Mid Life Crisis (Bands that should have broken up already) (Part Three)

Things change as you get older, and it’s less a general feeling than the small realizations you have as your routines change. It’s Monday night—not even 10:30 and I’m already thinking about going to bed. Instead of having a beer while I write, I’m flossing my teeth. I’m flossing now! It’s good for my gums! I wonder if my mom reads this. And yes, part of me wishes that I was still spending my Monday nights eating 10 cent chicken wings, dollar slices of pizza and having dollar beers at Farmhouse Pizza, but it wouldn’t be the same. The food is more expensive, the bar more crowded, the owner replaced by his lackeys, and my friends replaced by douchey fratboys. But you gotta embrace that shit. I like going to bed early, and I’ve grown to love my first two cups of coffee in the morning. But I ain’t embracing this is my music. It just doesn’t age gracefully. Here are a few examples of things I don’t want to follow into my old age:

Wilco: Oy. They didn’t make this easy. There are some redeemable moments on the past couple of albums. Somehow, a song called Wilco (the Song) is really fucking good. Parts of Sky Blue Sky reflect the band’s growth over the years (You Are My Face and Side with the Seeds strike me as songs Tweedy couldn’t have written a few years back). But that same polish and maturity is also what destroys these records to some extent. Wilco was a sloppy love—the dirty piano drenched blues during the last minutes of Dreamer in My Dreams that recall Exile era Rolling Stones, the raw blood-draining vocals on We’re Just Friends, and the brazenly casual yet deliberate guitar playing that opens A Ghost is Born—these moments are missing on the past two records. But I don’t want Wilco to “find themselves” or try to somehow go back to what they were. You can’t fake these things, you can’t fake a feeling and make it sound that good. They’re a different band now. Somehwere along the line they decided to take the worst song on A Ghost is Born (Spiders: Kidsmoke) and use that as the template for most of their instrumentation. Sighs. It’s over like me staying up past 2AM.

Built to Spill: One of the first “indie” bands I ever listened to. There was this online service called Audiogalaxy where you could read about bands and download them for free. It’s where I found the White Stripes, Built to Spill, and more. Anyhow, Built to Spill were always one of the highest rated/most talked about bands on there so I checked them out and fell in love. That was nearly ten years ago. I’ve seen them in concert multiple times, and even passed my love of them down to my little sister. There’s Nothing Wrong with Love is a great pop album, the ones that follow just great guitar rock. There was a time when I could listen to their 20+ minute cover of Cortez the Killer and enjoy it…but now when I saw that the opener on You in Reverse was over 8 minutes long…I sighed. Maybe I’m growing old quicker than they are, but I doubt it. It’s just not new/fresh/exciting like it used to be.

Of Montreal: Basically, Hissing Fauna Are You the Destroyer is a motherfucking classic and if you create something that good you have to just quit. No way to satisfy anyone after that, least of all a needy bastard like me. I guess that Skeletal Lamping wasn’t that bad, but it was so shitty (and weird, frenetic, spastic) compared to Fauna that I didn’t even give it a chance. It’d be cool to see them try and come back and write some 3 minute pop songs and give up on the sexual transformation epic concept albums, but I don’t see that happening, so I’d rather not hear anything at all.

Ryan Adams: Only non-band here. I’m with Fran—this is just some awful shit that he keeps putting out. But I heard that he quit music and is writing a book with Mandy Moore? Or that’s what I remember from a drunken conversation with Deacon. Is that true? P.S. Deacon we tried to go back to the grey area but I think it’s closed and it wouldn’t have been the same without you.

Weezer: See my earlier column. Those fuckers.

*As a side note, I didn't forget about solo artists, I'm just having a hard time figuring out how they fit into this (with the exception of Ryan Adams).

**Pretty proud that I made it throughout this whole thing without saying “it’s better to burn out than to fade away.”