Wouldn't Want to if I Was in Your Shoes

I was listening to Saves the Day's fourth, and unjustly maligned, album In Reverie today for the first time in ages. Like pretty much everyone else in the world, I can agree that the album which preceded it, Stay What You Are, is miles better, but I can also see what they were going for on the follow-up. In Reverie leans a little more into contemporary rock territory than the light classic rock feel they dabbled in before and you would think that would lead them to better performance on rock music charts, but it didn't. Chris Conley used a very different singing style on the record because of vocal chord problems, but that can't be it, can it?

Anyways, this post is not about that album. It was only to introduce it! What a sneaky cold open!

After In Reverie finished, Saves the Day's Self-Titled started playing automatically in my iTunes.* I don't really have much of a bond to the record, but it does take me back to a time when they were one of my favourite bands and I was absolutely all-in on everything they did.

*I actually think this album is okay. There are a couple of pretty fun, poppy rock songs ("In the In Between", "The Tide of Our Times", "Stand in the Stars") that almost make you believe the band is on some next level late-career renaissance shit, but there's also enough slow boring stuff to convince you they should hang it up. All told, it's at least a good creative direction for a band who's been active for over 20 years. I can respect a band for still trying new things and "doing it" as opposed to just rehashing their most successful sound in a pandering way, like blink did on California.

I saw Saves the Day play at Pouzza Fest in Montreal the summer before Self-Titled came out. They played a new song at that show and I remember being pretty stoked on it, but that can also be chocked up to me seeing one of my favourite bands for the first time and having an all-around amazing time. Later that summer, they released "The Tide of Our Times" and my hopes were high on them putting out a solid follow-up to Daybreak, which I loved. As a fan of the band's entire discography up to that point, I was convinced that this would be another addition to a storied career. When it did come out, I gave it a decent amount of listens, but eventually found that it just didn't resonate with me like all of their past material did.

However, the feeling of anticipation I had before the record came out is exactly what I chase as a music fan. Watching an artist operate at the best of their abilities and put things out that matter to you is special. It's even more special when it's a lesser-known band and you get to have this relationship privately, just you and the music. I know that Saves the Day is a huge band, with singles that are a touchstone for the genre and nine full-length albums, but I got that feeling a little bit while waiting for Self-Titled to come out.

Today, I started to think about who I'm currently "all in" on. The obvious first one is Oso Oso, who I won't spend another post gushing about right now (I will take an opportunity to link to their newest single though, it's great!). Tony Molina is another. Since Bay Dream came out, I would say I'm getting there with Culture Abuse, as their "Police on my Back" cover, "Goo", and "Wartime Dub" have all been excellent.

This brings me to Baggage, the new(ish) band of Jono Diener, who was the drummer and one of the songwriters in IMU sentimental favourites The Swellers. So far, they've put out two excellent EPs that continue the 90's alternative/punk hybrid that The Swellers were moving towards on their last two albums. Maybe Jono's vocals were the secret sauce to me loving that band? Highly recommended!



Baggage recently signed to Smartpunk Records and are going to release their first full-length album later this summer. So far, they've released two songs from the record, "Horseshoe" up above and "Misophonia" below, and I find that I've been looking forward to the record more than many others that will come out in 2019. In terms of being all in, I'm not sure if I'm there with them yet, but a good record for me to blast while I'm all alone in a new apartment in Montreal will almost certainly put them there. Here's to hoping.

Speed On

As a person, I am very bad at evaluating the worth of what I'm currently doing. I tend to think all the things I've done in the past are miles better than what I'm currently working on and I immediately start to wonder why I've gotten so lazy and less motivated to produce writing and do cool stuff. I know that a lot of this is nonsense and is mostly just me idealizing the past, but I also rely on it to keep me working on things. If I don't beat myself a little bit, then I won't keep writing. It's just how it is!

Something I've done in the past is talk about the space that specific songs have carved out in my mind. I did one on "Motown Never Sounded So Good" by Less Than Jake and one on "Chicago" by Big D and the Kids Table.* Maybe there's more! I'm not going to check! I wouldn't say that either of those songs is an absolute tattoo-the-lyrics-on-my-arm favourite of mine, but they are tied to specific memories and do stir something inside me each time I listen to them. Maybe that does make them an all-time favourite. I don't know. When you've been consuming music for 20 years it gets harder to delineate your favourites like you did when you were a teenager and discovering the Arrogant Sons of Bitches.

*Most of IMU's titles are lyrics from songs. Oddly enough, neither of those two posts use lyrics from the song they're talking about it. Seems like a layup, no?

While remembering that series, I was listening to "Motor Away" by Guided by Voices, another song which will live in my brain forever, and bam, the next IMU post was born.



I had seen Guided by Voices name-checked in online music journalism many times in my youth, but assumed they sounded much different from their name. Since I was so deeply in love with punk music in my late teens and early twenties, I thought that indie rock was death and strictly for poseurs. Spacey, grandiose, and esoteric bands like the Arcade Fire (whose first record I now like) convinced me that any musician who deigned to think themselves an artist was clearly way too pretentious and not worth my time. This changed a little bit when I started to listen to Pavement and Superchunk, whose riffing and quasi-punkness showed my that there is good in the genre, but it's really something that stuck with me a while, and still kind of does (Animal Collective fucking blows ass bro).

The way that I discovered Guided by Voices was through a collection of covers by Sean Bonette of AJJ. I've for sure written about this release before, so I won't go deep into it, but it's a collection of lo-fi versions of his favourite songs from skate videos. It's great stuff and has stayed in constant rotation for me since its release.

http://quoteunquoterecords.com/qur076.htm

Among the songs he does is "Motor Away". Even though I knew a couple of the other songs, "Motor Away" had an immediate impact and I got that lightness in your chest and slight shiver when a song shoots right to your chest. I looked up the original right away and was shocked to find a trebly and fuzzy song that was in the middle of a 28-track album of 90-second songs. This was not what I expected Guided by Voices to be at all. I thought they were a, like, 6-part band from Scotland who used glockenspiel and shit, not a rough rock band from Ohio who ferociously put out songs.

I tend to really love bands who focus on output rather than meticulously crafting records. I think it stems from Bomb the Music Industry!'s early output, when Jeff Rosenstock was making everything himself on a laptop and putting out an album per year, having a deep impact on me as a teenager and that informing the way I look at all music now. When somebody has each song be just the execution of one idea and not fussing over it, it screams DIY to me in the most encouraging way. Rather than reading it as "the song isn't finished", which I guess some (I'm looking at you Duffer) could, I see it as valuing the process over the product. The art lies in all of us trying to do it and putting it out there. It's why I'm head over heels for Tony Molina right now.

What I find great about bands like GBV and BtMI! is that when the songs hit they really hit. The idea behind the song is so simple and complete that it doesn't need anything else, and that is beautiful. "Motor Away" is basically just two chords for most of the song, with simple guitar leads over that. The lyrics are just poetic enough to stir up images and ideas in you, without getting up their ass. A perfect song.

When I discovered Guided by Voices and "Motor Away", I was living in Kitchener. I had just started writing my thesis and Beat Noir was starting to work on Sovereignties. Rebecca and I were just past the one-year mark in our relationship and that was becoming more obviously one of the most important things to ever happen to me. I was living with Mark, Colin, Duff, Erik, and Jeff still, but commuting to school where I was on my own. I was becoming more independent and still doing some important thinking about who I was.

When I listen to "Motor Away", I see myself sitting on my bed in Kitchener with the door open and the song playing. Everyone else is home, but I'm doing my own thing in my room for the moment because I have school tomorrow. Maybe the seeds of me moving to Guelph and then back to Toronto, moving in with Rebecca, finishing my thesis and starting at the gallery are there and that's why "Come on, speed on" hit me so hard.