Automatic

Music has changed in the last few years for me. Perhaps irreparably. 
As streaming has replaced downloading on iTunes (which replaced buying CDs, which replaced cassettes, which replaced vinyl, which replaced 8-track? I don't know, I don't remember anything before then) music has become about singles not albums and that's a loss I miss. A lot.
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Albums still come out, and I still stream my favorite bands' releases on Apple Music and I totally love the convenience of just having them appear on my phone the Friday morning of release day without me having to even do anything. But I'm busy and there's podcasts and there's Howard Stern and there just isn't enough time to sit through an album over and over again, so it's like two or three listens for me, grabbing the couple songs that really appeal and sticking them on a playlist and the rest of the album--unless it's truly amazing, is pretty much forgotten.
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​And that's a shame.

I never got around to making my Best of 2019 Music List for multiple reasons. I ended up posting a best of the decade and I can tell you without doubt my favorite single of the year ("Not" by Big Thief) and some other songs I really really loved (my boyfriend can DEFINITELY tell you what songs I played over and over again last year) but the album of the year? Less clear. The full album I played most last year was probably Deceiver by DIIV, which really was a great album and I played it so much because there weren't really any weak spots. I liked almost all the songs and the album was a tight collection of music, an absolute high point for a band that's been around at least since early in the 2010s. But also?  The quiet, melodic beach vibe of the album was a perfect accompaniment to writing or working or just walking around Hoboken when one could walk around freely without fear of a pandemic and enjoy the sun and the shade. In other words, the music of Deceiver sweeps over me, but it doesn't engulf me, and all my senses, the way the albums of Arcade Fire or Wolf Parade or Okkervil River did some ten or fifteen years ago, and other than Car Seat Headrest's Twin Fantasy in 2018, I'm not sure I can think of an album that had that kind of effect on me, recently. Songs, yes. "Not" is all-time great and Big Thief has several songs that are literal masterpieces (including "Masterpiece") but their albums are largely hit and miss for me, which is disappointing. Probably if I gave them the time, the time I could give to Arcade Fire's Funeral, which I probably listened to 200 times in 2014, all the way through, I would find more joy in them. But I don't have the time. Or I don't give the time. And that's unfortunate.

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The other day I was driving. Driving. To work. This didn't use to be a strange phenomenon in my life but it was a solid three months since I went into a warehouse and I almost haven't driven anywhere during the quarantine, beyond the one dog park in Weehawken that miraculously stayed open the whole time, unlike all of the dog parks in Hoboken. But I digress. I was driving and had my iPhone on shuffle, through the 20,000 or so songs that stream their way to my ears, and a song by The Jesus & Mary Chain, from their 1989 album Automatic, came on. "Here Comes Alice," the very first track on that album. And it floored me. 

The Jesus & Mary Chain were for me in the first wave of bands I discovered late in high school but mostly in college - the "alternative rock" or "new wave" or post-modern bands that largely put out their best music in the 80s but I didn't really know of them until the early 90s, British bands like The Smiths and The Cure and New Order and Psychedelic Furs and American bands like The Replacements and Dinosaur Jr. and R.E.M. The Jesus & Mary Chain were part of that wave of bands I would discover, fall in love with and become absolutely obsessed with, in the span of weeks in college, although they came in the later stages, when I picked up an Automatic cassette in the bargain bin--you know, the cassettes that had a little cutout in the plastic covering to indicate they were sold for well less than original price (actually I don't know what that cutout was for, but I had it in for several cassettes and I specifically remember that cutout for Automatic). I didn't know the Jesus & Mary Chain well--they were a Scottish band fronted by a pair of brothers who I think eventually hated each other and broke up the band (and I'm too lazy to research whether or not that's true) but by the time I picked up Automatic, it had been out a few years and I knew of "Head On" and maybe some other tracks but never owned it because I was a poor college student and most of the new music I heard came from borrowing my friends' cassettes or taping copies off their CDs (I didn't have a CD player until later). But Automatic was in the bargain bin of whatever awesome record store I must have been at (possibly Woodbridge's Vintage Vinyl, or possibly something closer to Rutgers campus). And the thing about cassettes is you had to play them all the way through without skipping, unlike CDs, unlike mp3s and definitely unlike this streaming crap we've come to love because it's all basically free and we feel okay with that because musicians can make money touring, except when a pandemic hits and they can't and I don't know how many of my bands will be left when this is over. If it ever gets over.

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But back then, the cassette tape was all we had and we could fast forward but it was inexact and painful so you listened to the whole album all the way through. From "Here Comes Alice" to "Sunray," the last track on the 2nd side (yes, you had to flip the cassette to the other side). And I listened to it so often I could still remember the lyrics some 25 years later. Not just to the "hits" - "Head On" and "Her Way of Praying" (which I haven't heard in forever) but "Here Comes Alice" and "Coast to Coast" and "Blues from a Gun" - the first three tracks that led into "Between Planets" (at the time, my favorite J&MC song and one of my favorite songs ever, even if the lyrics are a little cringeworthy in retrospect)-- these four songs were so different than anything I'd heard before and different from each other and today, if I never heard of the band and downloaded the album because I liked "Head On", I would probably put that and "Between Planets" on a playlist and forget about the rest. But I listened to the entire album again, on my drive to the warehouse last week, and it holds up. It really does. And maybe it's nostalgia and maybe I just really really miss going to concerts and seeing my bands but "Here Comes Alice" made me miss something more. Something that happened well before Corona. Having the time and mind space to appreciate even the lesser tracks, or the ones that aren't instant standouts from the albums that your favorite bands painstakingly put together. Finding joy in "Sunray" and "UV Ray" and "Take it," the three tracks from the 12-track Automatic that I didn't care for (at least in retrospect) because after them and before them and in between them was pure sonic brilliance.

I miss The Jesus & Mary Chain. I miss Automatic. I miss music the way it used to be. Not the bands -- believe me there are amazing bands like Big Thief and Car Seat Headrest and DIIV putting out great music this very day. But the album format and the way I interacted with it is something I've lost forever. I miss that.

Here she comes walking down the street
She's got something you would love to meet
It's her heart and her heart is black
Think of ice cream sliding into a crack
The heat sticks to summer's heavy sweat
Hang around it'll get hotter yet
You got the shakes and it's goin' get worse
Don't you know it's all a part of the curse
She's got the hit that takes you into space
Suck mud and make a deal for that taste
You got nothing but you're riding on a star
You couldn't guess that she could take you that far
Some things are so hard to say
Even though you'd say them every day
Don't let your life be the butt of a joke
Get your lips round a cool black Pepsi Coke
Oh here she comes