Track Listing from the Session
"Eleanor Rigby" by The Beatles (Jason S.)
"Reason to Believe" by Bruce Springsteen (Damon F.)
"Maybe" by Collective Soul (Matt K.)
"If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" by Manic Street Preachers (Phil J.)
"Atomic Man" by Portugal. The Man (Jason S.)
"Not" by Big Thief (Damon F.)
"Thrash Unreal" by Against Me! (Matt K.)
"Shooting Stars" by Rival Sons (Damon F.)
Participants
Jason S.
Damon F.
Matt K.
Phil J.
Spotify Playlist
Apple Playlist
Session Summary
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damon_ferrara
This session occurred in mid-June and while it is tough to say when exactly our country was collectively at its lowest point on 2020, I would see mid June had to be up (down?) there with the most difficult stretches. People were going stir crazy with the lockdowns and tensions were high with all of the social unrest. I turn to certain songs for perspective and inspiration during times like these the way many people turn to religious texts. One could argue that Bruce Springsteen is a rock and roll preacher so it shouldn’t be surprising that I turn to his songs often…one of them being “Reason to Believe” off his classic 1982 album, Nebraska. In the song, he tells a whole bunch of anecdotes involving different people at different stages of life all being presented with situations that would make a person question the meaning of life and what it is that makes a person continue to get up no matter how many times they’ve been knocked down…’how at the end of every hard-earned day, people find some reason to believe.’
Big Thief is one of the most highly regarded band in the indie rock scene today. And I didn’t even know who they were until I read about them and their 2019 album Two Hands in Paste Magazine’s list of Top 100 Indie Folk albums of all time. Frontperson, Adrienne Lenker has a voice is raw, vulnerable, powerful, and beautiful. Her lyrics are sharp and deeply personal. Musically, they masterfully fuse folk and rock. The song,”Not” is a masterpiece. Lyrically, the song goes through a list of things that are not ‘it’, all the while never saying what ‘it’ actually is. Perhaps I was/am reading to much into it, but I just got this sense that the song was a unique way to say that we’ll never actually be able to describe what ‘God’ is, but we there are infinite ways to say what it is not. Musically the song just gets more and more frenetic and her voice conveys greater and greater rage and vulnerability.
‘Not to die, not dying, not to laugh, not lying, not the vacant wildnerness vying. It’s not the room, not beginning, not the crowd, not winning, not the planet, not spinning.’