Demos: Live Grenades

Obama's in office now. I am going to sleep tonight knowing that the eight years of our long national nightmare is now officially in epilogue mode, I hope. Tonight I had a drink and very nearly did "We Didn't Start the Fire" with five other friends of Eleven Names, but owing to time, we all headed back. When Friday comes, I'll be in full end of week (and end of Bush) mode and the drinks will be raised in celebration rather than commiseration.

CNN and 24 hour news networks have been trying for a long time to find a way to speak about the momentousness of Obama's inauguration. I've got little to bring to the table except a sincere feeling of joy and being estatic. I'm a white, heterosexual, vaguely Christian male. People who like me have been President for a long, long time. I can't tell you, vividly, if at all, what it means to the percentage of the population that isn't like me. I'm, therefore, cynical of the people who are cynical of the inauguration. I literally cannot begin to fathom what hope and possibilities it awakes in the minds of the non-white communities in the U.S. and so to say it doesn't mean that much appears to me, to miss the point, if, in fact, I can plot the point on the map.

Right. This is supposed to be about records. Forgive me. You know how much I like Obama. The Gentlebeast (introduced as much to Thomas and I as he was to you) says that he wants more of King and Obama to overlap and I agree, I just don't want Obama to get shot. So not too much overlap, okay?

I originally wrote this for another feature and only now is it getting published. Originally, this was supposed to be published around February or March of last year, but it got canned because the old features editor already had someone doing CDs that week. Oh well. You can find Polar Bear Club here and Life Long Tragedy here. Life Long Tragedy has already broke up, but Polar Bear Club, it appears, has another disc in them, to be released this year, which excites me almost unreasonably. The title is a fantastic track from Let Me Run's record, Meet Me at the Bottom, which you can stream in its entirety here. Try to give all these awesome music its own space. All of it will grow on you, I hope.

There are two discs that I believe have not been sufficiently highlighted over the last year. The first is by Polar Bear Club and is called "Sometimes Things Just Disappear", and the second is by a group called Life Long Tragedy and is titled "Runaways". The two currently carry with them the weight of some fairly heavy RIYLs, so let's investigate.

Polar Bear Club's disc has the unenviable task of following their blindingly good and stupefyingly emotional "the Redder, the Better" EP, which every track captured, to a great extent, the evolution of modern emo without the philosophically intriguing but socially maddening dress up. Here is where tour hungry, sore throated, now venerated heroes Hot Water Music and Small Brown Bike have their musical progeny, and "Sometimes Things Just Disappear" answers that call. It's old fashioned emo, in the sense that it, rocks, without applying any of the violent, macho overtones that seem to plague the rash of groups having their way with the genre.

Yes, for the most part, it is a disc written about girls and relationships. "What good am I to anyone like this? It's been a hard couple months, I'll admit" vocalist Jimmy Stadt sings, and by the time he drops that line, he's already pleaded "Dr. Howe, please call me back" three times. One suspects the *cough* ladies have not been kind to the poor narrator, and by and large, they haven't. "This boy is spent, but forever unlucky" is the sticking point in "Bug Parade", and that's a song spent watching the lips of the girlfriend and her mother move, trying to discern what they're talking about. The most wrenching song is Heart Attack at Thirty, with it's opening line "eight years from now, I will go into cardiac arrest". It's a disc for the cold times that autumn and winter bring, so I heartily suggest you get cozy with it.

Life Long Tragedy's "Runaways" (the band has now broken up), carries with it the heavy, heavy tag of "the next American Nightmare", which in the hardcore punk scene, may as well be saying "the next Metallica". American Nightmare was a band known, and perhaps defined by Wes Eisold's romantically anti-social, jaded lyrics on hope, lust and love. (His fingerpints are all over Fall Out Boy's last three discs, even when he doesn't get a writing credit.) And on a couple songs, Sweet Innocence in particular, "tomorrow isn't promised, but it's sure as f*ck coming" and "true love was just a marketing ploy, so guys can hit their lines and girls can grab their boys" Life Long Tragedy channel this near-mythic influence (American Nightmare) with startling potency, but also 90's straight edge heroes Unbroken in Runaways' less frantic and pus trickling moments.

Track three Hey Death, though, stands head and shoulders above the rest of the disc. A slow, morose song, which builds and builds to a discharge of "Hey Death, can you stop this beating in my chest?", ending with Scott Phillips screaming for a minute of Death's time. Like the songs that spring from it, the production on "Runaways" feels weighty, oozing and festering. It's not a pretty disc, by any stretch of the lyrical or sonic imagination, the guitars are heavy and clear as mud, which describes the pacing and outlook of the disc fairly well. The bass is filthy. The vocals feel like Mr. Phillips slammed two shots of Liquid Plmbr before recording, and the end result sounds like the draining of an open wound. Not surprisingly, it only makes the songs more palatable to me. It's the grime that lends "Runaways" its remarkable authenticity, its character of being down but not quite out.

I hear all the time that certain artists lay it all out there, with nothing to hide. I recommend Polar Bear Club and Life Long Tragedy to you precisely because they actually lay themselves out there with uncommon effectiveness and poignancy. These discs won't be mentioned on Pitchfork any time soon, but that's fine, they're my secret from me to you. Start telling.