All of This and Nothing: Songs That No One Will Hear

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

This is possibly the most Obscure of my obscure songs: a single from one of those bands that is basically one person: the Swedish indypop "band" we are soldiers we have guns. (Stylized in all-lower case, for maximum indy cred, I guess.)

we are soldiers we have guns ran for the back half of the Aughts, roughly, with a few EPs and at least one full-length (get up, get out, - still on Bandcamp for anyone interested to look for more). The one person in this case was Malin Dahlberg; no idea what she's doing these days but I hope it's creative and fulfilling and wonderful.

Songs That No One Will Hear is the first we are soldiers we have guns song I ever heard; I think it was featured on Fingertips (which has been the way I discovered a lot of bands over the years - might be good for you, too. If not, my general advice is to find some outlet that is similar enough to your tastes that you always find what they feature interesting).

The lyrics don't exist anywhere online, and we are soldiers (I'll stay lower-case, but I have to abbreviate it somehow) has a lo-fi sound - so untangling exactly what Dahlberg is singing might not be worth the effort.

But, for a lovely mostly-quiet song from an obscure band from an obscure part of the world, Songs That No One Will Hear is almost a platonically perfect title, and the song itself lives up to it. Just listen.

All of This and Nothing: Down in the Valley

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

I think this is another case where the song I really like is from a side band or otherwise quirky project. Which is why I count it on the Obscure side.

But, this week, the song is Down in the Valley by a band called The Broken West.

(Some light Googling later: looks like this was the frontman's first band - he's a guy named Ross Flournoy - and the one that brought him and the rest of the group some attention, but they broke up fairly quickly. Flournoy formed another band, which also doesn't seem to have gone very far, and no one's bothered to update Wikipedia for more than a decade. As always, I hope he's out there making music and living off it, and no one around him has had the free time to update some random website.)

And I have no idea what this song is really about.

Sun down, blood horizon, now it feels alright
No one feels the darkness down in the valley tonight

It's all evocative, allusive - it sounds like a Western of some kind (or I may be latching on too hard to the band's name), but there's none of the usual Western trappings: guns, cowpokes, cattle, shootouts, Indians.

But, as I've said more than once in doing these song-based posts, you don't need to understand a song to like a song. A song is about listening, and feeling. This one has a great feeling, and sounds big and impressive: take it on that level.

All of This and Nothing: What's a Devil to Do?

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

I blogged about this band once before - but I should note that I'd gotten a mislabeled copy of this song and thought of it under the wrong title for a few months. And all of this is Obscure enough that my confusion made it even worse.

The band is Harley Poe, which I think was a specific project/style for a while in the Aughts, not a long-running band. And my favorite song of theirs - among a lot of competition - is What's a Devil to Do?

I don't think Harley Poe was a joke band, but they were a focused one: they did songs on horror-movie topics (vampires, zombies, cannibals) in a low-fi acoustic style that sounded to me very much like early-period Violent Femmes. (But I didn't see anything from Harley Poe to explain the sound; they might have had a different touchpoint or explanation.)

This song is from the point of view of an evil man - given the grand guignol of so many of their other songs, I tend to assume he's the Antichrist, but the song itself never quite says that outright.

I was created down below
And if it's evil that you're planting
Then it's evil that will grow

Like most of the Harley Poe songs I've heard, it's over the top - but lovingly so, in a way that completely commits to the bit, in the same way that a blues song can be about the singer taming a tornado. And that low-fi sound rocks hard, especially here.

Now Jesus died for them, it's true
But what's a devil to do?

All of This and Nothing: Alarm Clock

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Back to Obscure this week, which as usual means a song I found semi-randomly by a band that I can't tell you all that much about.

This time out, it's Alarm Clock, by the British band The Rumble Strips, from their 2007 debut record Girls and Weather. It's poppy without quite being power-pop, driven by some nice horn work and an appealingly distinctive vocal performance by the lead singer.

And it's a fun, zippy song that's about exactly what it says: the singer's alarm clock, which was annoying and now no longer works:

Well I don't like doing things
That other folks tell me to do
So I hit it with a hammer
And now he's quite subdued

That's it: a fast-paced, fun, horn-driven pop song about a guy who doesn't want to get up in the morning. If there's a Platonic ideal of the relatable song, this is right up there.

Well my alarm clock he ain't working
But I don't really mind
'Cause he ain't no friend of mine
He kept waking me up all the time

All of This and Nothing: Quit While You're Ahead

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

This week it's another Obscure choice: a 2007 single from a band with at least this one good record, about whom I don't know much else.

Quit While You're Ahead is from Southeast Engine, who were big enough to have a Wikipedia page listing their seven records. But, on that page, the most recent record listed is from 2012, and the first outside link is to MySpace, so I suspect they're solidly defunct at this point.

But a song, once recorded, lives on. And this is a good one.

The singer is talking to someone: someone who's trying to convince him of something, and has almost succeeded.

So tell me what I believe
tell what it is I need
tell me you'll provide it for me yes
and I will do anything for you
I'll do anything you tell me to
I'll mistake the lies you sell me for the truth

But that other person hasn't quite closed the deal yet.

Say it, say it like it is
you got thirty seconds kid
you got all the time you need

It's all in a straightforward rock presentation, big and impressive and driving, with strong drumming and guitar work to support that compelling voice. What more do I need to say?

All of This and Nothing: Cage in a Cave

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

I have a weakness for concept records. I think I developed that growing up in the 1970s - it was hard to avoid concept albums then, and we all came down with at least a mild case.

This week's song comes from a concept record - Rasputina's 2007 Oh Perilous World! I couldn't give you a decent coherent description of the overall story - the Wikipedia article includes a lot of things I don't really remember or didn't focus on. But the record is at least partially about Fletcher Christian, the famous mutineer from the Bounty.

And the song that's all about him is Cage in a Cave.

Fletcher Christian, he found him a cave
and he'd go there to be alone

Rasputina is a band that uses odd instrumentation - the lead is usually an electric cello - and singer Melora Creager sings in what I think is a slightly affected style, too: it's all distanced, strange, specific, different. She also writes the song, and is not afraid of wordplay and long words that take over their lines.

To fits of melancholy
he was increasingly prone

So this is a song I like largely for vibes reasons. It's about a dude hiding out, because the things he tried to do haven't worked out the way he hoped. So he's off in a cave, where he can be alone.

But, most of all, it sounds cool: it's a magnificent, enjoyable "everybody go away and leave me alone" song.

All of This and Nothing: Get It On

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

This week's song is not from the 1960s. It might sound that way, but it's actually a 2008 song by an Australian band, The Chevelles.

This is Get It On.

It was the lead single from a record designed to launch them in the US, Barbarella Girl God - they leaned into the '60s thing, I think, at least somewhat - and that record has a bunch of other good songs, too. She's Not Around, C'mon Everybody, and Every Moment I particularly like.

I don't think the launch "took" the way everybody hoped, which is why I'm classifying this as one of my Obscure songs this year. But a good song is a good song, and ones you haven't heard before are wonderful, so, if this one is new to you, you're welcome.

It sounds to me like yet another "rock band on the road" song, with verses loosely about specific US West Coast cities - no details, just the "here's what's next" of a band on the road in a blur of shows and highways:

Well, I'm seein' things in the highway lights
Twenty-four cities
I don't see the sights
Too far from home
Forgot my own life

And those kind of songs are fun. For those of us who don't go on tour with a rock band - which is the vast majority of us - they encapsulate the great parts of that life (excitement, cool music, novelty, moving on quickly) and avoid the less-pleasant bits (living in a van with 2-5 people you used to like, long hours on the road, eating whatever's available on those highways, etc.).

This is a good one; it gives the feel of that road rolling on, with something new around every corner. The feeling that you might as well Get It On.

All of This and Nothing: You Cross My Path

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

We swing back to Obscure this week with a song from The Charlatans from 2008. (This is the modern UK-based Charlatans, sometimes referred to as Charlatans UK; there was a US band with the same name in the '60s. This UK band of Charlatans, I'm happy to see, is still out there.)

They'd been putting out records for almost twenty years, and had some up-and-down fame - I think more in the UK than the US, but bands are quirky and have odd careers, so maybe they were massive hits in Poland or Thailand somewhere along the way, too.

You Cross My Path was the title song of that record, and it's just a great rocking song, in the old "you don't want to mess with me" genre.

It's not entirely clear who the singer is aiming the song at, or why, but he makes his intentions clear:

You cross my path I'll take you down

Or, to be even more pointed that than refrain, slightly later in the song he tells us

I will rise again and I'll take you down like that
You will die up there alone, I'll take you down like that

Given that this was a band well into their career, there's a non-zero chance that it's "about" a DJ or rival band - I'm deliberately not doing any research because I don't want to find out if that's the case. I like this song in part because I can fill in the blanks - I suggest you listen to it with the same openness.

But do listen: it's a barn-burner, full of energy and emotion and life. And do not piss off that singer, if you know what's good for you.

All of This and Nothing: Jackson Leftfield

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

OK, I've finally hit the point where my "Obscure" songs are so obscure that I can't even find a version of them online to embed here. Which somewhat ruins the point of the post, I guess, but let me do what I can in the circumstances.

Boxer the Horse is [1] a band from the Canadian Maritimes; their debut EP was The Late Show in 2008. The music website Fingertips featured a song from that record; I downloaded it, liked it, and ended up buying the band's full-length French Residency when it came out a couple of years later. (They seem to have had another full-length in the middle, which I missed.)

That first song, the one I heard in 2008, is Jackson Leftfield, which has very little trace on these here Interwebs. YouTube has a live version, but the album version doesn't even seem to be on Spotify anymore. The Fingertips link is long-dead. No lyrics exist anywhere I can find.

It's a loose-limbed, harmonica-fueled, electronic-organ-infused romp - Jackson is a girl the singer is talking to, though I think she's a friend or acquaintance rather than the object of his affections. Whoever is after her, though, she's not having it:

She said get your damn hands off me man
Do you have any idea who I am?

It's an energetic, fun song from a band that seemingly has been forgotten even by the people who knew they existed in the first place. The world is full of songs like that, unfortunately - or fortunately; it means the world is full of great stuff - and this is one I really liked and wanted to remember...if only I could find it to share it.

[1] Probably "was," I don't see any activity post-2014. But let me be optimistic.

All of This and Nothing: The Hurting Heart

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

We're back to Obscure this week, with The Hurting Heart, my favorite song from singer-songwriter Richard McGraw, off his 2009 record Burying the Dead.

This is another artist I know basically nothing about. Somehow, I got on publicity lists for some small record labels in the early days of this blog - I know; I'm not sure why or how myself - and have gotten a stream of review material that way. Because of that, I think I got Burying the Dead via email: it was coming out, and a publicity person at the label had me on the big list of "media" - or, probably more likely, and sadly for me, "influencers" - so I got it, and listened to it.

I don't know how many other people did. It's a fine record, with a bunch of excellent songs. But there are dozens of fine records every year; I don't myself listen to most of them, and I'm sure you're the same. The world is big and full of wonders, which can be sad if you're someone who just made something wonderful and the world isn't interested.

But maybe I can cast a little bit of light on this raw, bad-love song, a decade and a half later.

This is another "you broke up with me; you're going on with life and I'm not" kind of song, with McGraw's immediate, tormented voice to make it real.

And you're not even a ghost
since you moved back home.

She's doing well; the singer is not - and knows it. He wants to get over this, but he's not there - I hope there's a "yet" implied, but you never know with bad-love songs.

And if I could set aside this hurting heart.
I'd bear your ring at your wedding.
'Cause I don't want to own it
and I don't want to show it.

That refrain is strong and true, and gives the song real power - it's a song that shows rather than tells. McGraw says "hurting heart," but doesn't describe it, or talk about his pain, just what his ex-lover is doing and what he insists he is or will or should be doing.

But he's not doing it yet. That's the point of a song like this, and McGraw has crafted a great one here.

All of This and Nothing: Little Bird Courage

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Continuing the swing back and forth - as I noted last week, often from '80s songs reasonably well-known in their day to Aughts songs that are somewhat...less popular. This time out I have a song from 2009 by a band called Old Canes.

This is Little Bird Courage - I don't know much about it, or the band. But I liked it then, I still like it, in all of its rattly, clangy glory.

As far as I can tell, Old Canes was a sidebar band - the main guy, Christopher Crisci, had a main band, Appleseed Cast, which I don't think I've ever heard - and Old Canes only had two records in the Aughts. Their website is defunct, so I assume the band is as well.

This is another song with obscure lyrics - a metaphor for something, or more than one something. The title implies a lot of it: the song is about how the world is dark and dangerous, but there is hope.

And when I'm thirsty
You are the fountain
In the face of danger
I am unafraid

The tone is almost religious, but there's no specific dogma - Crisci may have meant it to be in some  particular tradition, but it doesn't come across that way to me. So it comes across as inspiring, no matter what you believe or don't believe - we can all rely on a little bird to give us courage.

All of This and Nothing: Why Didn't You Get a Haircut?

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

This one is even more obscure than most of my Obscure songs, I think - from Math The Band, which is indeed a math-rock outfit, and had gone from a one-man operation to a two-person band by the time this song came out in 2009. (It's since become more of a "real" band with even more people, as far as I can tell.) I don't think this was a single or anything: it's just the song that I glommed onto when I heard their record Don't Worry, semi-randomly.

Some songs we love because of their attitude, and the way that attitude is embodied in the sound. This one of of those for me. It's got that fuzzy chiptune sound that screams "late Aughts" to me, and lyrics that take direct aim the slackers of every generation. (There was a new group of slackers then; there's a new one now; there was one earlier that I was part of. There will always be another one as long as there are people to slack off.)

Good enough isn't good enough
Good enough isn't good enough
Good enough isn't good enough
Good enough is not good

This is another great song to play loudly in your car with the windows down, yelling along about how good enough isn't good enough. If you do that, it might help you even believe, internalize it.

I don't know if I entirely do believe that - "good enough" has often been just fine in my career - but I love the energy and enthusiasm and ambition, and I want to believe that attitude, that mindset. For a song, that's what matters.

All of This and Nothing: In the Branches/The Coal Mine Fall

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

This week we flip back to Obscure, with a band that I've tried to fit into this Monday series almost every year. (The band is all men, I think, so they really didn't fit with Portions for Foxes.) I finally managed to do it.

The Builders and the Butchers have a sound that I want to call unique - it's folk-based, but more in the rock vein, though nothing like the concept of "folk rock." They sound like what would have happened if rock had developed in the Appalachians, out of murder ballads, rather than the Mississippi delta.

Maybe. Something like that, anyway.

They have a lot of great songs, and they have a new record coming out this year that I haven't heard yet as I type this.

And, maybe because picking one song was tough, what I chose was a medley of two songs from their live record Where the Roots All Grow. So my favorite Builders and Butchers song is In The Branches/The Coal Mine Fall.

B&B songs are deeply atmospheric, sometimes telling semi-clear stories but more often full of apocalyptic, specific, haunting imagery, to imply and tease and suggest:

They left the angels singing
In branches of a burning tree
'Said it was all a game.
And your daddy got bent and twisted
In the bed that he made.
You'll end up the same.

Or, in one of the lines that comes to my mind most often:

A true love will leave you on your knees in the rain
A true love will leave you in the rain

This medley has the energy of a great live recording, two great songs full of atmosphere and menace to run through, and sees the band at one of their peaks. I recommend all of their stuff, for anyone who likes dark Americana music, but this is, I think, a magnificent entry point.

All of This and Nothing: Life Design

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

I know this song because I stayed at a hotel. The Hard Rock Hotel in Universal Orlando used to - and might still, for all I know - give away a mixtape to guests, called Sounds of Your Stay. I think it was a roughly annual thing. It was entirely digital even then; it might just be a non-downloadable stream these days.

My family stayed at the Hard Rock, on a big theme-park vacation, back around 2010. I liked some of the music on the collection, and I guess I'm still listening to this song even now.

This is Life Design by the Parlotones. (And I see, right this moment, that the mixtape got the title slightly wrong, and I've been thinking of this song as Life's Design for a decade. But I do also have the record it came from, Stardust Galaxies, which does not have the possessive.)

This is a bombastic song, sung in a register to emphasize that. I do like rock 'n' roll with pretensions, at least some of the time, so that doesn't bother me - it may get to some listeners. But it is big, with vague words that imply a lot more than they actually say, and a theme that, as far as it can be made entirely clear - the point is to be not-quite-clear to be even bigger and more impressive - is about All Of Life.

Again: I like it. It swings for the fences, and I think gets the ball solidly out into the parking lot. I hope you agree.

This is our story, this is our life design

All of This and Nothing: Deny All

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Nothing particularly fancy this week - no deep personal meaning, no lyrics that mean something entirely different than they seem. Just a straightforward rock song, loud and strong and wonderful, by a band with twenty years of history when they hit this point and more than that since then.

It charted; I think it was decently known at the time. But, fifteen years later, I'm comfortable counting it on the Obscure side of the list for this year.

This week's song is Deny All by the Dutch band Bettie Serveert. It's in English, and the singer was originally American, but the lyrics have that odd obscure quality that makes me think that they can understand and speak English but maybe don't think in English, that metaphors and turns of phrase and ideas are being subtly translated as they go.

You've got to make a choice, that's your life
How many times did it pass you by?
Grab it by the throat, grab it while you can
Don't say that you don't understand

I'll admit I'm not entirely sure what's being denied here - well, all of it, of course, but what does that mean? But I don't care: this song rocks, it's evocative and powerful, and that's more than enough.

Deny all (if you cut it like that)

All of This and Nothing: Dr. Bill

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

I'm back to Obscure this week with Dr. Bill, a 2011 song from a band called 13ghosts. This is probably the first song of theirs I heard, and it got me to buy one full-length and an EP. I didn't like anything else of theirs quite as much as this one song, but there was some good stuff. And that's the way it goes, isn't it?

This is a ominous, noisy, compelling song, focused tightly on the singer's voice and the things he's telling us.

Well, maybe the things he's trying to convince himself of, if we're honest.

I like the instrumentation here, the way it starts with that slow, walking beat, punctuated with emphatic guitar chords and timed out with the spare, mostly single-hit drum sounds. Then the singer comes in, and the music builds slowly behind him - the drumming gets more complex, an electric guitar with a slightly more soothing sound to start out with, but then it all goes on, a little tenser each verse. 

I'm very normal
I'm very like everyone else

The singer is visiting Dr. Bill, we think. Some kind of regular checkup. And the singer is protesting, we think, that he shouldn't be there, that he doesn't need this, that there's absolutely nothing wrong with him.

We might even believe him, at first.

I've got it all
Nine days a week
I never sleep, I never eat
I'm a real breadwinner, a real go-get-her

But he definitely protests too much. We've probably done that ourselves. Everything is completely normal. There's nothing wrong with him. There's nothing wrong with us.

There are no voices in my head
Everything I hear is real
There are no monsters in my bed
Everything I dreamed is dead

All of This and Nothing: Strugglin'

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

This week, we're back to Obscure, with the 2014 song Strugglin' from I Am the Albatross's self-titled record. They're obscure enough that they barely show up in a google search for their quirky, specific name, which saddens me - but the world is big and full of stuff, and most of it is hidden in one way or another.

I'm pretty sure this band is defunct - that their website is gone, that their Bandcamp page lists three releases ending a decade ago, and the aforementioned google search lead me to think that. But art can live forever, and I still listen to this song. (And I can't be the only one.)

There's a lot of people out there in the world tonight
A lot of people out there in the world tonight (x2)
That ain't gonna make it 'til the morning light...

This is another song that starts relatively quietly, and then goes on to burn the barn down. The lyrics are evocative, allusive, metaphoric. Something bad is happening - the singer's "baby" is "struggling," which is as specific as it gets - but the words are almost apocalyptic, all-encompassing.

When things can't get any worse, well that's when they do
Searching for a crack where the light shines through...

It has a shuffly, loud, borderline-lofi sound, and it blasts at top speed for almost five minutes - five great minutes. This is a song that shouldn't be forgotten, so I'll do my tiny bit to remind people it's out there.

All of This and Nothing: Divisonary (Do the Right Thing)

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Some songs you love because they say things you want to believe. They put into words ideas that might be in your head already, saying it more clearly and precisely than you managed to do yourself. The best of those songs give you an image to hold up, maybe a vision of your best self, of the person you want to be or could be, if you tried.

Divisionary (Do the Right Thing) is the last song on Ages and Ages's 2014 record of the same name. And it's very much one of those songs, as the subtitle implies.

Do the right thing, do the right thing
Do it all the time, do it all the time
Make yourself right, never mind them
Don't you know you're not the only one suffering

That's how it starts, like a meditation or an affirmation - like the singer telling himself as much as he's telling us.

He doesn't give us specifics: this is not about a particular situation, or at least he's not going to tell us here. There may be something specific in his mind. This is a song about how to engage with the world: how to work with people, I think, who claim to be open to change and compromise but will only drag you down.

Cuz they ain't moving, they're just moving around
So if you love yourself, you better get out
get out, get out, get out
now

This song has lived in my head since 2014. I hope it can live in yours as well. 

Do the right thing. Do it all the time. Make yourself right.

Don't you know you're not the only one suffering?

All of This and Nothing: Dylan Thomas

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

This week's song is Dylan Thomas, by Better Oblivion Community Center - last week I had a big famous supergroup, so this week I have something that's a supergroup in its own way, a one-off project by Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers that lasted a couple of years and produced one record. This one was the single, and I think it was moderately successful, five years or so ago.

I put this on the Obscure side, since I doubt anyone really remembers this project, but it was prominent enough that there are Wikipedia articles and the song lyrics are available online. (That was my trigger, during last year's project, to think something was really obscure - nobody put the lyrics online anywhere. So now I'm second-guessing myself about whether this one really counts as "Obscure" - oh well, too late to change the whole plan for the year now.)

This is a catchy, bouncy song, sung in harmony by those two singers most of the time, with occasional lines by just one or the other. And what's it about? It's one of those complex, allusive songs I love, full of quick wordplay and solid rhymes - it's about whatever you can figure out, about itself, about the world, about the experience of being this song at this moment in the world's life.

It's not really about Dylan Thomas, but he is namechecked in the middle. That's close enough for a title.

They say you've gotta fake it
At least until you make it
That ghost is just a kid in a sheet

All of This and Nothing: The Driver

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

I don't know who Andrew Deadman is. I half-suspect that's a stage name, or otherwise not the name he was born with - but I don't know. The world is large and contains multitudes.

I got his record Santa Monica Airport 1987 around when it was released in 2019 - probably as a publicity thing. (Yes, I get music for publicity purposes. I find it hard to believe myself; I can't see how I've ever been useful in the slightest to publicize anything.) It's a solid record, atmospheric and discursive, all supporting Deadman's tense, cracking voice.

My favorite song from that record is The Driver, the story (true or false or fictionalized) of one ride in a car, from somewhere to somewhere. Like a lot of the obscure songs I like, this year and previously, the lyrics don't exist anywhere online I can find.

So I'm sitting here typing, listening to the guitar solo at around three minutes in, wondering how much I want to try to transcribe lyrics myself. Maybe just the chorus; that's always a good thing. Maybe that's what I want to leave you with.

Driver please
I'm too young to be bleeding
Dead on the side of the road
And I'll take what you give me
I will take what you give me
As long as I live 'till I'm old