get it? it's winter!
It's been foreverrr since I've put anything up here, but that doesn't mean I've stopped listening to music or thinking about it. I uh, just haven't had all that much time to write those thoughts down. But once in a while, I finish my undergrad, work 9-5 in the summers, come home, have supper...and have nothing to do but sit down, watch baseball, and listen to all the new music I've amassed.
So it's under these circumstances that I post something I wrote back in May, about The Rural Alberta Advantage's (then-new) album Departing, best described by Pitchfork calling it the "winter counterpart" to their summery-sounding debut Hometowns (profiled on this very blog right here). Now, I wouldn't say it's any better than that album, due in part to the more sombre feeling the whole thing evokes, but on its own, it's certainly a nice piece of work, worthy of many listens. What it lacks in peppiness, great-to-amazing drumming, and backing vocals (the sneaky-good elements that made Hometowns so great overall) make replays an exercise in tediousness though.
Either way, what I wrote back then had nothing to do with the music itself - I like The RAA and will listen to all their new stuff regardless. Instead, the first impression I got from the record -- listening to it on the drive to and from surfing in Lawrencetown -- was that lead singer Nils Edenloff either has an ironically self-conscious sense of humour when it comes to song-writing, or he's managed to become completely unoriginal at it.
Behold -- quite literally, if Nils would have his way -- all the different uses of the verb "hold", or the simple idea of "holding" itself, by The RAA on Departing. Hearing the first few instances of it, I chuckled. The next few, I smirked at the songwriting. The subsequent ones? I started laughing at the absurdity. At that point I decided that the band was either pulling our collective legs, or had run out of words to put into songs. Those were the only two options. Read on and see for yourself, while keeping in mind that most of these lines were repeated in the respective songs:
--- --- --- --- ---
"Two Lovers":
- “and if I ever hold you again/I hold you tight enough to crush your veins”
"The Breakup":
- “and I held you tight/we were waiting for the break-up”
"Under The Knife":
- “never gonna hold us/tear us apart when you/tear us apart tonight”
- “the devil’s gonna tear us apart/the fight is gonna tear us apart/my love is gonna hold you tight”
- “we’ll hold the mistakes for time/never wanna grow/never wanna grow old when I’m holding you close tonight”
"Muscle Relaxants":
- “I know and I know when I’m holding you/but you wouldn’t try to find…”
- “our hearts will slow and I know you’ll hold me tight”
"North Star":
- Nothing...surprisingly.
"Stamp":
- “hold me close while you can”
- “hold on lover/you’ll find another”
"Tornado ’87":
- “oh Lord I lost you/I held you tight, oh I/hold on to your love in the night”
- “oh Lord I found you/I held you tight”
- “I let you go/I let you go/I let you know that I hold you”
- “black sky comes and I hold you”
"Barnes’ Yard":
- “oh let’s lie down for another night/I’ll hold you close under these skies”
- “we struggle to tear ourselves apart in the night”
- “I was holding on to you/and you were holding me tight”
"Coldest Days":
- “Lord, Lord, it’s tearing us apart/the way the love is holding on to your heart”
- “I held you in the coldest days/I held you in the coldest ways”
- “I would never be the one to hold/your creaky chest is holding an empty stone/our love was holding on/through the frost-bitten dawn”
"Good Night":
- Nothing...because I think they ran out of ways to say "hold" and "held"
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