A lot of great music came out in 2014. Some from bands I've listened to for years, some from bands completely new to me. I tried to use the #RockMySocksReview to show what I enjoyed throughout the year, but here's what I listened to again and again and again from this year (in no particular order):
Protomartyr's Under Color Of Official Right
A Sunny Day in Glasgow's Sea When Absent
Lower's Seek Warmer Climes
Iceage's Plowing Into the Field of Love
Ovlov's Am
Ex Hex's Rips
White Lung's Deep Fantasy
Cloud Nothing's Here and Nowhere Else
Fucked Up's Glass Boys
Speedy Ortiz's Real Hair 12"
St. Vincent's ST
Cheatahs' ST
Priests' Bodies and Control and Money and Power
Cayetana's Nervous Like Me
Little Big League's Tropical Jinx
Two Inch Astronaut's Foulbrood
LVL UP's Hoodwink'd
EMA's The Future's Void
Bleeding Rainbow's Interrupt
Honorable Mentions:
TEEN's The Way and the Color (but mostly because of "Tied Up Tied Down")
Perfect Pussy's Say Yes to Love (because of amazing lyrics and their awesomely energetic live shows)
White Reaper's ST 12" (it's hard to listen to a 12" again and again and again. It's over so quick)
#RockMySocksReview: Fucked Up live at King's Barcade
Rating: HOLY SHIT THAT WAS SO AWESOME I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT SOCKS ARE ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!!
Because I've been waiting to see Fucked Up for over 9 years, and they're THE most important hardcore band to me since Minor Threat, I'm going to actually write a review. Here goes...
Punk rock and hardcore are inherently about youth and anger and revolution. The problem with then being a fan of punk rock and hardcore is that these things don't last--they can't. And it really has nothing to do with growing up or maturing--two concepts that I'm still not sure actually exist. Rather, this has to do with aging. Because you just can't stop aging. You might or might not grow up, you might or might not mature, but you will certainly age because time just won't stop passing--and eventually sprinting--by.
And that's what Fucked Up's new album Glass Boys is about to me: time doesn't stop, and we will age, and what does that mean for your 30-something punk rocker who still worships youth and anger and revolution? (Can you tell I'm very nearly 30?)
Lines like "Nothing sounds like the source. Time slows that force" address the pain of memories of your past selves and past experiences, and how certain experiences dull or seem less important as time passes. "When we turn away, the kids just aren't the same, new ways to vibrate, I can't hear it, I can't relate, I can't change again" address aging while performing for an age-group that seemingly remains ageless. Simultaneously the fear that either you are changing or your audience is changing--and which one is worse. "We traded our moral high ground so they would sing along. But is it so bad? Is it as dark as it seems? To trade a little purity to prolong the dream? One by one we will find a way to let each and every one down. It's the privilege of mass delusion" addresses self-guilt and self-betrayal to your younger selves. Doing things you swore you'd never do. Feeling like you've become someone your younger selves would detest. "Pretend the kids are strange. But it's me who has changed. I wish I could go back, glass boy. I'm afraid to grow up. And fuck my life up. So I just sit and turn to glass, boy" is an admission and acceptance of fear of aging and changing (i.e., growing up) and the realization that to not change is to become a touchstone to your past self (i.e., a "glass boy").
These fears of the inexorable march of time are something that everyone eventually encounters and attempts to comes to terms with--particularly in a youth-obsessed culture like ours. But again, for those who grew up in a privileged-as-fuck society and became resistant to the complacency of that privilege and turned to punk rock and hardcore because it seemed to echo and channel your anger and yearning for something new and something pure--well, I've seen people go in one of two directions as they have aged and realized that they are aging (and this of course on a continuum):
1) You become the war veteran. You keep your uniform on with the studs and the patches and the rest of the flair to remind others of your sacrifice but more importantly to remind yourself of the iconography you have absorbed and become. You live where you can, you stay off the grid, you become a touchstone. You become the incarnation of the prototypical "punk."
2) You become the associate professor--culturally bourgeoisie but economically proletariat. You throw away the uniform (if you ever had one) because you realize the pointlessness of the iconography and the other rituals. You stop moshing, you criticize and look down on those who dress in uniform all while turning your mementos and artifacts into treasure hordes kept and hidden somewhere well out of reach and sight of your new peer groups. All the while your ideals pull you toward systems and organizations seemingly bereft of the privilege and complacency you see everywhere else (like academia or non-profit), only to wonder day after day if there really is any difference.
As time goes on I find myself drifting closer and closer to option 2, all the while both idolizing and despising option 1. I feel like it's a sick sort of exoticism and othering sometimes. Either way, regardless of where you fall on that Continuum of the Aging Punk Kid (and if you don't think I'm being fair or even right then I don't give a fuck), I think Fucked Up have some answers. And I finally figured this out by seeing them live.
I saw Fucked Up take the stage at King's Barcade in Raleigh NC last night. King's is one of those rare intimate venues that doesn't make you feel like you're stuck in a closet, and it can get real fucking loud and real fucking packed with high-intensity energy. In other words--the perfect place to see Fucked Up. I was dead center at the front of the stage as the band came out, and for the first fifteen minutes Damian Abraham was bearing down on top of me in all his immeasurable and indescribable of madness and glee. He'd swing his microphone and scream and hug and direct the slamming of bodies in the crowd. Bodies would nearly jump over me to scream their lyrics at Damian, and he would put the microphone to them (and me) to shout our share.
As a unit, Fucked Up have figured out how to make intelligent, loud, exciting, and continually growing hardcore punk music. Each album is different and memorable and--yes--timeless. When they play live, they are a brick-fucking wall of sound. I was wearing earbuds and my hearing was still blasted the next day. Ben Cook, Jonah Falco, Mike Haliechuk, Sandy Miranda, and Josh Zucker are deliberate and thoughtful and precise as they build this wall, and Damian is the wrecking ball that smashes it over the heads of the crowd.
Live, Damian is the focus and spectacle and most joyous human being in the world. No one else matters as he yells and grunts and sweats and pounds his chest and smiles like a child with the greatest secret in the world as the rest of the band blasts on. And despite Glass Boys being so concerned with time (there's a fucking hourglass on album art! and the first thousand vinyl copies were sold as double albums with a "Slow Version" of all the songs with drums at half-measure!), they seem perfectly in sync with their existence. They seem like they are exactly where and when they are supposed to be--not old, not young, not the least concerned with how they look or with the punk/hardcore iconography--just six people who love sharing their music and thus sharing themselves with people who will listen and shout along.
The eponymous track on Glass Boys admits that to not accept aging and change is to make yourself a "glass boy"--a fragile and transparent touchstone to a part of you that existed in a different time and in many ways still forces your present self into that form simply because you don't want to betray yourself:
"The sand fills the glass, with all the hours in the past. In the air now, for someone else to get back. A million little stones. Put to fire, put to sound. Make the man you see and the one you will become"
But then the track and the album ends with acceptance:
"There's a tunnel at the end of the light where you will find me. There's a darkness at the end of the night that conceals me. I'm a glass boy. I'm a glass boy. I'm so scared boy. But I'm ready. So replace me. Just erase me. Let me sit here. And shine"
This is acceptance. Because the truth is who your younger self was cannot be changed. It has become hardened and solidified and turned to glass. It is a sacred artifact that will forever have existed, even if as time goes on it will decay (as memory does). So it doesn't have to control you, it doesn't have to be you, but it can certainly be an echo and a reminder of you are--because who you are is a collection of past selves that sit on a shelf until they are gone.
And maybe if you accept that, then you can be like Fucked Up. You can be your punk self and live and exist exactly in the present where you need to be. Maybe I can, too.
