50 new things in 2023, part 3/50
Jan. 17th, 2023 05:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitThis week, it's an album: Bleed Out, by the Mountain Goats, from 2022.
Fair warning: my reaction to Mountain Goats songs is often, "That was awesome. What the hell was it about?" And I haven't read any reviews of this album.
But having said this, to me, Bleed Out feels like the flip side of 2020's Songs for Pierre Chuvin (an album I adore, which was one of very few new things I tried or enjoyed from 2020 to now). SfPC, inspired by historian Chuvin's work on pagan holdouts after the Christianization of Rome, was about resisting to the last breath, knowing you're going to lose, but resisting anyway. Mourning as resistance, resistance as mourning. Released after 4 years of Trump and the early months of the pandemic, it was--at least for me--the perfect music for that moment.
Bleed Out revisits those themes in light of the right-wing backlash since Biden's election. None of that's specifically mentioned, because (as the Mountain Goats tend to do) it's all filtered through pop culture tropes, specifically thriller/action movies. There are a lot of killers in these songs, a lot of people out for revenge of one kind or another, who feel lucky to have the opportunity to die or kill in a good cause. And the songs are nearly always from their point of view.
That's the tricky and brilliant thing. John Darnielle clearly wants to explore the rise of the violent neofascist right, but he's also thinking a lot about the common myth of redemptive violence, and how every political mass murderer is a hero in their own mind. I've been thinking a lot about the lure of violence myself lately; in the current atmosphere of attacks (journalistic, political, or literal) on trans (and other queer) people, some queer people have said, "We need to get armed and look out for ourselves, because we can't trust anybody else." The other day I saw a truck with a bumper sticker showing a trans flag; superimposed over the flag was an assault rifle, and the caption was "Defend Equality."
I get it. I feel it too. I'm not even sure it's wrong. But it scares the hell out of me.
The album ends on a quieter, but equally bleak, note with the title song "Bleed Out." It takes the big themes of the rest of the album and reworks them on a smaller scale, looking at failure, self-destructiveness, the inevitability of death, and the even greater inevitability of someday being forgotten. (I find this kind of thing weirdly comforting; you may not. I would recommend taking your emotional state into account before listening to this album.)
BTW, I know I've talked entirely about themes and not at all about music. That's because I know nothing about music! I can tell you that there's a "1970s thriller soundtrack" feel to a lot of the album, and some amazing trumpet (really) in "Extraction Point."
Tracks are on YouTube courtesy of Merge Records. Here's my favorite song from the album, "Hostages."
Fair warning: my reaction to Mountain Goats songs is often, "That was awesome. What the hell was it about?" And I haven't read any reviews of this album.
But having said this, to me, Bleed Out feels like the flip side of 2020's Songs for Pierre Chuvin (an album I adore, which was one of very few new things I tried or enjoyed from 2020 to now). SfPC, inspired by historian Chuvin's work on pagan holdouts after the Christianization of Rome, was about resisting to the last breath, knowing you're going to lose, but resisting anyway. Mourning as resistance, resistance as mourning. Released after 4 years of Trump and the early months of the pandemic, it was--at least for me--the perfect music for that moment.
Bleed Out revisits those themes in light of the right-wing backlash since Biden's election. None of that's specifically mentioned, because (as the Mountain Goats tend to do) it's all filtered through pop culture tropes, specifically thriller/action movies. There are a lot of killers in these songs, a lot of people out for revenge of one kind or another, who feel lucky to have the opportunity to die or kill in a good cause. And the songs are nearly always from their point of view.
That's the tricky and brilliant thing. John Darnielle clearly wants to explore the rise of the violent neofascist right, but he's also thinking a lot about the common myth of redemptive violence, and how every political mass murderer is a hero in their own mind. I've been thinking a lot about the lure of violence myself lately; in the current atmosphere of attacks (journalistic, political, or literal) on trans (and other queer) people, some queer people have said, "We need to get armed and look out for ourselves, because we can't trust anybody else." The other day I saw a truck with a bumper sticker showing a trans flag; superimposed over the flag was an assault rifle, and the caption was "Defend Equality."
I get it. I feel it too. I'm not even sure it's wrong. But it scares the hell out of me.
The album ends on a quieter, but equally bleak, note with the title song "Bleed Out." It takes the big themes of the rest of the album and reworks them on a smaller scale, looking at failure, self-destructiveness, the inevitability of death, and the even greater inevitability of someday being forgotten. (I find this kind of thing weirdly comforting; you may not. I would recommend taking your emotional state into account before listening to this album.)
BTW, I know I've talked entirely about themes and not at all about music. That's because I know nothing about music! I can tell you that there's a "1970s thriller soundtrack" feel to a lot of the album, and some amazing trumpet (really) in "Extraction Point."
Tracks are on YouTube courtesy of Merge Records. Here's my favorite song from the album, "Hostages."
