Expert in a Dying Field

 

The Beths

Expert in a Dying Field

(Carpark)

How does a person become an expert?  I'm not sure what that entails or feels like.  I suppose I became an export of sorts at some of my various jobs over the years, after practicing them for many years.  That never felt like anything other than doing a bunch of stuff that I really didn’t want to do.  Perhaps that is my problem that I need to figure out and adjust.  What I do know is that despite living in a country and society that touts capitalism, I seem to embrace dying fields, or anything that can be lucrative financially.  The things I enjoy doing or being a part of one rarely gets the opportunity to earn a living.  I have a feeling that this is true for many of us.  The entire “job” scenario alludes me.  How did we get here?  Why can I not be productive with the stupid shit I like to do without spending most of my time trying to make enough money to survive?  This is part of why I try to be so supportive of the artists I appreciate.  I try to buy stuff and talk about it when I can, in a minor effort to keep these atists enhancing my life with their creativity. 

The more life I’ve lived, the less I understand how to navigate it.  All of the good ideas I have and things I’d like to do feel impossible.  I’d like to be involved with music related projects, but the music industry is only profitable to an incredible minority and I don’t ever fit in, nor do I know how to break in.  My friend Ox and I have tried releasing music, and online music retail, but almost no one buys it anymore.  I sometimes enjoy writing. in my amateurish way, but I am allergic to promoting it, or trying to monetize it, nor do I think I could earn a living at it.  When I was a dialysis patient I had some serious ideas that might help dialysis patients with their difficult diets, but I never knew how to make that happen.  I would like to help people dealing with trying to navigate the medical system, but I don’t have the job experience or education to be taken seriously.  I have the problem of shooting myself down before anyone else can.  I am good at self-sabotaging, and I tend to disengage from things I like and can be good at, when they become jobs.

It’s surprising to me that this will be the first time I’ve written about Auckland, New Zealand’s The Beths.  Expert in a Dying Field is their third album since 2018 and it is as fresh and exciting as their debut!  I first happened upon them by accident via their first single “Future Me Hates Me,” which the creepy YouTube algorithms thrust upon me after I played my chosen song and I had let it play.  Turns out this one was right on!  I immediately pre-ordered that first LP.  It’s been a fun ride ever since.

The Beths "Future Me Hates Me"

I hate say it, since I recently referenced it, but I think I may have given The Beths a bit of a short shrift in that Men at Work way (read here).  They are fun and display a sense of humor, yet they are much more than that.  The “Future Me Hates Me” video is a sweet kind of goofy clip and the song has an awe-shucks ‘everything goes wrong’ self-deprecation shrug vibe to it.  This is an unfair and shallow assessment.  Bandleader Elizabeth Stokes’ lyrics are incredibly clever, inventive, heartfelt and impactful.  She has an unbelievable knack for creating effortless sounding pop songs that are relatable in an every-person sort of way.    Plus, they flat out rock!  These pop tunes are crunchy, buzzy, energetic, light on their feet and performed flawlessly.  The background vocals are otherworldly, frequent and super fun.  They capture the relatability and excellence of some of 90s band That Dog, but with way more consistency. 

The thing is that these songs can be fun and fun to blast on a warm sunny day, but they have a lot of depth.  Not far underneath these clever and inventive songs is some deeply felt emotion and huge dollops of melancholy.  There is a sense of loss and longing that is infused in most of their songs giving them an added depth.

I realize that the excellent title and lead off song for this album, “Expert in a Dying Field,” is a thought-provoking missive about clarity about a dying relationship, but to me, it’s more universal.  It’s bigger than that.  The title alone has stuck with me since it was first released as a single.  Stokes has had me contemplating life, existence, work, usefulness, and the damning passage of time just with the song title alone!  It has me feeling like an old relic.  Not the potentially valuable kind, but the kind that sits unnoticed in a weekend garage sale, that will be thrown away if not sold for a nickel.  Far too often, I feel like most of my interests and desires are part of dying fields. 

Having said that though, this album does not make me feel old.  Anything but!  The Beths brand of energetic pop rock is the type of thing that has always rejuvenated me.  Their mix of high energy, burbling basslines, noisy guitars, frantic drumming, incredible sing along songs full of passion is never not utterly infectious. 

The second song on the LP, “Knees Deep,” is the kind of song that confuses me.  It is so catchy and relatable, at least to me (“The shame / I wish I was brave enough to dive in”), it should be a massive worldwide hit that none of us can escape.  These songs are all over this album and their entire catalog.  This can also be said of the ultra-sentimental “Your Side,” the anthemic “Best Left,” the rocking “I Told You that I was Afraid,” and the reflective and wistful love song “2am.”

I think about times in my life, when I have pushed difficult and uncompromising noise onto others, attempting to prove to others that I am also those things.  There is that side of me, but I still get giddy over really well-done pop music.  I would’ve loved the Beths when I was a 4^th grader and I love them now as an old relic, or anytime in-between.

(https://thebethsnz.bandcamp.com/album/expert-in-a-dying-field)

The Beths "Expert in a Dying Field"

Keep on Working

 

Every September for the past several years, I have posted hyper-enthusiastic posts regarding my annual vacation time spent attending the annual visit to Portland by the LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association).  Except for last year.  Last year, I was hobbled too much by my medical condition, the tournament was moved to a terrible location and it was mostly rained out.  I did try to attend one day, but the course was simply too hilly.  It was upsetting, but I kept telling myself: next year.

Everything started falling in to place.  The tournament is set to return to its usual location at Columbia Edgewater CC and return period.  A new sponsor has signed on (AmazingCre – whatever that is), and the field looks to be loaded with stars.  However, I am not ready.  Generally, I get involved for the entire week.  I have volunteered to caddie for the two Pro-Ams and attend from dawn until near dusk all four rounds of the tournament.  I genuinely love it.  Perhaps too much!  Every year, I realize that I feel truly at home out there and feel great!  It makes me giddy!  I have always been able to overcome my physical limitations and push through and walk those hills repeatedly in the sunshine.  I had considered buying what they call Champion’s Club tickets (which are like luxury box seats in an arena (food and beverages are provided), but these seats overlooking the final hole are now too expensive for me to consider, even though I have bought them in the past.  I most enjoy following and rooting on my favorite players as they make their way around the course, but had considered the Champion’s Club seats as an alternative due to my current disabled state.  Unfortunately, they priced this particular riff raff out of the market, and the realization that the walk from the adjacent field parking lot to the golf course would likely be too difficult.

Now, on the eve of the tournament, I find myself truly lost.  I don’t carry cable TV anymore, so I will miss the TV coverage and I won’t get to see the golf and the trials and triumphs that take place everywhere on the course.  It is depressing.  To most, it likely sounds silly.  Yet to me, it’s emblematic of where I am now.  So much of who I am and what I do, or have always done, is gone.  Live music?  Gone.  I know there are ways to make some of these things happen, but it is all just too much for me to handle at this point.  I’m in mourning for what I used to be able to do and have not yet figured out what’s next.  I find myself sinking deeper and deeper into depression and this event that I always find so important and so rejuvenating has slipped through my hands for a second year in a row.

Next Year.  There’s always next year.  Gotta keep on working.

Overkill

 

Apparently, I’m a very nostalgic person.  I was thinking about how during the fall of 1988, my senior year of high school, I made a melancholy mix tape made up of songs from my earliest purchased records, so we’re talking stuff from like 81-83.  I remember being a huge Men at Work fan in 5^th & 6^th grade and digging their goofy schtick.  By 1988, I was fully immersed in the darkness of a lot of postpunk, gothic rock and industrial, so I was pleased to choose songs like the hyper reflective and nostalgic “I Can See it Your Eyes” and the underrated “Overkill” as choices for my mix.  It was fun rediscovering these things from my then distant past.  It seems silly now, because that was only five or so years prior, but it was almost a third of my life at the time.  Now that I am officially old, five years is a blink of an eye in an ever-unchanging lifestyle.

 

Men At Work "I Can See it in Your Eyes"

I realize that it is quite meta to be reminiscing about a time that I was reminiscing about songs about reminiscing, but that’s how I seem to be built.  Besides, if one listens to these two songs closely, they will tell my story here much better and more eloquently than I can.

 

Men At Work "Overkill"

As summer turned into fall in 2004, I was sick.  I was really sick.  I’ve written about it before, so I won’t dive too far into it here, but I had been on kidney dialysis for almost three years, I was going through treatments to kill my immune system, and my skeleton was withering away.  I was dying.  I hadn’t given up, but unconsciously, I think I knew my time was coming.  I had stopped sleeping, so every night I would weed through all of my stuff and box most of it up to get rid of.  I began perusing through old stuff like all of my comic books from the early 80s and all of those old mixtapes I used to make for car rides.  Before getting rid of these things, I read the comic books and listened to the tapes.  Both would transport me not only into the world’s within, but to the times that I originally encountered them.  It was pretty powerful.  It was a slow-cooked version of having much of my isolated life pass before my eyes.  There was a particular mix tape from 1987 that blossomed a very powerful flashback to a very particular day.  It included the song by the Cure, “Why Can’t I Be You?”  I think the fact that the tape had been put together when that song was brand new, took me back to that time.  When I say “took me back,” the memory became so vivid and real that it became a powerful beacon that I began to strive for. 

 

The Cure "Why Can't I Be You?"

The flashback was from a day in 1987, likely June, just after school had ended (sophomore year).  It was a rare bright sunny and warm Saturday on the Oregon coast and I was blasting music in my bedroom, and I remember feeling antsy and likely bored.  My dad told me he was driving to Salem to drop off some commercial art he had done for a client.  I asked him if I could ride along as long as he dropped me off at a record store.  He did and I purchased the Cure’s wild new double album Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me and Concrete Blonde’s debut.  When we got home, I put on the Cure’s new album, and my headphones and was completely drawn in.  The album was epic and more than I could’ve ever hoped for.  It was everything!  Not long afterwards, I got a ride to the south end of town for a dance at our city’s Masonic Temple.  It was there that I hit the dance floor for the first time in my life (to “Why Can’t I Be You?” and Depeche Mode’s “Strangelove”) and later sort of tried my first clove cigarette (so 80s).  It was a good day!   As a memory, in 2004, it was so real – so tangible, I began to feel like I was living that day again.  I’m not sure of the significance of that day, but I wanted those feelings again.  I loved that Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me felt like it was brand new again, that I had not yet heard “Just Like Heaven” 40,000 times and had developed a dislike of the final LP single “Hot Hot Hot!!!”  Not long after this recurring flashback began to dominate all of my thoughts, I got a call for my life saving kidney transplant. 

Like a lot of people, my memories are generally tied to the music I remember from those times.  It’s an old cliché, but it is truly a soundtrack to our life stories.  Personally, I am fascinated by stories.  A lot of the old stories I’ve shared on this page, are moments in time with some deep significance for the narrator/character.  This is why I’ve been so thankful and excited about the handful of Song Stories people have sent in.  It’s these personal attachments to important songs that can sadly get lost when we go. 

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to some Northern Picture Library and Field Mice songs in my car, as I was stuck in traffic.  I became overwhelmed by the emotion behind some of those songs.  Old wounds from heartbreak bubbled up to the surface, as did an intense longing.  I began to think about how important, not only those songs are to me, but those feelings that they still bring to the surface, which are tied to moments from my life that are only meaningful to me, and hopefully to the other players from those moments.  Then I began to think about how fleeting those moments are and how easily they disappear.  When I finally do pass, all those important moments that make up what and who I am will be gone. 

It brings up all of those old questions everyone asks themselves: “what is all of this for?”  Believe me, I’m not just now asking these things, but for some reason, it has been on my mind a lot lately.  Perhaps it’s because I’m older, wildly unhealthy, and feeling a lot lost.  There is a strong sense of purposelessness happening in my life right now.  I do not feel like I’m contributing, but instead just taking up room and valuable resources.  Perhaps it’s because I don’t feel like I used to.  I’ve reached a point in my life where I am too numb – too calloused from past physical and emotional distress.  Most news is bad news, so when I get positive news, I don’t trust it!  That life soundtrack is getting old and outdated.  New memories are rare and rarely as affecting as they used to be.  I kind of miss feeling dramatic and alive!  Am I alone on this? 

This is a long-winded call for more Song Stories!  Please share them here (tangledrec@hotmail.com).  Every story is important and I’m personally interested in why it’s important.  It can be any song and it can be anonymous.  Let’s explore these hidden moments together.

Thank you Alexandra Smith for sending me the "Overkill" video.

From Capelton Hill

 

Canadian six-piece, Stars, have hit pay dirt with their 9^th album!  I shouldn’t say that, because they have always been consistently good.  They have earned my loyalty.  If they release new music, I will purchase it unheard.  Stars have returned to form!  This, is also untrue.  As I said before, they have always been great!  However, they did set the bar very high from their humble beginning as an electronic duo in 2001 (I was drawn in by their cover of the Smiths “This Charming Man”), to the expanded four-piece lineup enhanced LP Heart, then to the amazing all-time classic that is their third LP, 2004’s Set Yourself on Fire.  It was this LP that blew my mind.  An album that somehow captured some kind of unholy crossing of the Beautiful South and the Delgados.  Capturing a melodrama filled with broken relationships and heartbreak with fantastic orchestral string-laden arrangements.  It was an impossible album to follow, and to be fair, they’ve done an incredible job trying.  Their albums are all consistently good to great, and they always bring that Fire melodrama and energy to their live performances.  However, From Capelton Hill brings back the strings and their secret weapon of having their lead singers, Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan sing most of the songs together.  I don’t know what it is, but the seamless combination of their voices seems to elevate the lyrics to another level.  Every song feels that much more important and crucial. 

It’s pretty remarkable that 21 years on this band has released an album so inspired that it plays like a best of collection.  Drop the needle anywhere and you’re in a song that sounds like it should be a single.  This record is informed by all of their past.  They have the dramatic duets full of desperate, sad and longing words from their early work, busy arrangements like their great 2010 single “Fixed.”  They’ve got the disco inspired dance numbers (a la the No One is Lost LP) of “Build a Fire” and “If I Never See London Again” (more of a Pet Shop Boys-styled circa ’89 Euro-disco triumph), and wonderful ballads such as “Patterns,” “That Girl,” and “Snowy Owl.”  Sure, the dramatics can be a bit overboard at times, like in “To Feel What They Feel,” but I think we all need to be bludgeoned over the head to gain some needed empathy for others, if we’re ever going to get out of our current ugly state of affairs culturally. 

It’s downright remarkable that they can pump out such all-time songs like “Palmistry,” “Pretenders,” and the cinematic “Back at the End,” and “Capelton Hill.”  Personally, I have always loved Amy Millan’s vocals, and this is the album where she is a part of every song!  And a special shout out to Evan Cranley, as the basslines here are fun and lively.  It is truly inspiring to hear a band this engaged after doing this for so long. 

(https://starsband.bandcamp.com/)

Stars "Capelton Hill"