#284 (of 365) "Goshen '97" Strand of Oaks

Sometimes a band will sneak up on you. I had known Strand of Oaks from Timothy Showalter's self-released 2010 album Pope Killdragon, which featured lyrical imagery and musical flourishes, but then the follow up either didn't reach me or didn't excite me and it wasn't until the truly amazing fourth full-length, 2014's Heal, that I realized what a gifted singer/songwriter he was. That album and follow up Hard Love (2017) produced minor indie rock success and I got to see him live around that time at Mercury Lounge on the Lower East Side, a show I remember for the earnestness of Showalter's appreciation of the audience--the largest he said he'd played for, and Mercury Lounge can't hold more than 100 people. He was so generous with his music, and his joy at having an enthusiastic crowd, it really touched me. And when he played "JM," his posthumous tribute to Jason Molina, a fellow singer-songwriter whose band Songs: Ohia just missed this countdown, he talked in length about his friend and then played the amazing song written about someone else's singing and the whole experience was magical.

I'm not sure if I saw him again. Maybe. Probably. But that first experience is what I remember. Neither "JM" or Songs: Ohia or Jason Molina's solo work made this list ("Farewell Transmission" was one of the last out) and instead this upbeat banger is the one to represent all of them, in a way. And it's got the beautiful lyrics Showalter is known for--discovering his "dad's old tape machine" ... "that's where the magic began". Just a wonderful, perfect song.

I was lonely, I was having fun. I was lonely but I was having fun.
I don't want to start all over again.
I don't want to start all over again.
​
"Goshen '97" - Strand of Oaks // Heal (2014)