and know each other? I hope that’s not true.

Maybe I’m seeing things this way because I have just returned home from a family reunion. It was with a branch of the family I don’t know that well. There were only a handful of people there that I knew. I did see a guy in his early 60’s sporting a very particular and epic type of mullet called “The Kentucky Waterfall” (that’s were the top is feathered back and the back is permed in tight curls and at least shoulder length). I was acutely aware that no one there would understand me because they do not encounter any of the mess I deal with on a daily basis. It occurs to me that I cannot understand their mess either. For real, what kind of mess is mullet guy dealing with that lead him to the hair styling option he chose? I can’t even begin to know.

The music on this one is slow with a 50’s vibe. The distortion on the outro solo reminds me of distortion that blues players like Memphis Minnie were using in the early 50’s. The slide solo in the middle reminds me a bit of slide guitars that you would hear on Patsy Cline’s excessively produced, sad songs from the early 50’s. I wonder if JM ever heard “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray”? It could have been his theme song for the relationships he was dealing with in the Silver and Gold eras. The more I listen to this, the more I think this is just a country tune with shoegaze sensibilities.

“Messed Up Over You” – Gold

Here we are at the second act of the Mess trilogy that makes up the center of this album. The tempo is slow, plodding and heavy. Each measure could last an age. The song goes into a higher emotional gear after the lyrics have ended. The entrance of the organ at the outro just slays me and I wish it had been mixed higher (maybe they did so in the remaster?). Those tortured, dueling guitars at the end do indeed say what the lyrics cannot.

As for the lyrics, it is the story of ruminating over someone lost and being stuck in all the despair that rumination brings. I feel like I’ve written this story already. Let’s find something different to talk about. One lyric really stood out to me today as I was listening:

Time
You bind me
Completely beat me

Time and the passage of it are frequent themes in JM’s later work. This is the first song chronologically that I can think of that mentions time so directly and takes the next step of revealing its nature. Time binds him to his memories and emotions felt for this person. Ultimately, time beats him and defeats him.

I’ve been contemplating the myth of Saturn recently. This may seem off topic but bear with me. Saturn was the ruler of the Golden Age. But he feared the future because of a prophecy that his children would someday overcome him. Saturn devours his children after their birth to prevent the future, and his eventual defeat, from coming. What a dick, right? His wife tricks him and keeps their son Zeus alive. When Zeus is grown, he returns to his father and forces him to vomit up the children he had eaten. These children become the pantheon of gods: rulers of war, love, hearth and home.

The myth of Saturn is no small thing when we look at our history. It is the subject of several classic paintings. A planet was named after him. His name is the root of Saturday (our own weekly, mini golden ages). That’s a lot of reverence for a story of epic daddy cannibalism. We get a better idea of what is going on here if we look to the Roman Saturn’s precursor: the Greek Titan Chronos. The Romans where shameless in taking Greek concepts and slapping new names on them. This is no different. The name Chronos reveals to us that this cannibal father figure is time itself.

Time devours everything it touches. It beats us. It binds us to a past that is gone and to a future we cannot predict. The slow tempo of this song is a hint that it is time that holds him captive more so than the person who is already gone. And time never devours so quickly as when we try to hold onto the past. Social psychological research has shown that each time you recall a memory, you degrade that memory. The memory itself is reshaped, restructured in the brain. If you ruminate over memories, you can degrade that memory to the point that it is no longer like the actual experience you had, that you are trying to re-experience in the act of remembering. Again, time never devours so quickly as when we try to hold on to the past.

There is some hope in the myth of Saturn/Chronos. The king of gods forces him to release all that he has devoured. All that was thought lost is restored in fullness. I believe in this. The God I love is no slave to time and he reminds me that I should be not be held captive by it either.