The song “Powers of Ten” by SUUNS gets me really keyed up, like drinking coffee to the point of grinding my teeth, nerve endings firing off with a generalized “pay attention!”. I can’t listen to it without moving along to it, but it’s not a groove, it’s a compulsion. The opening guitars put you in a holding pattern, a rapid strum barely progressing, and then the vocals come in, sounding like Thom Yorke through gritted teeth. Things die down, things crash in. The song keeps threatening to explode but it never does. Instead of a massive chorus, a cowbell comes in through the ruckus, almost a joke. At its most maximalist it still won’t give you release, it only compels you to keep its pace.
This playlist is full of songs that have a similar nervy energy. It’s the unpredictable outbursts of an alcoholic in “Cowboy Dan”, the yelps against fate of “Godman”, the keening wail of “Abating the Incarnation of Matter”. I can’t make it sound pleasant, but it’s alive. Music for raw nerves. The element that ties them all together for me is a certain stop/start tension. Things unfold and then close up again. The boulder goes up the hill and tumbles back down before cresting it.
“Satan in the Wait” is a tremendous song
The song that inspired me to make this playlist is “Satan in the Wait”, by Daughters, from You Won’t Get What You Want. Everyone was talking up that album when it came out, and it seemed up my alley, but I never got around to really checking it out. I still haven’t because “Satan in the Wait” knocked me on my fucking ass when I first really listened to it in April and I haven’t gotten it together to move past it yet. Daughters were known for being hardcore, but this is more of a Jesus-Lizard-gone-to-rot sound (so of course I put in a song by them as well).
A single drum hit is all the time you get before dueling guitars come in like tornado sirens. Just as you’ve gotten your bearings a deep bass throbbing comes in. It rumbles like the engine of heavy construction equipment. It feels like the heartbeat of some massive creature just out of sight, perhaps underground, perhaps right outside, but it pulses too quickly for that to be right.
A man is recounting something to you, it sounds dreadful, but he’s not hysterical, at least not yet. This world is opening up. And as he speaks, high, chiming guitars come in, like the full moon coming out from behind clouds. They sound like they could be from an Echo and the Bunnymen song, high glossy goth from the 80’s, but given the surrounding milieu they take on a terrible grandeur. It is an apocalypse in the etymological sense, a revelation. This world is opening up. Something beyond comprehension is here, huge but invisible, and this man seems attuned to it. Everything comes down for a minute, and all he says, calmer than he’s been for the last few minutes, is
Today's gonna feel like tomorrow some day
Tomorrow's gonna feel like yesterday
It’s not hope or wisdom or even explanation, just a brute statement of the inevitability of time. That is what is coming, and after the brief lull it all returns. This world is opening up.
Track listing
“Cowboy Dan”, Modest Mouse, The Lonesome Crowded West
“Satan in the Wait”, Daughters, You Won’t Get What You Want
“Godman”, Young Widows, Easy Pain
“Powers of Ten”, SUUNS, Images du Futur
“Flash Ram”, Brainiac, Electro Shock for President EP
“Then Comes Dudley”, Jesus Lizard, Goat
“The Pressure Keeps Me Alive”, Kowloon Walled City, Container Ships
“Abating the Incarnation of Matter”, Big Brave, Vital