A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I have my own version of that: The road to renewed happiness starts when you go outside and pick up the first pile of dog shit.
We have a dog who I love very deeply. He really is my best friend. He spends a lot of his day running around in our large fenced backyard, chasing small animals, conversing with his friends through the fence, and crapping all over the place. I get into these funks sometimes where I don't really venture outside much during the day. The poop builds up, both literally and metaphorically. It was during one of these periods for me when Laura Stevenson started releasing singles from her latest album Cocksure.
I loved Stevenson's last record, Wheel. With bits of country and folk accompanying her beautiful voice, Stevenson sang of the plodding nature of life and worried about being unbalanced and a liar. The perspective is similar on Cocksure, but this time Stevenson's self deprecation comes bundled with loud guitars and power pop hooks. That's probably helped along by the fact that her old Bomb The Music Industry! bandmate, Jeff Rosenstock, produced.
"Out with a Whimper" kicks things off with a loud, opening chord. The song is one of the slower burns on the record, as Stevenson belts ("Telluride"-style) over increasingly urgent guitars. She sings of toxic dissatisfaction and disaffection: "We're here while we're here, but I fear we're not here while we're here."
That nearly five-minute opener gives way to the album's two, roughly three-minute, singles. "Torch Song" is bouncy, poppy. On it, Stevenson sounds like she's dealing with the insecurity that accompanies a long-distance relationship.
"Jellyfish" could be my theme song. I've read several reviews of Cocksure that comment on the fact that the album buries its sometimes pretty downer lyrics in power pop or pop punky melodies. That's true, but it doesn't seem so incongruous to me. When I've spent far too long "at home and indoors," when I'm feeling that "I'm wasting away my life and gifts on being a piece of shit" like Stevenson does on "Jellyfish," I rarely turn to something sad and mopey. I turn to something like "Jellyfish," with its loud guitars, feedback, and four-letter words.
The theme of spending too much time "at home and indoors" pops up a couple of times. "Diet of Worms" is a louder version of the country sounds on Wheel. The song finds Stevenson looking down on the world as she sits alone in her room, judging and feeling like an asshole for it: "And I suffer fools like you. And I suffer fools all my life. And I will blow my hot air." On the frantic and punky "Happier, Etc.," we get, "My big blue house, A sinking pit and I'm sinking into it."
"Fine Print" finds Stevenson's character at the altar giving her betrothed one, final warning about all the stuff rolling around inside her head. "There's a monster under all this tulle. You'll never get out."
"Life Is Long" runs with an upbeat, driving song quality that finds Stevenson declaring, "I don't wanna be sick no more." This is one of those cases, I think, where the upbeat nature of the song -- and even that statement taken out of context -- is hiding something pretty dark right in plain sight.
Set closer, "Tom Sawyer/You Know Where You Can Find Me," harkens back to some of Stevenson's more singer / songwriter-style work, but it has its bursts of rock energy. It could be a companion piece to "Life Is Long" with lines like "Does it hurt more where you are?"
As I read through the above, I'm starting to think that I picked out some of the darker aspects of Cocksure to highlight. One thing I want to be clear about, though, is that this is a rock record. In most places, it's loud, noisy and full of rock and roll energy. And that's the way I like it.
There's definitely a time and a place for sitting and wallowing with your insecurities. But sometimes it takes a little anger or ass-kicking to make you want to do something about them. To get you out there picking up that dog shit.
Cocksure is out now on Don Giovanni Records.
No comments :
Post a Comment