Welcome to the 45th edition of Content Nausea. One time, I wrote the number 45 in a message unrelated politics, and unprompted, the recipient responded with, ‘45… [puke face emoji].’ We did not keep up a correspondence. You can read No. 44 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for continuing to be here, even as many people are no longer. Here is the welcome blog.
I watched the sky turn blue four or five times Sunday night when I drove down the New Jersey Turnpike through an apocalyptic rain storm. I went 30 mph in the right lane with my emergency flashers on and pulled over on the shoulder for a couple minutes to check the weather map to see if I could make it home to Philadelphia in one piece.
Spoiler alert: I did, and now you’re going to read this newsletter.
I felt pretty listless, music-wise, late last week, and when it came time to get in my car on Sunday morning to drive to the Meadowlands for work, I was having trouble figuring out what to listen to. It’s been a little hard for things to stick recently, and I made a big Google Doc of things I have already listened to and still want to listen to from this year, and it’s pretty daunting.
So I dug back into the mix archive I created in summer 2019 to pull up the Spotify version of a mix CD I made back in 2013.
The 130103 mix is one of my favorites because it distills fall 2012 down to its musical essence (mostly). I made the mix on Jan. 3, 2013, as the title suggests — I learned the year/month/day file naming convention in Jamie McIntyre’s JOUR203 class in spring 2012 and have not stopped labeling things in that fashion ever since — which was the day of the final teen suicide show.
Side note: Do you remember where you were on Black Friday 2012 when teen suicide announced it was ending? I was standing outside of the Charlotte Reusse at Harford Mall while Charlotte and Erin were inside looking at, I guess, clothes, or whatever they sell there.
There was a real feeling of deep anticipation surrounding that show at the Bell Foundry in Baltimore, and it was shaping up to be a real “I was there” moment. It has not aged as a real “I was there” moment. But I was going, and I was driving down to Ellicott City to pick up Mikey to go to the show, so I wanted to make a mix for the drive that encapsulated what we were about to see and what had happened over the previous few months.
The following 21 songs more or less fit together into a puzzle that creates a picture of fall 2012, music-wise. There’s the soundtrack to a near-death experience, 20-year-old angst, the end of the world and anything else you could think of.
I don’t remember much about the show, but I saw someone who was in one of the openers at my dentist in Philadelphia earlier this year. I did end up with the setlist, though:
I remember more about the rest of the weekend. Me and Mikey bummed around Bel Air the next day, and he survived a Chipotle outing with Charlotte and Erin. I drove down to College Park because I was covering some games that weekend, and we hung out at Treehouse on Friday night and The Cottage on Saturday night.
Everyone left me alone at The Cottage to go to D.C. (I was underage lol) while I stayed and watched a Packers-Vikings playoff game by myself. It was a good weekend, and for me, it marks the end of the era that this mix represents for me.
1. Cloud Nothings -- “You Will Turn”
Reese sent me this mp3 — I think it’s a Japanese bonus track from Attack On Memory, or something along those lines? — and I can’t find it streaming online anywhere on YouTube or anything, and I will not be the one who posts it because I love My Favorite Band. But it’s a track that takes the dark sound from Attack On Memory and imbues it with a more hopeful, crescendoing vibe. It’s a good song for when it starts getting dark out earlier, like “Pitch Black At 6 p.m. Type Beat.” But given where things were at the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013, it felt like a good way to start this mix. (On the Spotify version, I substituted “Cut You,” the closing track off Attack On Memory, for “You Will Turn,” and I think it does a good job setting the mood).
2. Sebadoh -- “Magnet’s Coil”
3. Archers of Loaf -- “Web in Front”
4. Archers of Loaf -- “Plumb Line”
Jack was driving me up Calvert Road to get booze from Town Hall in the Volvo because Benn and Charlotte were visiting in October 2012 when a car blew through the stop sign at Dartmouth Avenue and almost T-boned us. I don’t remember if “Magnet’s Coil,” “Web In Front” or “Plumb Line” was playing right at that moment, but in my head, one of them was. Eventually, Jack got us some Port Royal rum, Yuengling and Harpoon cider. We chased the Port Royal with Starbursts, and the handle lived in my fridge for the rest of the month. Benn was thrilled someone would buy adequate cheap beer for a visitor. There was a cat at The Cottage that weekend. I almost took a bus from Commons to Courtyards at 4 a.m. before I realized that was probably not a good idea, but it was a good weekend.
All three of these songs invoke October weekends in College Park where I wandered from campus down to The Cottage or up to Treehouse or aimlessly through the town in the afternoon. And for a 20-year-old who believed he was Going Through It, there’s a library of lines form these three tracks that embody the feeling:
“It feels good just to bitch about it”
“Nobody wants another mirror on their fears / I guess that's all you are to me”
“But I don't really want to lose this / Does it all depend on me? / It's always personal between us / You won't say what's on your mind”
“All I ever wanted was to be your spine”
“You're not the one who let me down / But thanks for offering”
“And there's a chance that things will get weird / Yeah, that's a possibility”
“When did you realize / That you couldn't follow this out / Through to the end”
“Clearly this is your loss / Clearly it's not my loss / Clearly it's just bad luck / Clearly it doesn't mean a thing”
“Cause she's an indie rocker / And nothing's gonna stop her / Plumb line says she's a bitch”
“You've got a great collection of things / Cause that's the best you can do”
I think, “It feels good just to bitch about it” is one of the greatest lines ever written, and there’s something particularly calming about it. When I hear it, I want to be walking through College Park while the leaves are changing.
If these three songs were a photo:
5. teen suicide -- “goblins cry too”
6. teen suicide -- “give me back to the sky”
The first time I heard “give me back to the sky” was in a rough demo that was posted to Tumblr right before we went back to school in August 2012. I was convinced I would never hear a better song. It had everything I wanted at that point, and then the final version on i will be my own hell because there is a devil inside my body built on that and made it more adult, more sophisticated with the string and harmony arrangements. I was so excited for i will be my own hell… and I remember finding out it dropped when the band showed up to the back-to-school party at Treehouse.
“goblins cry too” remains a good summer car ride banger. RIP Tumblr.
Also, I guess it makes sense these two songs were on this mix because, after all, we were going to the “final” teen suicide show.
7. Chromatics -- “Ceremony”
Honestly, I’m not sure why I put this song on the mix at this point, and it kind of cuts off the momentum. I’ve never been super into Chromatics, either, so the inclusion here still sort of miffs me. The only thing I can think of is 2012 was the year I started to shift from being a Joy Division guy to a New Order guy, which I feel like is important to note in the Guy Taxonomy. Jack played lots of New Order in the back room of The Cottage, and “Ceremony,” “Bizarre Love Triangle” and the rest helped soundtrack the year.
The first time I made an effort to listen to New Order was in 2007 at the end of my freshman year. Benn and I were at the Bel Air Library to do work on an AP Human Geography assignment, and we were going through the CDs. We ran into Charlotte there, too. At the time, I was all-in on Joy Division, and I considered them to be my second favorite band behind Sonic Youth. I didn’t think it would be changing. I knew the Ian Curtis story, and so I picked up the Singles compilation. I hated it. It wasn’t dark enough for me. I missed Curtis’ voice. I would never desert Joy Division for New Order.
Well, things change. When I was driving to the Meadowlands on Sunday, I spent some time in the car workshopping a joke about when someone tells you that you’ll go from a liberal from a conservative when you get older, they’re lying, but when they tell you that you’ll go from a Joy Division fan to a New Order fan, they’re telling you truth, but I couldn’t stick the punch line. You can steal this bit.
8. elvis depressedly -- “u angel u”
mickey’s dead dropped in the week or so after the first classmate I graduated from high school with died in summer 2012, and I listened to this song on repeat the week of the wake and funeral. Sorry to get dark. It’s a beautiful song.
9. Taylor Swift -- “Red”
Red is an incredibly frustrating album for me because it was the first Taylor Swift album I genuinely listened to and enjoyed, but there are too spots where it trips over itself in a way that prevents it from aging gracefully. “I Knew You Were Trouble.” is the greatest offender, but the chorus from “22” falls into that category, too. “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” — yes, my indie record is much cooler than yours — is borderline. But Swift has some just solid rock songs that have a tinge of her country background, and it makes for a solid marriage. “Red” is the best one, but “State of Grace,” “Holy Ground” and “Starlight” are up there, too. Even the slower songs like “I Almost Do,” “Sad Beautiful Tragic” and “Treacherous” (I think I made an iTunes playlist that left these songs off because I thought they were boring, whoops) have aged nicely. the best parts of folklore hit me in a similar fashion. Also, shoutout to Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody for cashing those T-Swift checks.
10. Swearin’ -- “Kenosha”
I am too lazy to go back through the newsletter archive to see if I’ve already written about “Kenosha” and the Swearin’ self-titled, but the blown out guitars immediate invoke walking down Preinkert Drive back to Commons from JOUR202: News Editing with Bob Grover, Mike and Yasmeen or Writing in the Arts with Caroline Wilkins (it depended on the day) in the hot August or September mid-morning. This track — and Swearin’ as a whole — helped define the fall 2012 semester.
11. Coma Cinema -- “Caroline, Please Kill Me”
Blue Suicide was more of a fall 2011 album for me, so idk man. In terms of mix flow, it fits after “Kenosha.”
12. Ty Segall -- “Thank God For Sinners”
Remember the six months? 18 months? three years? when Ty Segall was The Only Man In Indie Rock? I look back on that time fondly. Segall’s output in 2012 and the following years was prodigious — I am always surprised by the number of tapes I have from his various projects — and I did not keep up after the latter part of 2013. Anna and I saw Ty Segall and The Sleeper Band play at FYF that summer and I thought it was kind of boring.
But Twins was a ripper of an album, and “Thank God For Sinners” rules. I put it on when I was driving home from the Meadowlands on Sunday, and “Would You Be My Love” holds up as a great song. Ty Segall also had a weirdly strong influence on my own music, and I think the Wapinitia show in January 2013 featured two or three original songs that drew heavily on loud, crunchy guitars. Weird.
13. Paws -- “Catherine 1956”
Cokefloat! was one of the most pleasant surprises from 2012, and the Paws guys were super nice when me and Emily interviewed them at WMUC. Here are me and Emily (Mikey is just off screen!) in their U.S. East Coast Tour 2013 diary video:
14. The Babies -- “On My Team”
The Babies probably deserve their own Content Nausea at some point, but Our House on the Hill was a bright spot. I hope they are still cashing New Girl checks from this song. Emily, Olivia and I also saw The Babies on the night the world was supposed to end when Emily DJ’d at Comet Ping Pong.
15. Spook Houses -- “Search For”
The first time I heard of Spook Houses was on New Year’s Eve 2010 at 285 Kent because Marc was standing in the bathroom line next to someone he knew, and she was raving about Spook Houses to him. They were from Ridgewood, N.J., and it just so happened that all of the other bands we were seeing that night — Titus Andronicus, Real Estate, Julian Lynch, Andrew Cedermark — were from Ridgewood or the surrounding area.
Spook Houses didn’t click for me for almost two years until I dove into Trying right at the end of the semester. I was feeling dark — hey, the world was supposed to end on Dec. 21 — and the album, especially “Search For,” had dark vibes. I definitely wrote, “Holding my indifference as a sign of my existence / I am wholly what I lack” at the front of my 2013 notebook, along with the final lyrics from the song, which I also posted to Facebook:
I tried
But fuck trying when
There's just doing
And succeeding
There's just "proving it"
There's just living up to shit
I'm so sick of it
I'm so sick of it
Big 2012 vibes, folks.
16. DIIV -- “Sometime”
DIIV was arguably the band of 2012, even if it seems kind of foolish in hindsight, considering everything. I went back to check, and I gave Oshin the top spot on my album rankings over Attack On Memory and Celebration Rock, so yeah. Anna and I went to see DIIV — I think they were still DIVE at this point — at Big Snow at the end of 2011, and then we saw them two days later at 285 Kent at like 4 a.m. on the first day of 2012, and it ruled. There was a free open bar that was serving only vodka, and when I spilled some on myself, it burned badly. Great start to 2012.
A year later, we were back at 285 for another New Year’s Eve with DIIV (also Merchandise was there, too, and was awesome). In between, I wore out my “Sometime” 7” and learned to give this band some space beyond being a Beach Fossils side project (though it still remained a bit of a Big Joke).
Also, I started 2013 by making it into an Impose photo gallery (screenshot via bc I could not save the photo off of the site and I do not feel like digging through my external hard drive):
Still sucks that my bolo tie broke that night.
17. Pavement -- “Frontwards”
18. Dinosaur Jr. -- “The Wagon”
Hanging out with Jack and Amams at The Cottage in 2012 upped both my whiskey and alt-rock intake, so I assume that’s how these two songs ended up at the end of the mix. Both still go.
19. Wild Nothing -- “Gemini”
When I look back on this mix, two things that stand out to me is that there aren’t any Japandroids songs off Celebration Rock and that I went with the title track from Wild Nothing’s Gemini over one of the brighter bangers or even a song from 2012’s Nocturne, which surprisingly did not make my top 15 albums of that year.
“Gemini” is one of the darker songs in the Wild Nothing oeuvre (or at least was at that point), and it holds up with the singles as one of Jack Tatum’s better-written songs, imo.
20. Whirr -- “Blue”
21. My Bloody Valentine -- “I Only Said”
Nothing like ending a mix with some shoegaze? I think I made “I Only Said” the final track because me and Mikey had been talking about Loveless at some point during the semester. But it’s a good finish. Listening to Whirr makes me think about driving around California at night.
Thank you for reading the 45th edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
I'm wide awake
Mind so woke 'cause my brain never pushed the brakes
I'm wide awake
Eyes so open that my vision is as sharp as a blade
I'm wide awake
Movin' and groovin' and I ain't ever losin' the pace
I'm wide awake
Mind so woke 'cause my brain never pushed the brakes
—D.G.