Smoke season came around this year. Later and milder than some previous summers, the air outside doesn’t seem toxic, just sinister. A couple days ago, I walked down to the market for some groceries. Touristy as it is, Pike Place has great produce and an excellent butcher. The light was tinted orange, even in the mid afternoon. It looked like the reflected light from a fire.
Smoke season drags me down far more than Seattle’s long, gray winters. The blanketing winter darkness feels right for heavy-boughed pine trees and still, steel-gray waters. Even when it gets tiresome, it feels homey and correct.
During smoke season, I’m filled with a sense of menace. Not only because it often rolls in unexpectedly, but because of the wrongess it bring. Everything takes on a cthonic unreality, and even if I can’t smell the smoke, I can feel it seeping into my lungs and staining my mood. I find myself more eager for rain than I usually am this time of year.
At least we still have music.
I am occasionally overcome by grief that I’ll never hear all the great local bands from cities that I didn’t happen to live in during their performing lives. This comes from the parallel grief I have for all of the bands I have known and loved and whose careers were small and short, but who left behind songs that struck me.
Sunder Heed’s “American Gothic” is a stellar example. As far as I know, the band only released a single EP. I never got to see them in person. I don’t even remember how exactly I came across their music. “American Gothic” is still seared into my brain long after the band, apparently, dissolved.
“American Gothic” is far from a perfect song, but its minor flaws are charming in a way that only talented, promising local bands can be. The mix is inconsistent, the guitar lines seem to slip out of time with the bass and drums. The production is rough. The end result is still a charming, moody bit a brilliance that I can’t stop listening to.
With Sunder Heed apparently having disappeared into the wind, I’m left with a vague disappointment thinking of all the other dark, earnest, gothy jams we didn’t get from them.
For as much shit as I give The Algorithm, I can’t say it never did me any favors. I had completely missed The Ghost Wolves until “Shotgun Pistol Grip” got slotted into smart shuffle on a playlist seeded by a bunch of grungy psych rock bands. I was instantly charmed by the vignette itself and by the gutsy driving guitars. The slight hints of surf rock sensibility combined with the crime thriller lyrics ripped from the pages of a pulp novel both seemed designed to appeal specifically to me.
What can I say, I’m a sucker for a dark-Americana story about a women exacting revenge set to grimy, chunky guitars.
Of course, The Algorithm also gave me the gift of turning me on to the rest of their southern fried rock and roll catalog and now I have several of their records on vinyl on the way. One can’t deny its efficacy in its ultimate goal: driving commerce.
One note: I’m going to try to diversify the art I talk about in the future. While I expect music will still make up the lion’s share of column-inches here, I’ve read too much good poetry and seen too many cool murals lately to be promised that I’ll stick solely to music.