There’s a rule of iron.
Pitty the children of weird parents. The one’s who want nothing more than to fit in at 4 or 8 or 16. Imagine puberty and teenage angst but with the first name Eagle or the inherited hobby of rock tumbling. Imagine being able to do the Thursday Times crossword in your senior year of high school (in under an hour. without wikipedia.), but not being able to talk about Gossip Girl because your house doesn’t have a TV.
You’re the kid whose own dietary upbringing forces them to order half of one of the birthday pies vegan, and you eat your two slices, and the other three just sit there in the boxes. Kids ask for seconds, and the birthday kid’s parent say’s all that’s left is those, pointing to your half, a burnt red without any of the cream colored dairy topping that most people would argue makes pizza, pizza. You can feel the silence aranging itself like artillery across the table.
These kids cope with the same things that those of us with Television-fast-food-parents do, and they can’t help it if, when they talk about it, it sounds a little different. They might fall in love with the same girl as you or me, but their love might have Versimilitude and notes stuffed into lockers that read like they’re the instructions on draino bottles. Here’s an argument for you- there are absolutes- we just can’t think up a good enough shared language to say them right. Here’s another- just because things might seem jarring, exotic, weird, that doesn’t mean they can’t make 100 pereent sense.
In a perfect world, Chad VanGaalen, the Canadian basement songwriter, would be married to Merrill Garbus who records under the name TunE-YarDs, and they would have kids and color their hair purple and make their breakfast cereal using cornmeal and brown sugar and a mortar and pestle. I think there’s a lot to love about both acts.
“Blood Machine” is from Chad VanGaalen’s album Infiniheart.
“Bones of Man” and “Cries of the Dead” are from Chad VanGaalen’s album Soft Airplane.
“Sunlight” and “News” are from Tune-Yards’ debut album Bird Brains.
and I just love this song. Sorry, Wye Oak, I used to get you confused with Beach House. That was a terrible mistake on my part. I apologize profusely. This Is Fantastic.
“I Hope You Die” is from Wye Oak’s new EP My Neighbor/My Creator.
In other blog news, The Blisslist has new songs from the National, and Locust St, one of the smartest music blogs I’ve ever read, threw in the towel. Which sucks.
Songs Save Lives 