give yourself a rest / give yourself some room
you can’t get your arms around everybody / you cannot carry the doom
A few weeks ago, I finally remembered what day it was in time to tune in for one of the livestream concerts that Katie Crutchfield was doing as a way to perform all of her Waxahatchee albums, one per week, track by track. I caught the last one, her performance of Saint Cloud - an album which rapidly became a comfort blanket upon its release near the start of the shutdowns here.
Early on in quarantine, I frantically “attended” concerts on instagram (dismal) and youtube (better?) as a way of grasping at something I wasn’t willing to think about losing. The novelty of living rooms and extended banter and poor syncing issues and all the damn reaction emojis wore off quickly. After the first couple weeks I became largely allergic to the concept and started trying to make peace with the idea that this may very well turn out to be a year where I can count the number of concerts I attend on one finger.
When I’m feeling cheeky, it’s the middle one.
One of the concerts I would have attended had this year not gone so sideways was for Waxahatchee’s tour promoting Saint Cloud, and since I’ve streamed it so many times the cassette would have worn out, and that cancelled ticket had already been refunded, it only seemed right to funnel my money back in that direction and buy one for the livestream.
And maybe it’s because I’m feeling more sentimental than cheeky these days, or because it’s been months and months at home at this point and a very long time since I’ve been in communion with people in a way that wasn’t centered around work or grief, but the “concert” came closer to feeling like the real thing than I would have thought it could.
I was having a shit day - the kind of shit day I probably would have used as an excuse to bow out of a concert on a work night in the before times. But I’d bought a ticket and I didn’t have to worry about finding a parking spot, or the right way to hold my keys for a walk across a dark parking lot, I didn’t have to skip dinner to rush to the venue because the venue was my couch…
And a few songs in, I could feel the weight of the day starting to fall away bit by bit, and by the time the comment box next to the video feed erupted with stranger after stranger chiming in with “LIT UP” at the exact moment of “The Eye” that you’d expect to feel that same swell in person, I was mouthing the words, too.
—
The following week, I bought a ticket for a similar livestream being put on by Hand Habits and Angel Olsen. I caught the Hand Habits set, including a near holy duet of a cover of Tom Petty’s “Walls”, but had something come up a few songs into Angel Olsen’s and had to step away.
When I went back to finish watching it a few days later the stream was gone and that felt so very right. It’s not as though you can duck out of a concert early when life happens inconveniently, and then go and knock on the door of the venue on a day that works better for your calendar and expect to still catch the ending.**
And somehow the fact that they’d preserved that notion of the ephemeral (when it would have been so easy not to) endeared me more to the concept of these things. Made them feel more like an event than a re-run. Made it feel something closer to normal.
And I started to realize that these shows are not and will never be a true substitute for a real show, but they may be a salve for the continuing strangeness of these times.
—
**Though, perhaps, the small part of me that is still vaguely bitter about the time in high school a boy I was seeing convinced me to leave before the end of a St. Vincent show to spend time together before my curfew wishes that you could. There were, it turned out, plenty more opportunities to go make out in the woods, but I doubt Annie Clark will ever play the Mohawk again and I’ll never get that encore back.
Waxahatchee was joined by Kevin Morby and a heart-thawing dose of joy, for an encore that included covers of Songs: Ohia, Silver Jews, and Bob Dylan. And my open tabs weren’t all that embarrassing. I do still need help figuring out which Ganser shirt to buy.
playlists:
I do not remember the particular insomnia rabbit hole that brought me to this particular song by The Orchids but it ended up feeling like an excuse to listen to a lot of Mazzy Star, and this playlist born out of the concept of the song, which I may like more than the song itself, is the most cohesive vibe I’ve pulled off in a while: something for the longing.
Needed another excuse to wear a cowboy hat in my house, made another Western Wednesdays playlist: …Of the Highways Edition.
I spend a lot of time thinking about surfing for someone who can only barely swim enough to not drown. I spend a lot of time thinking about traveling for someone who may be becoming such a recluse in this pandemic that the grocery store feels like a trip into strange lands. Here’s a weird playlist I made that’s sort of about surfing and traveling and mostly about things that sound like not being home: surfing other shores
albums:
The Beth’s new album, Jump Rope Gazers, is so good for highway driving and feeling like it is summer and I’m not yet old and there are possibilities on the horizon and I wish that there was more driving to do than just some laps around town to make sure the battery in my car doesn’t die. Looking forward to the day this carries me away on a road trip.
If the only thing good about Jarvis Cocker’s new album under the not-quite-a-moniker of Jarv Is was the line on “I don’t want to dance with the devil, but do you mind if I tap my foot?” (from “Am I Missing Something?”), I would still probably be recommending you give it a listen. That is one good thing, but far from the only. Listen to Beyond the Pale.
I can’t stop listening to the album Ideal Corners, released back in May (or a whole lifetime ago) by the band Candace. It goes down deceptively easy for something that rewards so much on a re-listen.
songs:
Though the full concert is gone, you can still watch the Hand Habits and Angel Olsen duet on “Walls” here. You should.
Speaking of Hand Habits, you can also listen to Meg Duffy cover A.A. Bondy’s “When The Devil’s Loose” as performed for Aquarium Drunkard, on Bandcamp now. A good reminder that the original album, by the same name is hauntingly exquisite. This is not really a summer album, but this is not really a summer.
Speaking of cover songs, Shannon Lay and Steve Gunn did a great one of Blaze Foley’s “Clay Pigeons” in what I assume was a dual tribute - to Foley, the man who made it, and to John Prine, who made it known.
you know the drill - Listen to Ted Hawkins.