So… if nothing else, 2012 proved that by George the Mayans had it all kinds of right: this year proved a renaissance of apocalyptic proportions – a year when the culturally amnesiatic cynics failed to recognize a sea change over the screams of their own skeptic scoffs… alas, even in the midst of privately-backed Super-PAC pocketed media, bindered women, NRA publicity stunts, mass school shootings, a deluge of false formations and knowledge starvation, the spectacle’s continued triumph over literacy shrugged – and oh, Sandy; even in the midst of all that, there was music – glorious music – because after all, to mark the fall, the birth of tragedy is forever conceived in the spirit of music.
Somewhere along the 365 steps on the road to perdition, albums debuted, someone named Franked caused an Ocean of tears, a boy named Ken lamented the m.a.a.d. urban terrain, and Fiona spun the wheel while time idly passed by… but this isn’t about them – although everything else prior has unremarkably revolved around the former two – this list is about five albums I listened to, five albums I didn’t need people to tell me I liked, five works that are tragic in their own right, five that may not be cool, may be too young for school, but five that at the end of the day reminded me of what “those” Mayans might play had they lived to see this day…
Music 4 TNGRS – Chester French
Beyond the prominent production, the ever-enveloping electronic environment, it is the enduring lyrics that take us back to the playground. Some songs are like long-lost love notes, retrieved from a time capsule beneath the sandbox, or somewhere under a tree in the quad. Other songs take it back to the cyber sandbox of whichever social network was your shelter, reading along like a comment your present-day self would leave your former self. That’s what I dig most about the album. It doesn’t try to be anything it’s not. It is a 2012 LP of the mixtape you would have made for your Post-9/11-But-Pre-Katrina-So-There’s-Still-Hope self, about yourself, now. I also like it because … I’m a TNGR and it’s my kind of music.
I can’t believe this all came from dust, and that all of some people I love
I can’t believe that I might just be projecting a dream,
and I hope this finds you when things are good, and I hope that you’re not facing loss
and I hope, yeah I hope, you find someone out there who loves you a lot
The music maker and his masses… from the Dust Bowl we came, through the Angel Dusted star trails we conquered, and by the foolish gold dust we were quelled… that quarterlife lived, that life only lived once, that existence an increasingly intangible reflection of assumed materialized mastery… these time capsuled lyrics in a bottle, God-willing will return to their sender in the light of prosperity, the glow of a renaissance and rebirth from the ashes of this dark apocalypse… and above and beyond all of this, there is the enduring wish that one, and we, at some point find love in the wake of loss…
(The) Epochauserie 