UnquietDreams
Magna Cum Louder
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Day 3: Your favorite post break-up songs
My favorite I posted previously for another prompt, and I try not to reuse since there are so many great post-break-up songs. And there are almost as many different flavors: angry, sad, happy, vindicated, resolute, hopeful, broken, so many others.
This is Blind Pilot. They are originally from a tiny town at the tip of the Oregon Coast called Astoria. If you saw The Goonies, that took place in Astoria, though a lot of scenes were in Cannon Beach. (Just last month I was in the State Park where they built the restaurant, which is just a beautiful place.) In Astoria, you can find The Goonie House, but usually the owners don't want people traipsing all around their house for some reason. Dude, you don't want Goonie Tourists, don't buy the Goondocks. And I'm sorry to break it to you, there is no underground Astoria, no wishing well, and no pirates either. (I like the movie in concept better than the movie itself). Yes, that was a long aside, but I love Astoria.
Blind Pilot is an indie pop folk band, but they are not in the "Stomp/Clap/Hey!" side of that genre. Aside two: I have tried very hard, but I cannot connect with Noah Kahan. I have several friends who love his work, musically and lyrically, so I have tried, but it doesn't sing to me. One of them said it was because I wasn't a New Englander. But the reaction they had to the title song from his latest album was very similar to the reaction I had to "Umpqua Rushing," so maybe it is because I am a child of the PNW, and it is a regional vocabulary. We don't have a "season of the sticks," but we do get forest fires and river floods. Umpqua is the name of both a river and the forest it runs through, and both are part of the metaphor that sings through this. Fire runs all directions, changes everything, and floods wash over you. And it works.
This is a song about confusion, and pain, and the feelings of inadequacy you get when someone leaves you. It is also about the fear they have moved on to someone else. It is about a lot, all at once, and I have been listening to it almost non-stop for a while. It's a bit stream of consciousness, and a bit dreamy, and I love Israel Nebeker's vocals in here. But the part that sings to my soul isn't a lyric, or a note. Just as the track starts, before the music, there is a very small sigh. I read into it, of course, but we all read into art. In that exhalation, I hear resignation -- the knowledge that this isn't going to change anything. It is the sound of a lacking words, but still needing to speak.
I feel that breath so fucking much.
"Umpqua Rushing," Blind Pilot
My favorite I posted previously for another prompt, and I try not to reuse since there are so many great post-break-up songs. And there are almost as many different flavors: angry, sad, happy, vindicated, resolute, hopeful, broken, so many others.
This is Blind Pilot. They are originally from a tiny town at the tip of the Oregon Coast called Astoria. If you saw The Goonies, that took place in Astoria, though a lot of scenes were in Cannon Beach. (Just last month I was in the State Park where they built the restaurant, which is just a beautiful place.) In Astoria, you can find The Goonie House, but usually the owners don't want people traipsing all around their house for some reason. Dude, you don't want Goonie Tourists, don't buy the Goondocks. And I'm sorry to break it to you, there is no underground Astoria, no wishing well, and no pirates either. (I like the movie in concept better than the movie itself). Yes, that was a long aside, but I love Astoria.
Blind Pilot is an indie pop folk band, but they are not in the "Stomp/Clap/Hey!" side of that genre. Aside two: I have tried very hard, but I cannot connect with Noah Kahan. I have several friends who love his work, musically and lyrically, so I have tried, but it doesn't sing to me. One of them said it was because I wasn't a New Englander. But the reaction they had to the title song from his latest album was very similar to the reaction I had to "Umpqua Rushing," so maybe it is because I am a child of the PNW, and it is a regional vocabulary. We don't have a "season of the sticks," but we do get forest fires and river floods. Umpqua is the name of both a river and the forest it runs through, and both are part of the metaphor that sings through this. Fire runs all directions, changes everything, and floods wash over you. And it works.
This is a song about confusion, and pain, and the feelings of inadequacy you get when someone leaves you. It is also about the fear they have moved on to someone else. It is about a lot, all at once, and I have been listening to it almost non-stop for a while. It's a bit stream of consciousness, and a bit dreamy, and I love Israel Nebeker's vocals in here. But the part that sings to my soul isn't a lyric, or a note. Just as the track starts, before the music, there is a very small sigh. I read into it, of course, but we all read into art. In that exhalation, I hear resignation -- the knowledge that this isn't going to change anything. It is the sound of a lacking words, but still needing to speak.
I feel that breath so fucking much.
"Umpqua Rushing," Blind Pilot
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