Long Reads, Music

Voiceless City: The Broderick and Promises Unfulfilled

On Saturday June 15 2013, Melbourne hardcore band The Broderick played a 20 minute set at Bang nightclub. The weather was harsh, the crowd was disinterested and The Broderick were a band at the end of their rope. After seven years together that had seen them perform with some of the biggest bands in hardcore including Poison The Well, Converge and Misery Signals, yet had somehow yielded only one full length record, The Broderick were winding down. A week later they would be flying to South East Asia for their very first overseas tour after which they would call it a day. This would be The Broderick’s last Melbourne show. The venue was half empty but overrun with Mall Punks that were too drunk, too stupid and too ignorant to fully understand the significance of what was unfolding on stage. Instead the faux punks, decked out in basketball jerseys and eye liner, moved in hair straightened packs to survey the scene and after quickly realising that it was too unpalatable for their saccharine tastes would sneer as they scurried to the adjoining room to listen to a DJ spin lame 80s metal tracks.

This was to be The Broderick’s last Australian show and it was to take place at Bang- the lowest dive in Melbourne that was renowned for attracting only the most vanilla kids that would go to great lengths to dress up in their “punkest” outfit but actually knew nothing about the music or the scene except that you were supposed to swing your arms into people and make the devil horns during each song. To add insult to injury, The Broderick weren’t even the headliners. Instead they were wedged in between a hair metal tribute act on one side that was fronted by long haired freaks that were so serious and earnest that their performance bordered on parody and on the other side was IExist– a sludgy hardcore band from Canberra with a degree of popularity but nowhere near the quality of The Broderick.

It shouldn’t have ended this way. The Broderick are one of the best hardcore bands to emerge from Australia. The musician’s hardcore band. One of those rare hardcore bands to successfully wed heavy, brooding guitars and beautifully melancholic lyrics to create a whirlwind of emotional intensity that didn’t need the hollow thrills of breakdowns and mosh parts. News that The Broderick were calling it a day should have been greeted with sighs of disappointment and fond farewells. Instead their final moments were spent in a plastic dive in front of kids that could barely suppress a yawn as they waited for the next cheap trick to entertain them. Yet for all their undeniable talent and brilliant music, The Broderick never really got the recognition they deserved. The reason for this injustice? The Broderick.

“TELL ME AGAIN WHY MY THROAT IS CRIPPLED IN PAIN WHILE EMPTY FACES STARE A HOLE THROUGH ME.”

Think of 21st century Australian hardcore and the names that immediately come to mind are Carpathian, Parkway Drive, Miles Away, Break Even and 50 Lions. Over the last eight years The Broderick played with all of these bands and was better than each of them. Tragedy crippled Break Even before they could properly take flight. 50 Lions’ bro mosh schtick wears thin after you turn 24 and realise that swinging your arms around and fly kicking the air isn’t a particularly impressive feat nor a great way to impress women. Miles Away are a strong outfit that always play hard but are too generic to really stand out from the hundreds of other hardcore bands out there. Carpathian’s greatest success, Isolation was loaded with emotional gravitas that put them in the same mould as bands like Modern Life is War and Have Heart, but Carpathian could never properly transfer that emotional punch into their live shows, instead meandering through dull 30 minutes sets that sounded just like the record but without the same intensity. And Parkway Drive, despite reaching a staggering level of international fame and success that no other Australian band has matched, were always just a bunch of surfer dudes that belted out crunching metalcore riffs that were fun to listen to but were ultimately bereft of heart and substance.

The Broderick had all of these bands covered. They were aggressive like Parkway Drive but had an emotional centre that gave them meaning. The Broderick’s slow build ups combined with chaotic, frenzied finales gave them an edge that separated them from the generic pack, unlike Miles Away. In terms of angst and emotional intensity, Carpathian and The Broderick were similar but the fact that The Broderick became more intense and captivating on stage elevated them above their Melbourne counterparts who tended to leave their audiences feeling underwhelmed.

The Broderick brought a level of intensity to their live sets that surpassed every other Australian hardcore band.

The Broderick’s ascent to the best Australian hardcore band was slow and almost didn’t happen. In 2008 they released Illusion Over Despair, a six track EP that was distributed on Washed Up Records. Illusion Over Despair, with its frantic, distorted guitars was well received within the local scene, cracking the vaunted Short Fast Loud Top 40 Hardcore Albums for 2008. Listening to Illusion five years after its release it’s clear that this was the work of a talented young band still finding its feet. Although the vocals veer too closely towards the throaty, growly, incomprehensible side of the scale, the seed had been planted; their chaotic brand of hardcore was in its embryonic stages and The Broderick was a band to watch out for.

Illusion Over Despair pegged The Broderick as an act on the rise and they soon landed coveted support slots touring with the likes of Poison The Well, The Ghost Inside and Carpathian. Doors were creaking open and all The Broderick had to do was step forward. Instead The Broderick sank into a creative black hole that can happen when you’re five guys in your early twenties with no direction or idea about what to do with your lives. Disagreements broke out, apathy festered and stagnation reigned supreme. The Broderick had hit a wall and the shows dried up. Sure, they still played the odd show at The Arthouse, but it was never enough to build an audience. Like most things in life, the artistic process is all about momentum- you need to be constantly moving forward, to be perpetually building, writing and creating however as soon as you stop, the rot sets in and apathy takes hold. But when you’re bunch of young boys figuring things out, putting one foot in front of the other every day can be the hardest thing in the world. The Broderick were rapidly overtaken by more organised acts and it seemed as though something which had started brightly would burn out.

“I FEAR THIS ANOMIE RUNS THROUGH MY VEINS.”

The next three years would be difficult for The Broderick. They entered a state of almost permanent hibernation; questions about a debut album were usually answered with a shrug or look of disappointment. Infrequently they’d awaken to pick up a support slot for a bigger band or to play a set at Bang or Next, the only two venues that paid a decent appearance fee but only attracted the shallow fans that didn’t care for the moody, atmospheric sound The Broderick were striving for. Creatively the band hit a wall. They knew what they wanted to sound like but the process of actually getting to that sound seemed a long way off. As vocalist Logan Fewster commented: “We found it really hard to write songs. We’d all bring our ideas to practice but we could never agree on anything. Each time someone put forward an idea, the rest of us would criticise it and pay him out. It was a tense environment we created for ourselves and it became difficult to do anything.”

Meanwhile, as The Broderick stagnated, the Australian hardcore scene was changing. New bands were emerging. Melbourne’s Hopeless took the scene by storm with their stellar full length Dear World. Carpathian called it a day and Break Even were dealt a cruel blow that permanently stopped them from getting to where they seemed to destined to go. “Other bands worked harder than us and were more committed. We knew we were as good as them but when it came to actually putting the hard yards in, we kept falling over.” Suddenly The Broderick had transitioned from up and comers to aging underachievers, destined to be discarded and forgotten.

“VOICELESS CITY… REMINDING US OF WHAT WE ARE.”

Out of all music genres, hardcore is most certainly a young man’s game. Hardcore bands are relatively easy to start – all you need is a group of friends, secondhandinstruments and an amp. As long as you’re willing to live rough, play hard and deliver breakdowns, you’ll always be able to pick up gigs. It’s this ease of entry that is hardcore’s greatest strength and weakness. It allows for a never ending influx of new acts to emerge and constantly regenerate the scene, however most of these new bands, for all their enthusiasm, lack the most important and intangible ingredient of all – talent. At the end of the day, energy can only take you so far before repetitive, droning breakdowns bore most listeners and drive crowds away.  Although the hardcore scene remains forever young and vibrant, it’s swamped with mediocre acts that mask the real talent and perpetuate the myth to outsiders that hardcore is nothing but a hangout for thugs, knuckleheads and angry young males.

In this high turnover, limited talent environment most hardcore bands live a short existence. The rump of mediocre groups break up once the novelty of playing shows wears off. The lucky few bands that gain a following, crank out a few records, generally of declining quality, and live in the back of a van as they ceaselessly move from gig to gig. The elite hardcore band, that is the one with seeds of sophisticated talent, usually outgrow their humble roots and evolve into a much more accomplished group, shedding their hardcore skin and reaching for a broader audience.

The Broderick fit none of these categories.

Far too talented to belong with the chump bands, nowhere near successful enough to sustain even a meager living from touring and their sound, though sophisticated and evolving, was not gaining new admirers too quickly. To compound the problem, The Broderick were old. To be in your mid to late twenties in hardcore was to be as old as Moses. Being in a hardcore band means putting the rest of your life on hold. Family, friends, work, education, money. All of these things take a backseat when you’re in a hardcore band. When you’re 19, getting a good job or buying a house feels trivial and the thrill of the stage is all that matters. But as soon as you hit your mid twenties, that excitement has dissipated and instead all that’s left is the grind- the grind of another set played in front of small, disinterested crowds. The grind of underpaid, part time jobs to make ends meet. The grind of watching your friends progress with their careers while you’re still sitting in vans.

The Broderick had reached that stage. Still in the scene but outside of it as well by the dint of their age and the fact that the next generation had already usurped them. The Broderick had reached a fork in the road. Quietly disappear from a scene that had always given them an underwhelming response and wonder what might have been or launch one final assault. One last statement of intent to remind everyone of what had been under their noses this whole time.

After much debate and consternation, The Broderick decided to take the latter option. One last roll of the dice. The band knuckled down and sensing that this was to be their epitaph, summoned up a level of determination that up until now had never shown. Months of toil in the studio culminated in Free To Rot, Free Of Sin. The Broderick’s magnum opus and one of the best records produced by an Australian hardcore band.

“I AM FRACTURED. I SEE THE RUIN IN ME.”

From the first strains of opening track, Black Lung, it’s clear on Free To Rot that The Broderick had hit their stride. The potential for greatness that laced Illusion Over Despair finally blossomed on this 10 track record. The frustration from years of waste and ignorance had boiled over and had manifested itself in this maelstromic album.

The Broderick’s Free to Rot. Released in 2012.

Marc Harpur’s dissonant guitar that blends hardcore aggression with progressive soundscapes gives Free To Rot its unique flavor and provides the soundtrack to mid youth breakdown. What separates Free To Rot, Free Of Sin from its contemporaries wasn’t its aggression or its epic choruses, of which there are many, but its quieter moments. Harpur, showing expert craftsmanship, uses these quiet moments not as lulls in the action or the cost of doing business before returning to more breakdowns, but as opportunities to build the tension. Any band can deliver a crunching riff but very few understand that what transforms an album from just a random collection of songs into a cohesive whole is the ability to weave a narrative and mood through each track so that each song builds on the last and bleeds into each other without the listener even realising it. Harpur’s moody, atmospheric guitar provides that continuity. Even the interlude tracks add to the atmosphere. On “Unseen” muted guitars combine with Ash Denman’s superb drumming to create a feeling of dread and impending doom. As the volume gradually rises, the tension becomes almost unbearable as the listener strains for a release, setting the stage perfectly for the explosive opening to “Low Sky.” Instead of allowing the listener to catch their breath, the quiet moments of Free To Rot, Free Of Sin, close the walls around the audience, squeezing the air out of their lungs as they grasp for respite.

If Harpur’s guitar is the engine that propels this stellar record, it’s Fewster’s pained vocals that elevates this record into rarefied air yet simultaneously grounds Free To Rot with an emotional hold that almost strangles the listener with its ferocity. Fewster, fuelled by his own self loathing and insecurities, becomes a snarling beast desperately trying to exorcise his personal demons. On “Low Sky,” the standout track on a standout album, recounts the final days of a doomed relationship as both parties attempt to keep alive something that had died sometime ago: “We will talk, pretend and reflect / Of course you can’t go through another night like this.” Fewster’s decision to use The Broderick as his confessional is by no means revolutionary but it’s delivered with such sincerity and passion that the listener cannot help but be moved. Such is the level of despair in those pained howls that by the time closing track “Diving Bell” begins to fade and Fewster mourns that “I am empty skies,” the listener will be physically and emotionally exhausted by the significance of what has just been imprinted on their conscience.

“HOW COULD YOU LET GO?”  

Free To Rot, Free Of Sin was the best hardcore album of 2012. It garnered positive reviews from all corners and those that heard it commented on its sophistication and power. The Broderick had arrived. Their ambitious vision for a progressive, moody hardcore album had been achieved, yet as soon as Free To Rot… was released The Broderick began slowing down once again.  A national tour took place, support slots for touring overseas bands were picked up but it was all half-hearted window dressing. The Broderick couldn’t even be bothered to produce a film clip to promote the record for fear of being laughed at and seen as desperate, even though their teaser trailer rapidly generated over ten thousand hits. Even with a masterful album in tow, The Broderick still couldn’t muster the will to get out and push the record into the hands of those who needed to hear it. The haphazard touring schedule resumed and momentum was squandered. Fewster later reflected that “we didn’t promote Free To Rot properly… we knew it was a great record and were proud of it but as soon as the album was pressed we’d all stopped caring.” It was as though the effort required to produce Free To Rot had drained the band of all their remaining energy and now that their last great feat was accomplished were simply going through the motions of touring and support which as a band they were expected to do but the intent was gone.

The key ingredient that made Free To Rot so powerful was its maturity. It was the work of seasoned musicians who knew what they were doing and were determined to see the vision come to life. A band in their teens or even their early twenties could never have produced an album of such sophistication and gravitas. Yet it was this maturity that was now The Broderick’s undoing. Having been through the meat grinder of touring before, they no longer had the stomach to do it again.The problem for The Broderick was that they’d peaked too late. If they’d managed to produce Free To Rot when they were still full of youthful vigour, they may have found the strength to build themselves into what they should have become. Instead they were here. At Bang. In front of an audience that didn’t know who they were and nor did they particularly care. They were old men struggling to keep up in a sport meant for the young.

When asked to assess The Broderick’s legacy, Fewster is reluctant to give an answer but there’s no doubt that he’s proud of the band. “We accomplished a lot, more than most other bands from the scene. Free To Rot is something I’ll always be proud of and grateful to have been a part of.” At the same time, after repeated questioning Fewster can’t hide the pangs of disappointment. “We should have been bigger than what we were. We didn’t reach the level we should have. That’s probably our own fault.”

Talking to Logan Fewster about his band is like trying to hold water. He’s hard to pin down and reluctant to say anything, even to those close to him. After careful prompting he finally offers an opinion on why The Broderick never made it to the level he believes they should have- “We fought a lot. Nearly all of us quit the band at some point and we were lazy.”

At that point Fewster’s evasive skills take over and he has nothing more to say but perhaps it’s what he didn’t say that matters most. The Broderick failed not because they weren’t talented enough or because they couldn’t get that lucky break. The Broderick’s ultimate demise was because they were too frozen by the fear of failure to give everything.

“TRACE OUR STEPS AND MAP OUT OUR DESTINATION / WE’RE NOT MOVING, WE’RE STATIONARY.”

The final Bang show began just after 11pm. Close friends of the band, knowing that this would most likely be their last show, turned up to show their support. Parents came along. As always The Broderick play hard and Fewster radiates an animal magnetism that commands attention however the show is a disaster. The sound mix is poor and the vocals are completely inaudible. Ten minutes into the set the bass amp blows up bringing proceedings to halt. The band exchange tense, resigned smirks as they stand awkwardly on stage waiting for a new amp to be set up. Eventually after an unbearable pause, a new amp is found and The Broderick play one last song before exiting the stage. The audience is confused. The crowd is waiting.

We’re still waiting for The Broderick.

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Books

Book Review: My Father Left Me Ireland – An American Son’s Search For Home

Among those who think themselves wise, few words in our political vocabulary seem more likely to elicit a derisive scoff than nationalism. Little, as ever, do they know, as it is an idea whose importance, in our time of Brexit, Trump, and pandemic, has been somewhat rescued from neglect and disfavour. Nationalism, as any fair-minded thinker would allow, has both benign and pathological forms, and it isn’t inevitably guided or condemned to take one path over the other.

After pointing this out, one notices, with annoyance, more scoffs, the volume and contempt of which are calculated by the gender of the accused, the toxicity of his masculinity, his alleged racism, and, well, you know the list by now.

Perhaps such unthinking responses are best ignored, useless as they are, perhaps now more than ever. This almost seems to be the approach of Michael Brendan Dougherty in his memoir My Father Left Me Ireland, a serious and affecting reflection on fathers and sons, the nation and its survival.

Dougherty is, first of all, a masterly writer, and he so carefully interposes his personal narrative between the larger political, cultural and historical questions that one hardly notices the transitions. He writes:

“All nations are in some way dissolving, we’re told, and that the dissolution is a good thing. Ireland’s national pride is a font of violence, a spur to extremism and superstition. And besides, Ireland is a failure. It has always been a failure. After all, my ancestors left. James Joyce left. Ireland’s children still leave. They send back selfies from Bondi Beach in Sydney. They send back money from Vancouver . . . I have to laugh. They all leave, but you stayed.”

The addressee here is the father in the title, whose staying in Ireland left his son fatherless in America, loved at a distance. Now, the arrival of Dougherty’s first child prompts the collection of letters to his father which makes up the memoir.

The letters combine grief, humour, anger, reconciliation, and, perhaps most importantly, recovery:

“I am suddenly alive to the idea that I could pass on this immense inheritance of imagination and passion if only I could work up the courage to claim it for myself.”

First, however, his recollections must pierce the soul: all too brief moments of visiting his father and the tears that followed; and the abandonment and broken endurance of his heroic mother. “Your curse was in being so easy to love,” Dougherty tells his father, and it is that same love that compelled his mother to try to hold on to the Irish songs and stories, the political commitments, and even the language.

Despite the real hardship and the literary risks of the letter form, Dougherty never collapses into self-pity or sentimentality; his bigger themes wouldn’t allow it, anyway. He skilfully uses his own story to tell a more important one about the culture and its degradation. His insights are remarkable and convincing.

He contemns what he calls the myth of liberation: the combination of self-absorption and self-delusion by which his generational cohort has lived and suffered. This has led to the desecration of community and family institutions and their replacement with a focus on the self, who is always right. The preferred cliché, nowadays at least, is the exhortation to speak and live your truth, which is risible at first glance and nerve-wracking at the second.

Reflecting on the death of his mother, Dougherty ties this social deformation to his own mourning and anger:

“I was furious too at the ambivalence of our culture in the face of her death. This myth of liberation was like a solvent that had slowly and inexorably dissolved any sense of obligation in life. It dissolved the bonds that held together past, present, and future. It dissolved the social bonds that hold together a community, and that make up a home.”

For Dougherty, one part of the solution to this crisis is a return to the nation, and he finds solace and inspiration in the thought and words of Patrick Pearse, the teacher and revolutionary of the 1916 Easter Rising. Pearse averred:

“We must accustom ourselves to the thought of arms, to the sight of arms, to the use of arms. We may make mistakes in the beginning and shoot the wrong people; but bloodshed is a cleansing and a sanctifying thing, and the nation which regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood. There are many things more horrible than bloodshed; and slavery is one of them.”

How easy it is to imagine such words shrivelling the tongue of some sanctimonious fool, the one who loathes the mere idea of borders, his nation, and, in the end, himself. We live in a time when speaking in defence of one’s inheritance is something like bad manners, and even the use of the word manhood is a social solecism. One easily notices a reproach in Pearse’s words, and we would do well to reflect on it.

For Dougherty, this reproach from the past means doing away with our present conception of the nation as mere administration, as a rank in terms of GDP or policy success or whatever. It means a recognition of what his father has truly left him – Ireland, with all its wonder and complexity. It means remembering that a nation has a soul, and we are haunted by its ghosts: our fathers and grandfathers from whom we inherit a tradition, as well as a responsibility to pass it on. It means that in such an act, sacrifice may be called for, and it should be given joyfully.

Some of these are old ideas, and we have forgotten them. That is why, in Dougherty’s arresting prose, they seem very much alive: “To dance up to the idea of idolatry, you might say the life of a nation proceeds from the father and the son.”

My Father Left Me Ireland should be read widely and thoughtfully, as both an example of outstanding memoir and, more importantly, as a political intervention: perhaps our etiolated debate over the nation and its soul can be brought back to life.

My Father Left Me Ireland

by Michael Brendan Dougherty
(Sentinel / Penguin Books)

My Father Left Me Ireland: An American Son’s Search For Home was published in April of 2019 by Penguin Books.

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Books

Malleable memories and transcending time: An interview with Joanna Howard

How many versions of my life are there?
Did other people see what I saw?
What really happened around me?

In a mesmerizing way, author Joanna Howard’s vivid new memoir, Rerun Era, nudges us to ask ourselves these questions — and reconcile what we think we know about time and our own experiences.

Narrated by Howard’s five-year-old self, Rerun Era paints a striking portrait of her childhood in rural Oklahoma. At the cornerstone of it all is trauma — as well as a connection to television that reveals more than pop culture taste. It serves as the foundation of time and memory.

While Rerun Era is a welcome return to a time of boxy television sets, VHS tapes, and radio dials, the story is relatable beyond generations and regions. It is the story of so many of our childhoods, spent seeking solace and stability in screens and laugh tracks.

When you started to write Rerun Era, did you think that remembering things in this fashion — attaching memories to, or grounding yourself in, pop culture — was universal or kind of unusual?

Howard: It felt universal for my generation, particularly. For a lot of people who grew up in the 80s and early 90s — it was the rise of the MTV generation. I did think there would be a lot of people who shared a kind of collective memory of what they watched. And it does seem to be the case. Since the book has come out, I’ve been hearing that from a lot of people. Even if we didn’t watch the same thing, it’s triggered people’s memories of what they watched when they were a kid.

Given how thoroughly media has changed in the past few decades — whether that’s speed, or the amount of media, or consumption habits — do you think it’s possible for late Millennials and Gen Z to experience the same type of solace and relationship to pop culture that you did?

Howard: I worry that they won’t. You know you’re getting old when you start worrying about how the youth consume culture, or whether they read or what they watch (laughs). I do think it’s hard now to watch anything we don’t feel we have complete control over. Like how we watch it, when we watch it, for what duration we watch it.

For me as a child, I knew it was time to go to dinner when one episode of M*A*S*H started, and I knew that dinner was over when another one started. That way in which television sort of cordoned off time? I just don’t think kids now can ever have that, because of streaming and downloadable platforms and binge watching.

It’s dramatically changed, that relationship with time. People can still escape into shows; it’s just a different kind of escape.

The memories that you wrote about seemed most vivid when they mimicked TV. For example, you wrote about going to an event called Frontier Days, where people were obviously dressed up and playing characters. In those types of scenes, everything seemed a bit more vibrant. Why do you think those memories were so vivid? The ones that — I don’t want to say they necessarily emulated TV, but they were obviously more character driven and almost played out like an episode of TV.

Howard: I do think if you grow up watching a lot of television, it really shapes the visual part of your memory. Like if I am reconstructing an experience in my mind or telling a story to someone out loud, I’m often sort of picturing it in my head like it’s a film or a television show, because I’ve done so much viewing as a kid. I still do this.

But that visual component is also super important to me in terms of seizing upon memories. I tend to be a person who, if I see an object, it triggers my memory much more than if I smell something or hear something, for example.

Do you think you were predisposed to having that kind of visual inclination, or was it shaped by TV? Or maybe both?

Howard: I definitely think it was shaped by TV. Movies, especially. Rerun Era focuses on television because it was in that moment right before we got a VCR. But when the VCR was introduced into my life, suddenly the longer form of stories was available . . . and I was just an obsessive watcher. I could do ten films in a row, no problem. I was really prepared for binge watching before it was a thing.

It’s all totally affected the way that I think. In my other writing, when I’ve done other types of fiction, people always say that image is the thing that unifies the style of my work. I’ve clearly been influenced by that visual culture.

In Rerun Era, television is really as much of a character as any of your family members, if not more so. At some points, it’s a caretaker. A reliable, comforting presence in your life. A window to somewhere outside of a small rural town. 

Did it seem that way when you were younger, that TV was almost kind of personified? Or is it just now, in retrospect?

Howard: I really like the phrase “caregiver” that you’re using there. I was totally aware of the fact that my parents were cordoning me into this space to watch television, as their way of dealing with having a kid when they didn’t have time to deal with having a kid. The TV did absolutely feel like a babysitter.

I see it a lot with my friends who have kids now. They’re resisting putting the iPad or whatever in front of the kid, but there’s this way in which time opens up for adults when their kid goes into that zone. Even though you know it’s not a great idea, there’s something so seductive about the silence the parents get from it (laughs). That concept of “television as babysitter” or “VCR as babysitter” was my parents’ lifeline in many ways, and I was very aware of it.

But I don’t think I was worried about it, and my parents weren’t terribly worried about it either. Parents nowadays are obviously much more concerned with what screens are going to do to us in the future. My parents were not super worried (laughs).

I wonder how much of modern parents’ worry about screen time is because they themselves were babysat by screens. Which leads me to another thing I found really interesting about Rerun Era . . .I feel like, generally, people refer to latchkey kids or kids raised by TVs in a really negative light.

Howard: Oh, yes.

But you don’t do that. It’s very nostalgic. It’s very warm. TV is not, by any means, the enemy in your book.

Howard: Definitely not. If I have any kind of ethical core, it’s been partially formed by these clichés in these shows where the person does the right thing (laughs). Those shows sort of formed that tapestry for me.

But I also think it’s sad, the degree to which a parent now feels responsible for every aspect of their child’s life. I understand that comes out of seeing a lot of kids end up in very bad situations, or children who were susceptible to adults that were harmed or with bad caregivers.

For me and my friends, there wasn’t a lot of oversight into what we were doing (laughs). We were allowed to kind of run amok. My parents were working, and they didn’t have the time. And I’m kind of grateful for that. It meant I had a lot of freedom as a kid and as a teenager, and when I went to college, I didn’t freak out about the sudden freedoms you have when you become an adult.

I see it a lot with my students now, because I teach those Gen Z students, their parents have overseen just about every aspect of their lives and have been exactly what we think of as model parents. But it becomes so much harder for their kids to imagine their own independence in the world.

It seems like there are a lot of those types of experiences in Rerun Era that, while they’re still relatable, would be entirely foreign to later Millennials and Gen Z. Like one of the things from the book that I remember well were those uncertainties of who sang this song, who acted in that movie? That’s not an experience people can have now. Either passionately believing in a wrong answer for years, or not knowing what actor that was in that one thing. We have instant answers now.

It’s so interesting to think about how foreign the book could be to people who really aren’t that much younger.

Howard: That moment where the Internet made access to all answers possible, there was just no going back. There used to be a certain kind of charm that a person who collected trivia held in the world. If you were the guy who knew all of the records, and could identify who did that song — that person could even carve out a career from that. People would pilgrimage to try to get answers. You’d have these intense interpersonal exchanges where people would debate whether or not someone was in this particular Hitchcock film. Now you’re at a dinner party, someone asks “Who was in that?” and you Google it, and the conversation’s done (laughs).

Now, anyone can be an expert in, like, 20 minutes. There’s less of a need for people to collect up facts and learn now. Like I remember, we would play Trivial Pursuit, and whoever won was revered! (Laughs.) How amazing that this one person could answer all these questions in all these different categories? Sports, entertainment, history . . . 

Oh, they were so worldly!

Howard: (Laughs.) It was amazing.

I feel like that instant access probably has something to do with why we’ve become so argumentative online. You can sit behind a screen and quickly Google things. Even if it’s something you didn’t know five seconds ago, you get so entrenched in it because you can find the answers to back up your opinions as fast as you need to.

Howard: Absolutely. And we also feel justified to call someone out for not knowing things because they should have Googled it before they posted whatever they posted. That’s a tough demand. And if you’re at all hot tempered, those things don’t go well together. (Laughs.)

To switch gears, you cover a great deal of trauma in the book. So much so that it seems as though more time lapses than the year you actually cover. How did you hone in on this specific period of your life?

Howard: You know, it just happened so quickly. I had been talking with a friend of mine, a poet from Arkansas, C.D. Wright. . . . she had been trying to get me to write about my family for a really long time. There are a lot of these parts of the world that are perceived to be backwards, and she thought that there weren’t enough stories from people who come from these parts of the world and have had a very vibrant relationship to culture and art. We didn’t necessarily grow up cut off from left-wing thinking or things like that. I set out to do this book because she was very much like, we need these voices in the world. And this book just immediately took off.

Originally, I hadn’t set out to do the voice how it is. I’ve never written anything with a child’s voice before. Once the voice was in place, it just started to write itself. The whole year came on in a tide; I’ve never had an experience like that with another book.

Did you uncover a lot of things you had forgotten about?

Howard: I sat down with my brother, who’s ten years older than me, and that helped. He was just a more fully formed thinker than me as a five-year-old. At five, I was prone to have gotten pieces confused or imagined things and my brother was very clear about things.

I found out that I had conflated some things and people. In a few instances, I allowed a bit of that fictional technique to rearrange some things.

People often write memoirs, even of their young childhood, with a great deal of certainty about details. In Rerun Era, that wasn’t really the case; you were upfront about the shifting or unsure part of your memories. Was that hard?

Howard: I definitely think it was helpful for me, that feeling of having articulated that. I didn’t go into the project thinking that’s what I was doing, because I didn’t think about my mind that way.

I think about the phrase “gaslight” a lot. We didn’t use that in the way we do now. We didn’t talk about it. My parents would often have a very different memory of something that took place than me or my brother did, and they would try to force that version on us. Because of that environment, where my memories have been challenged, I have always felt a bit vulnerable about what’s real and what’s not. It’s made me feel, at times, that I’ve needed to protect my own way of seeing things — even if it’s wrong. It can feel like your identity is being challenged.

What would you say to anyone who is struggling with that sense of being unsure of the details of what’s happened in their own life — particularly when it comes to traumatic events?

Howard: Well, I think it’s just really important to be gentle in the way that you deal with those things. I went into this book blaming my parents for a lot of things. My memory would sometimes shape things to re-emphasize that narrative of blame, or of the absentee parent. The process of writing the book really softened my view of my family, to know that we all had different ideas of what was actually going on.

Truth is really great when we’re talking about climate change, but when you’re dealing with your personal memories, that’s when we need to be gentle and a bit more lax. Those things can take time to figure out.

Rerun Era

by Joanna Howard
(McSweeney’s)

Rerun Era is available for purchase at the McSweeney’s Store and Amazon.

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Music

Willie Nelson’s “Sad Songs and Waltzes” and the Art of Alienation

Someday, when the world finally loses Willie Nelson, there will be an eruption of sadness. He is an icon, yet many people will still be shocked at the depth and profundity of his body of work. At this point already, the unbroken length and quality of his career is almost without precedent in American music. He has simply been here so long it seems he has always been here doing what he does. And his music has defied easy categorization, slipping seamlessly between wide varieties of country music, jazz, and American standards. He is probably the artist for whom the term “Americana” was most properly invented. 

Yet his career can be divided into rather neatly-defined stages. For many people, myself included, his most interesting stage is probably his brief stint with Atlantic Records in the early 1970s. Atlantic had just begun a Country division and Nelson was brought in as a cornerstone for that new endeavor. The experiment was not long; Nelson ended up recording only two albums under the Atlantic label, Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages, but the two albums worked out to be an essential bridge in Nelson’s gradual transformation from a fixture of the Nashville establishment to an iconic Outlaw and the singular artist we know and love today. Without these works, there is no path to Red Headed Stranger or Stardust or the collaborations with Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard that would come to define Country music in the decades to come. 

Here I want to discuss the simple, singular genius of one song from this period, “Sad Songs and Waltzes” from Shotgun Willie. The song perfectly embodies the artistic maturity gained by Nelson’s long breakup with the Nashville machine. And the hard lessons learned by that process show up in the song’s spare production, which works with its deceptively simple lyrics to show how market economies alienate human beings from themselves and one another. 

“Sad Songs and Waltzes” and Willie Nelson’s Career

Nelson was pushing 40 when Shotgun Willie was released. He was a longtime fixture in the Nashville music business, mainly as a songwriter (he was a hit maker for many other artists, writing songs like “Crazy” for Patsy Cline). As a solo artist himself, however, Nelson was constrained by the producer-centric power structures of The Nashville Sound. His ambitions were too large to be contained for long, however.

Nelson had already experimented musically. For example, he released a beautiful yet enigmatic concept album in 1971 called Yesterday’s Wine, which began the process of pushing his way out of the mold Nashville had formed him in. Eventually, he would leave RCA and Nashville altogether, moving to Austin, Texas and, in that strange mix of bikers, cowboys, and hippies, Willie Nelson as we now know him began to invent himself.

This is the world into which Shotgun Willie, and its third song “Sad Songs and Waltzes” was born.

The Song

With only a single guitar, alternating bass notes between plucky strums to create a (you guessed it) waltz, and backed by a distant steel guitar, the song begins “I’m writing a song all about you. A true song as real as my tears. But you’ve no need to fear it, ‘cause no one will hear it. ‘Cause sad songs and waltzes aren’t selling this year.” 

This utterly simply, yet devastatingly powerful opening tells the whole story. A man, an artist, is betrayed by his love and longs to express it through his art. The power of the marketplace makes this an impossibility. He is left both without a woman and without a song to mourn her absence. This is the purest tragedy. 

Essentially the song, like many country songs,  tells a story about a man who has lost a relationship with a woman. This is a rather normal part of human life, but human relations are flexible and people typically have the ability to craft new relationships in the wake of these breakups. The speaker in this song is deprived of that opportunity. The purpose of his art, the song he sings about writing, is to forge a relationship between him and his audience. His artistic expression is an extension of his humanity, his self. Sadly, this self does not exist outside the controls of the marketplace. His song will remain unsung because “sad songs and waltzes aren’t selling this year.” 

The chorus puts it in even more starkly economic terms. “It’s a good thing that I’m not a star. You don’t know how lucky you are. Though my record may say it, no one will play it. ‘Cause sad songs and waltzes aren’t selling this year.” Perhaps if our singer were more famous he could escape the cage built  for him by the music industry, but he is not. Therefore, any effort to make art from his pain — art that might forge a relationship between him and an audience — is in vain. No one would play it in the first place as it is not marketable. 

One particularly interesting feature of this song is its meta approach to songwriting. It is, in simple terms, a song about a song. This is not a particularly novel concept in itself, with the supreme example probably being the first verse of Leonard Cohen’s ubiquitous “Hallelujah.” “Sad Songs and Waltzes” provides a fascinating twist on the genre, however. This is a song about another song that no one has heard, nor will they, for economic reasons that we will get into in a bit. 

This is not merely clever, it is a formal feature that contributes to the song’s meaning. “Sad Songs and Waltzes” is a song is about alienation. And the singer of this song is so alienated from his personal art that he can only sing about it at a distance. It represents an ultimate form of alienation.

Alienation and Markets

Alienation is a devastating consequence of life lived under the control of markets. This is a central point in the writings of Marx and other critics of capitalism. The moving around of money in the quest to extract profit makes us all, in one way or another, cogs in a capital-producing machine, and Nashville certainly was and remains one of those. 

Like many talented artists working in Nashville, Nelson had been alienated from the fruit of his labor. He was put to work writing songs for other people to sing to create income for his record company. And when we was permitted to record his music himself, it simply wasn’t Willie Nelson as we know him. Seriously, look at his early album covers and try not to laugh at how uncomfortably not Willie Nelson he looks.

And just as Nelson had been forcibly removed from his authentic self, alienation extends beyond our relationships with the products of our labor. It also emerges as a barrier between individuals, interfering with proper relationships among human beings. Forced to sell our labor for wages, other people lose their individual identities and become mere competitors, making human cooperation difficult to achieve. We become, above all, alienated from ourselves and other people on a natural, human level when subjected to the demands of money-making. We lose our status as fully embodied people, having been reduced to a figure in some equation to determine the bottom line. 

Its hard-won wisdom about the human toll that capitalist alienation extracts is what makes “Sad Songs and Waltzes” so beautifully devastating. The betrayed singer is alone and must remain alone because he cannot spin his pain into enough profit for the bean-counters. 

Conclusion

When Shotgun Willie was produced, Nelson had only recently emerged from the Nashville money machine. He had spent years conforming himself to the demands of that industry, stifling his creative self in service of its products. This professional history provides insight into the source of a career frustration that finally exploded into songs like “Sad Songs and Waltzes.”

The move to Austin, a place that was weird and incomprehensible to the logic of the Nashville scene helped break him from his binds. Hanging out with the hippies and hillbillies of that unique and idiosyncratic music scene allowed him to develop something closes to an authentic artistic self and it set the stage for his many career reinventions. He became, in many ways, country music’s best answer to Bob Dylan in this way. 

When he eventually returns to Nashville it is as a bonafide “outlaw” with the rest of that movement largely founded on its rebellion against the Nashville Machine. Waylon Jennings’s “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” is a good example of how the Outlaw movement wore an open animosity against how Nashville’s system stifled individual creativity and forced it back down the throat of that very system. Capitalism being what it is of course, Nashville eventually found a way to coerce profit out of the artistic forms that rose up against it, bringing the enemy into the fold as it were. Outlaw Country became the defining sound of 1970s Nashville.

Still, Willie Nelson’s Atlantic Records period serves as an inspiration. It is a moment when an artist well into his career finds the strength to reinvent himself and claim significant ownership over his own art, taking a career full of alienation and molding it into a new form of art that would indeed forge powerful human relationships with a new audience for decades to come. It might even be said that he took a share of the means of production, with the product being Willie Nelson.

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Film

Election still wins by a landslide

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the incisive satire Election. Based on a Tom Perotta novel, Election tells the story of a high-school civics teacher, Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick), who plans to take down know-it-all student Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) as she vies for school council.

The film is still hilarious — a well-liked but sad-sack teacher tries to thwart an overachiever’s bid for school president by throwing a popular football hero into the race (and, accidentally, his disaffected sister). Thematically, it’s as relevant as ever. Integrity. Meritocracy. Nihilism. Hypocrisy. Ethics versus morals.

Watching Jim and Tracy’s battle of the wits many years ago, I recall Election posing the question not just of who would win, but who should win. The audience grappled with who to root for because Tracy and Jim’s misdeeds were presented on relatively equal footing. On paper, Jim’s deeds are far more dastardly than Tracy’s, but at the time, their personalities mattered more. Reviewers painted Jim as imperfect but well intentioned, while Tracy was obnoxious. Seductive. Even an “aggressive vixen” (cough cough Roger Ebert).

But a rewatch in 2019 reveals Tracy as more of a heroine than ever — and Jim McAllister a more pathetic and mean-spirited hypocrite than he seemed 20 years ago.

Part of what fuels Jim’s disdain for Tracy is a complicated plot point—his best friend and fellow teacher, Dave Novotny, was fired because he began sleeping with her. The film (and book) mostly portray Tracy as an equal, willing participant in this relationship, even a manipulative one at that. Tracy narrates her full consent, a point likely meant to assuage viewers and readers of the 90s, but today’s (hopefully) better understanding of power dynamics have us questioning not just the claims of Tracy’s manipulation, but her ability to consent.

A clearer understanding of a troublesome sexual relationship aside, it’s also easier to champion Tracy Flick thanks to shows like Parks and Recreation, a rare mainstream hit that humanizes ambitious women. The strong parallels between Election and Parks and Recreation are obvious. In true Leslie Knope fashion, Tracy’s mother writes letters to successful women like Connie Chung, soliciting advice for her daughter. And the race between Tracy Flick and Paul Metzler—played hysterically by forgotten teen dope of the 90s Chris Klein—closely mirrors Leslie Knope’s city council race against Bobby Newport. In every one of Paul Metzler’s ditzy and excited proclamations, it’s hard not to hear Paul Rudd’s portrayal of Pawnee’s fortunate son turned political candidate. (It’s also hard not to wonder if April Ludgate was partly based off Paul’s nihilistic sister, Tammy.)

More than anything, though, what changes how we see Tracy Flick in 2019 is how we see Jim McAllister in 2019.

Twenty years ago, Jim was far more convincing as a passionate educator. Sure, he was smug and made stupid decisions and treated people poorly. But his steadfast belief in morality (skewed as his version of it was) made him more sympathetic than he deserved to be.

Jim is truly despicable, though. His obsession with thwarting Tracy’s achievements reveals precisely who he is. He is every man who had a chance to achieve and fell short. He is every man who wasted his privilege and settled for something less than great. And he is every man who has ever resented a woman for rising to where he didn’t, despite his head start.

What Jim hates more than anything is feeling bested, particularly by women. After Linda Novotny, Dave’s ex-wife, comes clean about their affair to Jim’s wife Diane, his smothering declarations of love instantly turn dark.

“Why did you do that?” he screams into Linda’s answering machine. “You ruined my life, is that what you wanted?” Later, when Linda explains their tryst was a mistake and that he took advantage of her vulnerability, his anger turns into gaslighting.

“You hugged me! You kissed me!” he whines, as though Linda didn’t promptly reject his first hamfisted advance right after her marriage fell apart. (She did.)

Much as he lectures about it, Jim has a piss-poor understanding of morality. His treatment of Tracy shows how little he cares about a grown man taking advantage of a high-school student; his scolding judgments of Dave’s relationship with her seem performative and self-important. For all the lukewarm proclamations of affection for his wife, when his infidelity is revealed, he expresses nothing more beyond an expectation to be forgiven after a waiting period. And while he wields it often, he shows no understanding of the unfair power dynamic he briefly has with Linda, a vulnerable and confused woman who relied on him for support during a difficult time.

That’s why, when Jim describes seeing Tracy silently celebrating her victory in the hallway outside his classroom, he projects his anger and clings to his version of morality.

Defending his plan to throw the vote count in Paul’s favor, he says: “The sight of Tracy at that moment affected me in a way I can’t explain.”

But we can explain it, no problem. He is filled with pitiful male rage.

After all, underachieving Jim channels his need for validation through his relationship with women — an affair with Linda, “winning” against Tracy. But Tracy only channels hers into achievements. Extracurriculars. College applications. And winning the student council election she knows she deserves. She’s never concerned with “beating” Jim McAllister because she knows just how insignificant he will be in her life. And that infuriates and enrages him, like it does with countless other men when they’re outwitted by a woman.

While the film itself obviously hasn’t changed in 20 years, this dichotomy between Tracy and Jim used to be murkier. Tracy Flick is ambitious, cutthroat, smarter than her classmates and teachers, and shrill. That used to be all you had to say to get an audience to view a female character as at least partially unsympathetic, if not an automatic antagonist.

Back in 1999, Election relied on this assumption to paint Jim’s and Tracy’s wrongdoings in a similar light.The film’s trailer pieced together snippets of Tracy’s most stick-in-the-mud soundbites and pitched the movie as the story of an “ego the size of the Grand Canyon.” And it still is, but now we’re finally asking the right question.

Whose ego is that?

Election was originally released in April of 1999.

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Music

A Night with Northlane

Settling in to 170 Russell would have been nice, but as we stepped in at the allocated 6:30 door time we were greeted with the start of Void Of Vision’s set. Sprinting down the stairs and into the room, it was clear that moving the door time forward half an hour had definitely affected the crowd.

A decent audience had streamed in, but nowhere big enough considering the year Void Of Vision has had. Releasing their magnum opus album, Hyperdaze, they have been on an absolute tear, and it was clear during this set that they were going to keep going hard.

Opening up by bringing the heavy early, Void had the room shaking from the world go. An impressive light show and an almighty wall of sound filled the room with layers upon layers of adrenaline. Vocalist Jack Bergin led this assault, bringing as much energy as he possibly could, whilst utilising his seemingly endless amounts of stage presence.

New songs like “Babylon” and “Hole In Me” showcased their new sound, while “Kill All Your Friends” got the pit going like it always does. They finished strong with “Ghost In The Machine” and left their stamp on 170 Russell.

International act Silent Planet were up next. A pretty much completely new band to me, I was immediately impressed by the connection they appeared to have with their audience. From the word go, the pit was open, and everyone in the front few row was singing along with all the passion in the world.

Spoken word vocals mixed with harsh screams ensured that vocalist Garrett kept the audience on their toes. The instrumentals kept up this pace as well, with their hard hitting dark tones unrelentingly assaulting the ears of all listeners (in a good way).

Silent Planet sounded incredibly large all the way through, and definitely would have made themselves some new fans on the night. Their music appeared to be full of themes of mental illness, and political issues, which is absolutely super important in today’s societal climate.

Counterparts were up next. Definitely a well known band, the heavy Canadians immediately made clear the tone of the set announcing themselves with a call of, “Counterparts Schoolies Week Motherfucker.” They launched into their first song and it was immediately clear why they are as acclaimed as they are. Ridiculously tight and sounding stupidly massive, they had fans moving from the second they started playing.

The shit talking between sets would have been the highlight, but the songs themselves made it hard to top. Playing the old classics as well as the new heavy-hitters, there was as much two stepping as there was singing along. Also this was perhaps the first time in history I heard a pitcall of “schoolies 2019 motherfucker open it up,” which was an experience that I’m glad I had.

Dedicating a song to Australia’s very own Trophy Eyes, their massive sound continued unrelentingly. Coming towards the end, the set closed with a wave of crowdsurfers all diving and climbing towards the microphone, trying to get ahold of vocalist Brendan so they could scream his words right back at him. This set was great, and I’m quite sad I personally am not a Counterparts super fan so I couldn’t join in the fun. Next time boys. Next time.

Finally it was time for the big dogs, Northlane. The lights went down and hands went up, ready to go and awaiting the bands arrival impatiently, the audiences cravings would soon be met. Northlane charged onto stage and belted into “Talking Heads.” The movement was huge from the start, and the audience was off their feet and jumping non-stop all the way through.

“Details Matter” was a definite highlight of the set, with the ridiculously massive sound of one of the better songs of 2019 running rampant through 170 Russell. Headbangers were aplenty and moshers were in surplus. This continued even into one of their softer songs, “Rot.” The first song released by the band with vocalist Marcus Bridge, “Rot” went down an absolute treat as always.

Northlane are a ludicrously tight live band, and this became ever more clear as they smashed through “Citizen, “Obelisk”, and “4D.” New party song “Eclipse” had the room shaking as everyone refused to stop bouncing. The set began to come to a close as massive Alien single “Bloodline” was the definite highlight of the show. It has been one of my favourite songs of the year, and this rendition locked that in even more. Cannons and lights were ablaze and firing everywhere, and made this even more of a spectacle.

Leaving stage momentarily, Northlane returned as Marcus came back wearing a big sparkly coat. “Sleepless”, the closing track of the album was incredibly effective and touching live. And was a nice sombre end to the show, right before they launched into the timeless heavy classic, “Quantum Flux.” And goddamn was it massive.

Northlane are one of the best bands out there, and this show only locked that in.

Check out the images from the Northlane show:

All photos by Albert LaMontagne. Copyright 2019 Albert LaMontagne / Sound the Sirens Magazine. Please do not use or distribute these images without the permission of Albert LaMontagne. If you use these images without permission, you are a terrible person.

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Television

Why Fleabag was the most important show of 2019

How is it that even among the award show sweeps, iconic jumpsuit copycats, and seemingly universal acclaim, Fleabag still seems underrated? Maybe it’s because, on paper, little about Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s play-turned-Amazon-series should have worked all that well for mass acclaim — particularly for American audiences. Half of the characters in the show are nameless. There is constant breaking of the fourth wall. And, perhaps most surprising to its success in the U.S., the show comprised only two seasons of just six half-hour episodes apiece — released an agonizing three years apart. (We typically like our TV shows abundant and delivered fast, the cinematic equivalent of a cheap dinner at a strip mall buffet.)

But paper can’t capture the brilliance of Waller-Bridge’s tale of a woman drowning her guilt and trauma in sarcasm and casual sex (and occasionally guinea pigs). Fleabag is packed with raw humanity, top-notch writing, and impeccable comedic timing. 

The ingenious writing and acting of Fleabag is matched only by the show’s ensemble cast. Brett Gelman is delightfully disgusting as swarthy, pitiful brother-in-law Martin. As Fleabag’s season two love interest, the Hot Priest, Andrew Scott exudes turmoil so heavy you can feel it through the screen, as he struggles to navigate sexual desire with spirituality. Sian Clifford beautifully embodies Fleabag’s high-powered sister Claire, whose Type-A rigidity is as palpable as her deep unhappiness. 

And who can forget the incomparable Olivia Colman? She is hysterical as Godmother, a self-important artist whose fixation on alienating Fleabag is only as cringeworthy as her pride on her wedding day in showing off the diverse identities of her “friends.” (“This is my verrrry interesting friend Daniel, who’s deaf. I picked him up at a student gallery opening. Utterly fascinating. Can’t hear a thing.”) 

But it so much more than outstanding casting and indulgent black humor that makes Fleabag the most important show of 2019.

Fleabag will be that show that influences other shows and movies for decades to come. Fleabag has proven that you can teach an old cinematic device a brand-new trick. The show has taught us that these techniques aren’t doomed to become a shtick or a crutch. And it has taught us how compelling it can be when stories of women’s sexuality and humanity are explored authentically (see: why fewer men should be writing these stories). 

But more than anything, Fleabag has raised the bar. 

We have much to thank Phoebe Waller-Bridge for — Fleabag is as deliriously funny as it is heartwrenching. But we should also thank her because, in the vein of Twin Peaks, her show will blaze trails for other artists. Just like David Lynch’s groundbreaking soap-opera-tinged supernatural series paved the way for shows like Northern Exposure and True Detective, screenwriters in the coming years will owe an equal creative debt to Fleabag. 

So we may clamor and beg for seasons three and four — which we will never and should never get — but we should appreciate Fleabag for exactly what it is: near-perfect television and inspiration for the amazing shows that we haven’t even seen yet.

Fleabag airs in the UK on the BBC and internationally on Amazon Prime.

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News

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: We are on a short holiday

Dear readers,

What an unexpected year it’s been since this magazine had a rebirth of sorts in October of 2018. I had originally started this zine back in 2001 after a successful initial run, it lay dormant from 2014 (its last iteration under the name The Marshalltown). The idea was only to restore the archives and re-upload all the content that disappeared from the web, and that arduous process that began in earnest in August of last year. It was a painstaking process of cutting and pasting from archive.org but I felt that the work that all the writers did from 2001-2005 were not only too good to leave to the oblivion of dead web pages, but were also great memories.

I didn’t however, expect to start writing again. But I did, and I wrote and wrote and wrote… and best of all perhaps, some of the old writers who had been part of the magazine’s early run came back to write again. Trent Moore came back to write some great pieces, Becky McKendry came back to write some great pieces, David Nagle came back to write some great pieces, Timothy Cootes came back to write some great pieces. We are also lucky to have new work from new writers like Danny Anderson, Karla Smith, Josh Hockey, and Mark McConville. Truth is, I didn’t think all these years later, with all that has changed on the internet that there’d be room for another magazine (there isn’t), but this past year has proven that it’s still a blast sharing your opinions, discovering new bands, and talking to some old ones.

I’ve come across some great new bands and have had the opportunity to talk to and write about some of my all time favorites. Bands I never got the chance to talk to during the magazine’s initial run, like Good Riddance and Strung Out. Connecting with some great PR people both old and new has been a blast too.

For the next few weeks things will slow down a little bit as I’ll be overseas taking a break, taking in some new sights and exploring a little bit of this world. But there will still be updates- maybe once a week- until I’m back. We were born in the age before social media so we’re still not very good at that, but we’ll keep sharing content via our Facebook and Twitter channels (so please follow).

Much gratitude to all the new readers who came by and read us this year, and to all the writers who have been part of this new chapter, thank you. We’ll see you in a few weeks.

Billy
Editor-in-Chief
Sound the Sirens Magazine

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Videos

Hangtime share “Can I Take You Out” video

Video

Not too long ago we had a short chat with Canadian pop-punk band Hangtime about their new EP and the video for the track “One Nine Nine Five”. The aptly titled song is a throwback to a pop punk thought long gone but as this Toronto band will attest, is by no means dead. Now the band have debuted their new music video for the track “Can I Take You Out”; a sweetly romantic, melodic pop punk ode.

The track is a cut from their 2019 EP Invasion, which you can pick up via Bandcamp. Hangtime have a couple of upcoming Canadian shows on the horizon; with all the details available on their Facebook page.

When we spoke to the band and where their sound comes from, guitarist/vocalist Warren Gregson explained their influences;

“There’s no escaping the 90s sound I’m afraid, that’s just who we are. Actually, our biggest influences go back further than that. Most of us were first listening to bands like ALL, Misfits, Dag Nasty, Big Drill Car, Bad Religion, Doughboys, Nils… etc, back in the 80’s. I suppose that’s where the 90s sound for many other bands originated as well.”

Check out the new video and let’s reminisce about some good old school pop punk.

Reviews

Crossed Keys – Saviors

Philadelphia’s Crossed Keys are an interesting intersection between melodic hardcore and punk, taking an earnest approach to the sound that made its way from the underground in the late 90s and early 2000s. This relatively new outfit is the result of Kid Dynamite and Samiam in a blender- in the best way possible. The Kid Dynamite influence may be a given since Crossed Eyes features KD’s drummer Dave Wagenschutz, but the band’s pedigree also includes members of bands like Zolof the Rock & Roll Destroyer and The Curse, all backing the melancholic vocal work of frontman Joshua Alvarez (Halo of Snakes). So while Crossed Keys are somewhat new, its members have been cutting their teeth within their respective circles for years, and their new EP Saviors shows the work of well-seasoned musicians finding new energy in old sounds.

Saviors is backboned by the furious urgency and energy that Kid Dynamite showed through their history, but while Jason Shevchuk’s vocals were beautifully abrasive, Alvarez takes a more restrained, wistful approach to singing. Songs like the opening “Times of Grace” are musically up-tempo percussions and razor-sharp guitars, but are buoyed by Alvarez’s more melodic vocals. His vocals rest at a good place between Samiam’s Jason Beebout and that NYHC tone exhibited by bands like Token Entry and Grey Area. In songs like “R.J.A” and the closing title track, Crossed Keys find more success with their brand of blistering speed meets harmony- slowing down only for the kind of melancholic punk that made Samiam a noted name. While much of Saviors is built on pace, it wasn’t always this way for the band. In fact, their 2017 EP, I’m Just Happy That You’re Here, leans closer to Samiam than it does to Kid Dynamite (the song “Jeff Pelly vs. The Empire” is particularly fantastic), so there’s been an uptick of urgency with Saviors.

For fans of any of the aforementioned bands here, there is plenty to like with Crossed Keys and plenty to like in Saviors. It’s succinct, to the point, but filled with ample reflection and exploration that gives the EP depth and resonance. Any band that has found influence from Kid Dynamite is most certainly OK by us (this site is named after a KD song after all), but Crossed Keys does more than just tip their cap. This one’s a really good one, and worth your time.

(Hellminded Records)

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Music

Every last time: Revisiting Gameface’s “How Far Is Goodbye?”

Southern California’s Gameface were always a band that seemed perfect just below the cusp. Their brand of pop-tinged punk was somewhere in between the melancholy driven emo of the early 1990s to what would become of radio-friendly punk bands evolving from the Jimmy Eat Worlds of the… world.

I loved this band. It was songs like “My Star” and “When You’ve Had Enough” that captured my attention. They didn’t fit in with the punk explosion of the mid-90s and had more melodic chops than those that remained in the underground with bands like Quicksand and Texas is the Reason (the latter being the most musically similar).

To this day, I count their track “How Far Is Goodbye?” as one I can listen to on any given day and still feel the same way about it as I did years ago. It’s a glorious sound of a time gone by, and Jeff Caudill, who has been the backbone of their songwriting since the beginning, has still got the chops his ilk can only dream of. There’s a tinge of melancholy that conjures up a certain sadness, a scene in a movie where the protagonist is making their exit into the distance as the scene closes. Something about the song, the sentiment, and the lyrics that always reminds of driving away while looking at the rear view mirror.

Five years ago Gameface released a new album, Now Is What Matters, an album that perfectly encapsulated their ability to write with emotion, melody, and magnetism that only a select few seem to possess. I interviewed frontman Jeff Caudill before the album came out to chat about the band, an interview I think still holds up. Caudill has been busy since then with a lot of solo material, while the band themselves have been releasing music sporadically (mostly singles) since 2014.

While their catalog is deep, there’s one song I keep coming back to, and that’s “How Far Is Goodbye?”. Originally released on the split 10″ vinyl with Errortype: 11 in 2000, the song received an update in 2018, which you can hear below.

Gameface photo from Gameface facebook page.

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