catchyouonthebside
catchyouonthebside
Catch You on the B-Side!
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"All is quiet, except for this song." (Joy - Against Me!)
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catchyouonthebside Ā· 6 years ago
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Haunted By Ghosts - HowĀ ā€˜Sister Cities’ Helped Me Come to Terms With Acceptance
Death is, unfortunately, pretty inevitable.
I’m the kind of person who will do whatever I can to deal with it when it happens rather than dwelling on it. I don’t handle it well regardless of what kind of form I’m facing it in; all cinemas in a five mile radius of Cannock can tell you what kind of state I was in by the end ofĀ Avengers: Endgame.Ā However, if you’re reading this, more likely than not you understand what it’s like to hit the stage where you wake up and someone you care about just isn’t here any more, and there’s nothing you can do. It’s a stage which I hate being in because I don’t know how to deal with it - should I be sad? Angry? Was there something more I could have done? Was there more I should have said? And so on.
Just over two years ago, I lost someone close to me. I was in the hospital with her with my family when they passed, and being there for that moment is something that will stay with me forever. One moment they were lying in the hospital bed across from me, and by the time I had drawn my next breath they had gone. It was a bizarre experience for all the wrong reasons; I’d encountered death before and I knew it was hard, but I’d never been in the room to witness it happen. This was something we’d know about for about a year, something I’d constantly been telling myself I’d been braced for - but the reality was I was when I thought I was braced, I was merely driving pretending I was wearing a seat belt. I remember some moments unfortunately vividly, like sitting outside the room afterwards trying to process everything that had happened, or climbing onto the roof with my cousin and just sitting there with him. I also remember driving home with my Mom, andĀ I PromiseĀ by Radiohead coming on the radio, and the opening lineĀ ā€˜I won’t run away no more, I promise’ felt like a sign from above telling me everything would be okay - even now I look back at that moment and feel like something was guiding me to that song, and I used it to help me through the healing process. Yet for months, I couldn’t shift it all from my head. I felt l was doing the opposite to what Yorke had sang at me those nights ago - I was running away from how I felt and I couldn’t address it because I didn’t know how, and I felt myself sinking lower and lower from a year that in a rain that started in January and left me drenched through December and into the new year.
April 2018 was where for the first time I started addressing it to myself. In the mail arrived my copy ofĀ Sister Cities, the new (at the time) album by one of my all time favourite bands, The Wonder Years. Every album I’ve loved of theirs, but there’s major change with every iteration.Ā 
The opening track of each album shows a shift, both lyrically and musically. Their first album,Ā The Upsides, is one big generic pop-punk cluster (and I don’t mean that in a bad way, the album is amazing) - yet from the get go, the lyrical mastery of Dan Campbell is prevalent. TheĀ ā€œI’m not sad any more, I’m just tired of this placeā€ opening line of ā€˜My Last Semester’ carries all the way to the final track of the album, showing the world that by digging through the pop-punk riffs and humorous lyrics about feeling socially awkward at parties, there’s depth to be found at the bottom.Ā 
(For the record, I’m aware thatĀ Get Stoked On It!Ā isĀ technicallyĀ their first album, but considering the band don’t play any of the songs live and have actively said they hate it, for the purpose of this I’m choosing to ignore it.)
ā€˜Came Out Swinging’ opens up second (third?) albumĀ Suburbia I’ve Given You All and Now I’m NothingĀ with Allen Ginsberg reading an excerpt from one of his poems, before bursting into an outlook onto the band’s life after touring through the first (second? I swear I’ll stop doing this now…) album. I get a sense that in this album, the band seem to have carried the torch ofĀ The UpsidesĀ on - yet somehow, differently. Change is inevitable, but rather than it seeming like a stranger knocking at your door, the change of style sweeps in like your best friend coming over for a cup of tea.Ā The Greatest GenerationĀ indicates it with a genuine sincerity from Dan singingĀ ā€œI’m sorry I don’t laugh at the right timesā€ during opening trackĀ ā€˜There, There’. The openness continues not only through this album but into the next, withĀ ā€˜Cardinals’ seeming more like a confessional of not helping a friend in need than an opener toĀ No Closer to Heaven. However, their (at this moment in time) most recent album that resonated me most over their five (six? Okay, I’m serious now.) album run that spoke to me intensely personally. This album didn’t just impact me because of the lyrical themes, but because to me it felt like in the time I’d spent listening to the band, I’d grown and evolved as a person alongside the band.
I didn’t know what to expect from this album - I never do when I listen to their music for the first time, but listening to the two songs they’d released before the album dropped, theĀ title trackĀ andĀ Pyramids of Salt, gave me indication this wasn’t something I could anticipate like I’d done it a million times before. It’s like they’d shed their pop-punk cocoon and become an atmospheric, alternative rock being unlike what I’d heard from them previously.
Album openerĀ Raining in KyotoĀ instantly refers to Campbell’s grief of losing a loved one while on tour and about his guilt for not being around for the funeral. The lines ā€œIt’s been over a year now, April turns into May/I’ve barely stopped moving, I’ve been so fucking afraid/Too much of a coward to even visit your graveā€ hit me like a ton of bricks, as much did the rest of the album to come. I even felt deep relation the choruses where he mentions sitting in hospital beside the person in question, as it took me back to the months we’d been visiting where I wished we could just take her home and everything would somehow be okay. Listening through, the way I personally interpreted the album was Campbell running away from grief while going around the world, and by the end of the album coming home and coming to terms with everything - not letting go, but forgiving yourself of blame. Even months, years even, after these events, I still read the lyrics to the songs on this album and find new meaning to them. I remember being so lost I was walking around my neighbourhood at 3am, andĀ ā€˜We Look Like Lightning’ came on and I just understood - I felt likeĀ ā€œthe stranger in my bedā€, yet all of a sudden it was like everything made sense, and soon after I went home. I felt the weight of ā€˜The Ghosts of Right Now’ and ā€˜Pyramids of Salt’ -Ā the lyricsĀ ā€œI wanna take you somewhere safer/Pull your pain out with my teethā€ from the former and ā€œI’m helpess/And you’re drowning/And I’m beating at the water here so desperatelyā€ from the latterĀ reminded of everything we’d known was coming, everything I wish I could have done but everything I’d chosen to push to the back of my mind about due to fear and denial.
The whole album is a journey of grief and acceptance, and although I thank every song as a whole for helping me through the process, closing track ā€˜The Ocean Grew Hands to Hold Me’ was my crutch for most of my healing. It was like I’d been looking for someone to blame for a long time, and I used to blame God a lot for not answering any prayers I’d given during the longest night of my life, and it was like Campbell felt the same. Even down to the the little things, like the lyricĀ ā€œI came to numb my lungs in the salt airā€ reminding me of sitting on the hospital roof with my cousin. I remember crying when I heard the lyricsĀ ā€œI’ll hold you with my left hand and ball up my right/And if the bastards come for the both of us, I’ll be right there by your side/I’m by your sideā€ for the first time (and almost every subsequent time after that) because I felt like when we were there just as the moment came, looking after who we lost. As the song wrapped up and my first of what feels like thousands of listens of the album came to an end, I remember sitting in silence for a moment and absorbing what I’d just heard. I listened constantly for the next few weeks and the album inspired me to come to terms with what had happened almost a year before and to carry the torch for who we’d lost. Now, every time I listen to this album I feel a sense of reflection - that I can feel who I’ve lost looking down and telling me that it’s okay to carry on.
Grief is hard to get through, but having things to keep you going helps you focus on the here and now. I couldn’t ever thank The Wonder Years enough for releasingĀ Sister CitiesĀ when they did, and I don’t know what I’d have done without it. I would like to thank my friends and family for helping me through one of the roughest 8 months of my life, even if they didn’t know it. If you made it through thisĀ ā€œlittleā€ piece (which turned into me basically gushing about the album), then thanks for coming on this journey with me and listening to what I had to say. Finally, I want to say thanks to my Nan, who’s courage and strength I I will forever admire and hopefully one day be able to achieve.
Death may be one hell of a hurdle to overcome, but the memories you make with the people you love keep them alive forever.
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