Baby where’s a feast for the smile?
Hard, near impossible, to write so joyously about being so tired, and if you did not speak the language you would never know that these songs all feel so close to weary hearts.
It’s hard to describe this feeling of burn out, the collapsing sensation of my chest, as if the bones are folding in and letting blood rush into me as water. I’m sitting and staring at words and lists and things that I know I have to do. All my little tasks and goals, and each one has become a mountain. Each letter strung on a line into sentences and phrases, written by me, a threat.
This morning I sat and stared at my computer, held my face in my fingers, and just imagined what would happen if I never left this position. How could I possibly write or think at al when I have this impossible configuration on the body? This morning my dad, who is in his 70s now, will wake up in a different time zone and ride his bike — if there is good weather, which there hasn’t reliably been in the Yukon this summer — to work at a glass shop, as he has almost every day of his live for close to 60 years. I feel guilt, I suppose, because that used to be my life too, and I feel guilt now that my burn out is for good reasons. It’s because I’m busy as a working writer, which feels like an absurd sentence for a journeyman Glazier to write. The life I dream of is too much some days. Like saying I’m exhausted from all this fresh air.
My inbox, it should be said, is full, and the number of unread emails is wild and untenable. I know that some of them are just UberEats reminding me that we could order the chicken nuggets from Taco Bell again — try the chicken nuggets at Taco Bell, they’re not bad — and many are PR emails about bands I would surely love if I could find the time. I’m sorry I haven’t listened to so many of them. I’m trying. I’m failing. That is all to say I found a band purely by accident just this morning, scrolling through Apple Music to avoid looking at my email and my workload, and in the “new this week” section was an album called Official Researchers of the NJ Devil.
My dad had this habit, according to my mom who often tells his stories for him, of going into record stores without a plan. He just looked and flipped through until something spoke to him. An album cover, or a title maybe. I’m certain this is why he owns so many Ozark Mountain Daredevils records. I will say that I’m an easy mark for a cryptid, and maybe it was the NJ Devil part that got me, but I clicked through all the same, and the minute I hit play on this new record from Philadelphia’s Mopar Stars I felt my exhaustion wash away.
Ur Trommler
It’s all relative I guess. There’s an exhaustion to words and scribbles that was never the same when I was tired from labour. Long days, especially those in the hot summer, meant that by the time I got home my body was drained of life. All I could do was lie on the cold floor and pray that either I would die there, or be reborn. My muscles tired from so much movement and stress. The cuts on my skin wrapped in duct tape or filled with crazy glue. Now I just have to type letters that might become words, so that they may come together as a coherent structure, and some days that is a mountain without a peak.
The right song at the right moment will heal you, and maybe this is the magic of discovery. In burn out I seek easy comfort, and perhaps all my abject frustration stems from reliable wellsprings not offering the same refreshment when the need is so desperate. Something new though, something unheard, will change me. The scrappy power chords that drew me in on “Wreck The Bike” washed over me, as vocals and harmonies paired together to build a perfectly ramshackle power-pop opener. As if a band might commune with Paul Westerberg’s deep and abiding love of Big Star’s sharpest pop sensibilities, alongside the early years of Teenage Fanclub.
There’s a thread of working class storytelling running throughout the songs on Official Researchers of the NJ Devil, the exhaustion of working yourself to the edge of a never-ending cliff, long days that bleed into endless nights at the only bar in the only town in the world. Hard, near impossible, to write so joyously about being so tired, and if you did not speak the language you would never know that these songs all feel so close to weary hearts. It’s not overwrought, but it feels earned and lived in. As if you can feel the rough surface of the hands that have crafted all the hooks and bridges that build the 11 songs on this record.
It feels like the perfect album for long and tired summer days. When I have to go outside later, when the sun is high in the sky and the temperature slows my feet, it will make the perfect soundtrack to the sun on my face, and the wind moving around me. A summer record about moving through all the minutes and hours of the day that might otherwise drag on without something to give them a beating heart.
If I was to tell you there is a song on this record that will become the backdrop of a perfect memory, I would say that “Feast For The Smile” is it. A steady tempo, never furious but never slow, that is bright and bold and loud, built by perfect chords and rhythms, that might help you forget everything but feeling alive for just a moment. Let the weight on your shoulders become something beautiful.
It’s strange to feel a little joy in this burn out, but it’s a miracle that I’m even here to feel any of this at all. To be so blessed to have the career and life that I do. Typing all my little words in a loft in Toronto, while my partner and pets sleep in the perfect dark of our comfortable little home. How blessed are we, despite all the stressful realities of this life that will confront our hearts as the day opens around us. This day will eventually be real, and I’m just hoping it waits a little this morning.
