Songs & Silence

Four albums deep into their career, my favorite band, Parquet Courts, released their most personally-affecting album.  Not pushing at the outsides of art, nor self-reflective to the point of admission, Parquet Courts' fourth LP can be summed up by the song "Tenderness," which closes the album. In it, Andrew Savage, the co-frontman of the quartet tries to break down some of the scaffolding any of us have constructed by our 30s. A distinct moment on this record occurs after a rumbling catapult from the two-part song "Almost Had to Start a Fight," and "In and Out of Patience," pummel us with the realization that there's nothing black and white about living in the chaos dimension and to look for meaning is futile, literally transitioning halfway through from mono to stereo, and addressing the idea of self-doubt and how we handle it. "This next one's called Freebird II!" Savage announces to a faux-live audience before a distinctly th...

It's New Years Eve. I'm sitting on my couch, enjoying the second week of my Christmas vacation.  My wife of nearly one year walks down the stairs of the home we bough one year prior. "Here's something I forgot from Christmas," she says as she hands me an already-open brown box. Inside, a plush rabbit. We've been trying to have a baby. The doctor says it's not likely we'll be pregnant in the next few months, as she has just gone off of her implant birth control. At the bottom of the box, a small plastic bag with three pregnancy tests inside. They're open. They're positive. I had considered jotting down a few ideas for New Years resolutions and trying to keep a running reminder here. I've never had a better reason than now. So this is that attempt.  I have always started projects with an earnestness and commitment to maintenance, but have yet to find enough will to continue a project.  This one will have an end date. For 2019, my ...

John K. Samson is the lead singer of the rock band The Weakerthans, as well as an accomplished singer-songwriter with a few albums released under his own name, as well as an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia. He is my favorite writer. Samson's songs are witty and sensitive, often culling the adult world for jumping-off points to discuss more heady subjects like death, identity, compassion and fear. Often he doesn't use broad strokes, but creates a zoomed-in, detail-oriented assessment of what makes a person tick. John's writing connects with the listener by forcing you to encounter your own empathy. When a lot of writers are keen to obfuscate, or hide meaning in cryptic and vague lyrics, Samson, more often than not, offers plain-spoken and simple tales of regret, optimism, turmoil and Canadian pride.  A writer like Samson can be taken for granted. A song exemplifying the earnest nature of a bus driver who is forced to drive by the a...