album review: Of Gold

This review was originally written on August 23rd and was submitted to McSweeny's for their columnist contest. They requested that submissions be previously unpublished, so I refrained from posting it in this blog. Now that the contest is over (and I did not win) I can post the entry here for your reading pleasure.

Sunday night, as I pulled my bike out of the garage and took off for my friend's to watch Mad Men, I felt a tinge of everything in my world being perfect. The temperature was ideal and unusually cool for mid-August and the setting sun was peeking now and then from behind the clouds. I was wearing a new jacket that I would basically be living in for the next three months and around my shoulder I was carrying a portable cooler with a built in speaker. The combination of a well-spent day and emotional comforts resounded strongly to a depth of my mind and soul which I too rarely tap into.

Pedaling down my street, I listened to "Cannibals", the final track on Of Gold, which starts with an introspective muted guitar reminiscent of my favorite post-emo indie rock bands like The Jazz June or Jets to Brazil. The song grows into a sprawling poetry of lyrics, scattered drumming and guitar twangs. A slight departure from the organic and kinetic energy of the preceding songs, this track is the breath of Autumn which serves perfectly as a closing statement for the album and complimented the greying air around me. Bars of Gold's strength is their sure-footed approach to an energetic live show and passionate message. Their performance is a confrontation and a challenge. There is nowhere I would rather be than in attendance, with my hand uncontrollably rapping on my chest.

As "Cannibals" builds into a repeated chorus, the emotion grows discontented with a soft-spoken delivery and becomes an impatient pounding. Screams overlay and fight with humble chantings of the metaphorical message, "I was born a cannibal". It is a hunger not for flesh but for love. A need for inclusion in someone's everyday life, to sustain a yearning heart so wholly different from another human's, and proudly so.

"I was born a cannibal; not like any cannibal you've seen before."

Often in the Fall I adopt feelings of contentment with the world. I absentmindedly reflect on the Summer behind me and all I have accomplished, pleased that I can call it to a close with no remorse for what I might have done. Perhaps it is simply my mind preparing for the yearly Winter, an aspect of growing up in the Midwest which I would never trade for warmer weather. That such a mindset snuck up on me on this August evening was indeed comforting. Perhaps it was because I had spent the day in solitude cleaning my house, or had looked up the lyrics to "Cannibals" and found that my own interpretation of them supplemented my hopeful, romantic nature and left me, on a Sunday night, seeing weeks and years ahead of me in love and among friends. I spend a lot of time and effort preparing for future happiness. What are thoughts and actions, toward and for others, if not truthful to our character which we are free to sketch for ourselves, erase and sketch again? Though we may revise them, they are surely ours, and will only ever be. The rights and wrongs of our selves are infallible and it would be foolish to not let our decisions follow them honestly, drawing each of us as a perfect person to live as in the world.