Astoria: A Journey in Threes
“Everything happens, it happens in threes” a statement in trimeter, sung in 3/4 time, in an overture of 3 movements. Astoria is the title track off of the album, Astoria, the band Marianas Trench’s 3rd concept album, meant to emulate the coming-of-age 80’s movie soundtrack and heavily influenced by its namesake, The Goonies. This in mind, the metaphor of 3’s extends further to tell this story, referencing the superstition that bad things come in 3’s. The three movements of this piece reflect that, telling the story of the hardships of songwriter Josh Ramsay’s life post the highs of winning a Grammy for writing Call Me Maybe and landing a US record deal with his own band’s double-platinum album, Ever After. The movements follow the pain of learning his mother has Lewy Body Dementia and the rapid deterioration that followed, his struggle and consequential frustration in trying to write music that lived up to his recent success that led to his fiancé calling off their wedding, and finally, his resulting drinking problem that landed him in the hospital for pancreatitis.
The first lines of the song open over a synth motif, “Astoria, I’m warning you, / Not ready yet, not for you,” a shout into a void of reverb. These lines set the tone of the coming-of-age tale, never being prepared to grow up but being faced with the journey ahead. The next line, “Don’t want to know my darkest lows / my blackest pitch, murder of crows” enhances this denial as the notes descend. Each phrase starts with a step up one pitch followed by a fall of three steps, continuing this descent into adversity when forced to say, “goodbye mother’s fairy tale”. The entire first movement then references being forced to grow into adulthood by losing his mother. This is wrapped in a beautiful metaphor in the second verse of the first movement by the phrase, “slow rebirth,” that could mean two things, one is that Lewy Body Dementia attacks the brain so aggressively that it forces people “to the cradle again”, a common theme throughout the album of helping his mother as her adulthood disappears. The other option is that this is meant to talk about how these experiences reshaped who he was as a person and forced him to grow up, something he feels he struggled to do his whole life. This is followed by the desperation found in the lines, “Don’t remind me what the price is / When left to my own devices’ / Cause I'll find out in all due time / What happens to never say die”, saying that he feels he can’t be responsible for himself and can’t survive on his own. This is possibly a reference to the drinking problem that sent him to the hospital a year later. The use of “Never say die” from The Goonies is another example of this childhood mantra fading from his head, having to come to terms with the fact that someone he loves is dying and he is helpless. The movement ends referencing the role this played in his downward spiral to his hospitalization, mentioning, “I’ll say whatever doesn't make me stronger kills me / But it's going to be a long year / Till the hospital can find hope in me” Two new voices enter in a call and response. “Tell me I survive,” sings Miles Ramsay, the songwriter's father, shadowed by Josh Ramsay’s sister, Sarah, asking, “Do I survive you Astoria?” The repetition of the lines implies a growing urgency. This makes this moment a family struggle in which everyone is unsure if they can grow past this and learn to live without their mother or wife. This is finalized with a trio of Josh Ramsay joining his father and sister to sing, “Do you know everything happens / It happens in threes”, another layer of the metaphor of threes that leads into the second movement.
The second movement completely changes the musical motifs, taking away the rock drums and bright guitars and replacing it with fuzzy synthesizer over a heavy 4-on-the-floor pulsing bass drum beat. This introduces the first line, “A fever blur through names obscured”. You can immediately feel the drunkenness in the distant, quiet, haunting music, “And speech is slurred” confuses your brain with the layers of chorus and vocals that don’t quite line up and emphasize the onomatopoeia of “slur” by packing in alliteration with “speech” and elongating both S’s with a lingering, whispering, creepy voice that is distorted out of existence as the story of how he ended up here unfolds. “I'm on my own you came alone / All dressed up in bad news / I know you can hurt too / This would be the wrong move / Maybe we should leave soon”. To have come alone, dressed up in bad news meaning he is there alone as a direct response to something, presumably relationship issues. By the time we reach “This would be the wrong move” we get the impression of the rebound hookup contrasted with this hazed judgement. He knows its wrong and he’s going to do it anyway, made clear when he throws caution to the wall and sings, “Hey ever just say fuck it? / Maybe I'll drink this all away in buckets / Oh, hey, might as well say fuck it / I want to hurt myself until I love it”. This gets into the vice of drinking as a response to his mother’s health and his fiancé leaving him, the lack of parental guidance and being left to his own devices, his coping mechanisms having never formed past substance use and self-destructive behavior. “And the little deaths / Are a little less even if its just for a moment / Hey lets all say fuck it / I’m gonna make my mother so proud of it,” tells the listeners of the song that this is both a sardonic dig at his own behavior and feeling like he’s letting his mother down as well as letting the listener know that this is something he’s hurt over, that he so desperately wants to make his mother proud and he feels both that he as a person is incapable of being someone she could be proud of.
The final movement is ushered in by Josh Ramsay’s lead vocals screaming the main musical motif that has been present through the entire song while the set player goes crazy with drum fills and the bass and guitar hit their power chords to radiate and take up space underneath him in an epic climax of emotion. After the moment of silent reflection, the lines from the first movement return, “I'll say whatever doesn't make me stronger kills me / Buts its going to be a long year / Till the hospital might find hope in me”. Ramsay makes it a point to draw out the word “long” in a screaming belt that emphasizes just how much pain he’s going to go through that feels never-ending. The continued motif of tipping the common “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” on its head helps describe the catastrophic impact of all of these issues in his life, feeling like everything is so hard, taking such a large toll, that he’s slowly dying, that all this hardship is killing him. This leads to a desperate call and response of the title, “Astoria” between Josh Ramsay and his family on the album, one again in a set of three. The desperation of his scream contrasted with the angelic harmonies of his family’s support create such a dire dichotomy that completely changes the effect of the word. The calls for “Astoria” fade out and the only thing left is a desolate quiet filled only with the slow pings of a piano, so high it sounds like a music box slowing down to a stop, and single broken voice singing over it. These final lines feel like a lullaby, repeating the last wish in the night, “Let the melody save me Astoria / Let the melody save me Astoria”, feeling almost child-like, begging for help from some kind of savior. “The quid pro quo's that will compose / From esoteric to common prose” is the line wrapped in the most layers of metaphor. Quid pro quo’s being an exchange, a bargain, and esoteric to common meaning it is something that started obscure but became something common, constant and expected. The important words in this phrase then are “compose” and “prose”, which relate it to language, this is something that is being sung or said. Likely, this is then about denial and coming to terms with his mom’s health, his fiancé leaving him, and his drinking as a result that led to his hospitalization. It’s all a form of grieving, and the exchange happens in composing lies and attempts to deny and justify behavior. The more you try to convince yourself that things are okay, the more you say the same things, the same lies, until they are “common prose”. Finally, the song closes with a chorus of voices from the band, their families, and friends singing, “Astoria”, leading into an upward key change that provides a hint of hope at the end of the journey.
