Yeah, I loved our band, I don't have one regretI even loved our first two records on cassette.
They were the soundtrack for the night
You and me had that fight
Out in the woods, over some girl we met.
-- "Introduction"
Going back to what I was saying about Pinkerton. If that album's raw, abrasive feel gave it the look of an document of honest, unpolished heartache in progress, here is an album painted generously with a nostalgic sheen, which only highlights rather than obscure the sadness at its core. Its high level of production, beautiful instruments and tight construction draw attention to, rather than distract from, the difficulty of the human heart. I don't have much tolerance for one-dimensional songs of love or heartbreak, and here is an album that manages to hit the double-life of both feelings, the beauty and pain.
I would say that every album on this list could be considered a "concept" album in some sense of the word, bound with underlying themes or motifs. All the albums I've chosen are very deliberate constructions rather than merely collections of songs. This is the only one, though, that is openly conceptual. It tells a story, or at least circles around a loose narrative, outlined in those opening lines: two friends are torn apart when they both meet the same girl at a party in the woods. The reflective tone of the "introduction" informs us we're about to look back to when it all happened. The actual events of the narrative: who did what, hurt whom, remain obscure to me even after 50-odd listens over the past year, but that's not important, because the storytelling here is so strong that I don't have to do too much work to construct the story in my head. All one needs is the suggestions of emotional beats, all of which are hit excellently.
The "Introduction" leads into the wonderful scene-setter, "Drunk Teenagers," which brings us to "Ashtray Rock," a spot in the woods where high schoolers gather to drink whatever booze they could scrounge up. I miss that "getting away with something" feeling of underage drinking, especially since I didn't start drinking until I was 18 anyway. I always get a chill up my spine when I hear that opening zap of fuzzed-over guitars, like a cinematic tracking shot downward over a snowy scene of gathered teens. It's very "In fair Verona where we lay our scene." We get snippets of conversation, including discussions of who can acquire beer, and various drunken ramblings. It's delivered with an anthemic rocking quality that sums up the scene quite nicely: "DRUNK TEENAGERS! Let's start a fight / Out gettin' wasted on a Saturday night!" reveling in the glory of it all. It's beautifully archetypal, tells you exactly what sort of story you're getting. A celebration of the past, for all its dumb parties and heartbreak, a time jsut before you learn you're not invincible.
After another snippet, the Abbey Road-like title track that contains the first indication of how the story goes, "Later on, I see you talking to the beauty / I'm right beside her but you're lookin' right through me." "Fashionable People" then arrives as a character study, a sarcastic appraisal of the kids who have the time and freedom to get loaded in the woods. "The dancers need a dancefloor / The swingers gotta swing, / Fashionable people / Doing questionable things." It and "Penny For Your Thoughts" give us these fragments of narrative but also function well as songs in their own rights with singalong choruses and catchy hooks. Joel Plaskett is one of the single most exceptional songwriters my country has ever produced, because all through this album, and even in individual songs like these, there are so many diverse elements, instruments, verse-chorus structures, that are being put in place, and he pulls the strings perfectly. By the end of these songs, we feel as attached to the characters as they do to each other, even though we aren't watching a movie or reading a book.
The chugging, sinewy, riff-driven "Snowed In/Cruisin'" follows, into the first of three emotional climaxes on the album, the astounding "Face Of The Earth." I would like to break from protocol and define my love for this song by examining what it is not: a wistful, sighing lament, a quiet moan. No, it is as furious and frustrated and pissed-off as anything off Pinkerton. On the page (and in various acoustic versions I've heard,) you could play it low-key, but the Emergency goes balls-out here and makes it a knockout. there's something so defiant about the way the music drops out in the "Rolling thunder" refrain that heightens the tension, the drama, the tragedy. The chorus features guitars the fall like light rain and drums that kick like distant storms. It climaxes with the amazing protest chant "TEARS ROLL DOWN / THE FACE OF THE EARTH! / TEARS ROLL DOWN / THE FACE OF THE EARTH!" where our teenage protagonist demands the planet itself acknowledge his suffering. That shit is straight up Lear. Yes, somehow I've managed to work two completely separate Shakespeare allusions into this review. 'Bout time that degree starts earning its way. It's one of those times in music when you just fucking... feel it.
The next track, "The Glorious Life," is a bit more of a narrative weight-bearer than a song, but it leads into the second climactic moment, the tremendously-worded fuck off, "Nothing More To Say," an anthem of the cold shoulder. "Don't call me up when you figure it out / I got nothin' more to say to you / You had your chance when the truth came out / I got nothin' more to say to you." It's just pure, unadulterated "Fuck this shit!" And while he hammers bitterly against the guitars, the piano underneath the track begs forgiveness, because there's something so sweet and blameless about those ivories.
But for all that slamming of the door, there's another way through, with the bridge-mending "Chinatown/For The Record," which speaks to the power of music to see into the hearts of others, and "The Instrumental," which carries all the power of any other song without the need for words. The amazing thing about music is that pure feeling of feeling without being told in language. It does contain an important spoken-word segment and a few rhyming couplets at the end, but the powerful bit is the lyricless jam.
That brings us where we came in. The third and final peak of the album, the excellent "Soundtrack for the Night," whose opening lines we previously heard as the "Introduction," giving us that emotional resolution, that sense of full-circle. It also contains the best rock and roll usage of castanets ever but that's beside the point. The song absolutely soars, and swoops in for a delicate landing in that last verse that turns the intro on its ear and tells us it wasn't really about the girl as much as it was about the friends.
The album actually has its own "Her Majesty" moment, after a lengthy pause, an "Outroduction" pulls us back out of the narrative, offering a weirdly skewed vantage point and telling a strange anecdote about the time Dave Boyd ran for school president. To me, I guess, it's a weird reminder that no matter how important your problems seem to you, there's a whole world going on around you at the same time.
There's so much to say about this album. It has that perfect blend of personal and universal that all great music must, with the oddly detailed songwriting and very specific song structure blending with timeless themes of heartache and lost friendships, deception and betrayal and in the end, forgiveness. It's ornate and decorated with accessories because that's the way we view the past, but Plaskett never forgets that the good old days never really were that good.
Here is one of the greatest albums of our decade. It doesn't struggle to wrench emotion out of cliches, and it doesn't sentimentalize and it doesn't deny feeling in order to seem cool. Wisely, it finds that sweet spot to signify just enough of its own meaning and let you feel it for yourself. I often have emotional responses to music, but Ashtray Rock is the one, probably the only one, that gets me every time. I swear, every fucking time. That's what's so great about music, like a memory, it allows you to revisit those same feelings over and over, and it's so rewarding, when it's drawn so well as this one, that brings it all out and lets it all go. There will always be a place for this album.
Buy this album from iTunes now!
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