A Complete Explanation Of Everything

Years ago.

And I mean literally years ago.

Myself and my mate, "lil' Dave", currently living in China, were throwing around demo name ideas for a laugh. And a sort of joint effort was the title of this entry, I don't know why but I'm in the mood to explore, for our general edification, the sort of dark music that makes me up today.

And before we start, please bear in mind that I don't find these songs depressing per se, they tend to cheer me up, they're cathartic at the very least and sometimes just sitting down and listing or plucking them on a guitar will pick up my mood.

That kinda comes round to the whole Jeff Tweedy (lead singer - Wilco) argument, that songs aren't written to change your mood, you're in that mood and you choose songs to reflect what you're feeling until you don't feel that way no more but that's an argument for a whole other day.

What are my top depressing tunes? My Mum came home with a book ages ago, that was penned along those lines, I was suitably unimpressed with the songs chosen of course.

"Hurt", both versions was about the only one that could readily be agreed with. There was a Nirvana entry but I can't think for the life of me what it was, however, if I was going to kick off with a Nirvana and I'm going to... I'd choose...

"Heart Shaped Box"

Kurt had heavier, more intense, more oblique songs perhaps but this one really hits the money for me, in a more believable way I guess.

Choice lines such as:

"Cut myself on Angel Hair and baby's breath"

"I wish I could reach your cancer when you turn black"

& the killer:

"Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back"

Combined with the known pain of the author, whether self inflicted or whatever, well, it just speaks to me on a subconscious level.

Anyway, enough of the obvious, if you're still reading at this point, it's because you're interested in hearing about some songs that could help you out of an emotional rollercoaster which has hit rock bottom. So here are my top picks, you may not have heard!

Uncle Tupelo / Jeff Tweedy: "Black Eye"

This was Jeff's first band, he played bass before moving up to guitar until things eventually turned nasty with his co-collaborator, Jay Farrar. Jay left and formed a new band, Son Volt, and Jeff pretty much took the remaining Tupelo musicians and turned them into Wilco.

One thing you have to credit Farrar with was giving Jeff his head, he allowed him to play his songs in the band when he was very much the junior partner and although Farrar told Jeff to sing his own songs, in a manner that was probably equal parts disparaging / encouraging, it was still quite a liberating thing to do. And it lead to some great music both for Tupelo and it's future incarnations.

"Black Eye" was a Jeff song and it's just fronted up on the records with a single acoustic guitar, with a couple of overdubs. It clocks in at just over two minutes and as it's so short, here are the full lyrics:

"He had a black eye
He was proud of
Like some of his friends
It made him feel somewhere outside
Of everything and everywhere he'd been

Like his brothers
He emptied himself
And played it safe
Like their father
He wanted to remember
But he almost always
Forgot what he was gonna say

Black eye
Black eye

When he realized
That this one was here to stay
He took down
All the mirrors in the hallway
And thought only of his younger face

Black eye
Black eye"

As you can garner, it deals mainly with the themes of growing old... The unspoken, irreparable damage of age to the physical form. It twists youthful exuberance on it's head and juxtaposes it with the old man in the hallway.

We've all had one of those moments and we're going to have a lot more of them in the future. But, what redeems this from being a pointless exercise in the bleak, is that's it a central and shared human experience and those that are fortunate to have the opportunity to live a life where they can grow old, can rejoice in that.

Ryan Adams - "Dear Chicago"

I fulfilled one of my life's ambitions last year. Sit in a bar in Chicago and hum this to myself, en route to New York. If you ever get to Chicago, find the bar. It's called: "Aliveone". It's skit is that it has a jukebox full of live music tracks and it probably is, the best jukebox in the world.

Anyway, coming back to the tune, this is a song that Ryan Adams has apparently being carrying in his live set for many a year, at least in his post Whiskeytown days. Which is unusual because as much as any artist, he's progressed his music to the point where he seems to have difficulty countenancing the old material to any great degree. I can attest to this because when he played the Olympia in Dublin at the start of winter, the older tunes were generally treated to a more straight ahead country take thanks to the backing band, the Cardinals, but "Dear Chicago" was left to fend for itself, like a plaintive sigh, a hot breath condensing on the air in the cold winter.

At least that's how I visualise the song anyway.

Basically, it's your standard boy tells girl you know I met someone but hell, she could never compare to you even though you ditched me but you know I think I'm getting past all that now and I'm in a place where I can finally move on fare.

And christ! Who hasn't had one of those.

And it's a bitter, twisted, ironic take on life in the lines inbetween.

"Nothing breathes here in the cold.
Nothing moves or even smiles.
I've been thinking some of suicide.
But there's bars out here for miles."

The bars will save you, they saved me and they saved Ryan.

But the closing line's the charm...

"New York City, you're almost gone.
I think that I've fallen out of love,
I think I've fallen out of love... with you."

Billy Bragg - "St. Swithin's Day"

Monsieur Bragg, kicking it old skool. Billy, for the uninitiated was an original in many senses. One of the first of the real DIY merchants, he began by taking an amplifier on his back and guitar in hand and playing up and down the UK, as his atonal efforts failed to dent the business end of the charts. He had a relative hit with a "A New England" but managed through sheer tenacity to develop a respectable album oriented following that respected Billy for both his passionate support of the Miner's strike, his political songs and the honest approach of his paeans to lovelorn disaster.

"St. Swithin's Day" is one such tune and was actually covered years later by the female vocal fronted, The Sundays. Who incidentally post two of my favourite covers of all time, "St. Swithin's Day" and a beautiful version of the Stone's classic, "Wild Horses".

Billy didn't play acoustic guitar because well, he only had one guitar when he was touring. So he adopted a unique approach, without back up, he played. This gives his records, a sort of stark nature but also their power. "St. Swithin's Day" plays this straight down the line, the arpeggio like slow intro, setting the mood, the spaces in the music, you fill in with your mind.

Billy's voice wasn't exactly an oil painting but on this tune, he does a decent job, again it's the honesty of the emotional engagement and the familiar theme that brings fragile redemption to what essentially is depressing subject matter.

"The polaroids that hold us together
Will surely fade away
Like the love that we spoke of forever
On St. Swithin's day"

There you have it then.

Three from the bottom of the drawer.

When you're in the bottom of the drawer yourself!