Truckin’ Vol. 3 [oops]
witching hour edition
I had a heavier piece I was getting ready for this week, but work was extremely, unexpectedly chaotic. Weighty topics just weren’t a good fit — I needed to have fun. And what says “fun” like reminiscing about times that I was stuck out on the road way later than I had intended, feeling like the world was vaguely haunted?
In all truthfulness, driving in the wee hours of the night-that’s-nearly-morning has always felt soothing. The road is open and peaceful and for once it’s actually quiet with the windows down. If you choose to lower your music’s volume, you might even catch chirping birds. Or you might find eerie silence: the kind that leads to meditative reflection….or that makes you turn the dial forward, yearning for a song to keep you company.
Forgive me for continuing to add to this series. I’m desperately counting down the days until a vacation. Can’t you tell?
When You’re Feeling Content: Paradise [EP] by Lana Del Rey (2012, chamber pop)
It is a miracle that I have not gone on a Lana Del Rey rant on this blog yet. I’ve fought to avoid it. She’s exhausting to stan. She says so much dumb shit. She never honors the release dates she announces. And yet…I cannot get away from the enticing air that surrounds her work. She is constantly mythologizing herself in the ways I wish I could — in the ways I think we all wish we could, if only our jobs and our schedules and our anxious thoughts weren’t in the way…
But fortunately, we have this music, like a portal, allowing us to have our own moments in the sun. Lana is unafraid to make broad declarations, for better or for worse — and when it comes to the music, it’s for the better. When you put on a Lana album, you get to be just like her for a half hour or two: glamorous, adventurous, in a state of total surrender to the experience of a life that is grandiose. Extravagance isn’t a vice here, and fidelity is weakness. Give in to your darkest desires and skip town before anyone can reprimand you.
Paradise is structured like a journey, perfect for a long drive or a ponderous solo walk. But it shines the brightest in the total dark, radiant like high beams piercing straight to the heart of the matter. Sometimes we drive just to leave, and not to go anywhere in particular. Sometimes we leave just to feel alive.
For Driving Out (or Directly Into) the Existential Dread: Run the Jewels 2 by Run the Jewels (2016, hardcore hip hop)
It was hard to pick just one RTJ album for this title, but I had to go with this one — It came out during my senior year of high school, and will always be my favorite, tied irrevocably to memories of rage uncovered and confidence claimed. This is an album about justice, resilience, and power. It’s hilariously quotable and unafraid of veering dark. It’s given a home to my once-latent anger and accompanied some of my most successful runs.
Political music can be a risky dice to roll when we’re already feeling existential — Will it make the spiral worse, or anchor our anxieties? But this is an album that grounds its hard conversations in humor and celebration. It approaches all its beasts from the perspective of someone all-too-ready for the challenge: Killer Mike and El-P, along with the god-tier collaborators they enlist, feel like superheroes. There’s no fear of losing, as long as they’re on our side.
For Dark and Stormy Nights: Heart Failure by COMANAVAGO (2020, electropop)
This might be my pick for “most underrated 2020 release” — in those deep, dark days of isolation, I need my sugar sad and my sadness saccharine. Dark pop was the name of the game back then, and COMANAVAGO delivered it in deadly droves, in heart-shattering shots of adrenaline. Hyperpop was popular at this time, and people craved music that put nostalgia through the spin cycle: leaving it squeaky clean, but unraveling at its seams. But while most hyperpop pulled from the 2000’s dance-pop playbook, the music here owes just as much to millennial R&B, and the serpentine vocal lines of Britney Spears.
The references to bad weather are quite literal here: “When it rains / I promise you it pours” are the words that open the record, an immediate reference to both excess and agony: pure melodrama. But there’s something about the overall atmosphere that continues to call back to the bigness and darkness of a storm — chilling heights of ice-hardened angst, paired with melodies warm as a fireside chat.
For Feelin’ Spooky: Pain is Beauty by Chelsea Wolfe (2013, darkwave)
Past 3 am, whether you’re behind the wheel or under the covers unable to sleep…It’s a game of spook or be spooked. Here’s how you win.
If Lana Del Rey’s music invites the listener to participate in glamor, excess, and hedonism, Chelsea Wolfe’s music invites the listener to be formidable. Beastly. Furnished with the kind of beauty that adorns sirens. Her characters weather a bulletproof sadness — one that doesn’t want pity, but wanders, spectral, towards a hazy revenge. If you’re feeling like an outlaw, there’s room for you here. If you’re just feeling aimless, there’s even more.
For Calm Nights: Love Deluxe by Sade (1992, smooth soul)
Sometimes we’re out late, but less in a ‘running from our fate’ way, and more in a ‘personal end credits scene’ kind of way. Planned or unplanned, our journey is under way, and we’re about to end up right where we needed to be. We feel immaculate, as we drive off into the sunset. Or sunrise. Or anything in-between.
Love Deluxe feels, deeply, like the 90’s — Perhaps that’s why the film credit reference feels apt? I put this album on, and I feel like I’ve reached the end of a favorite childhood VHS tape: bright-colored logos and familiar names scrolling across my mind’s eye. And yet… it also doesn’t feel like the 90’s at all. It’s embellished by traditional instruments, where that decade erred electronic. It’s smooth and polished, where that decade gave us grunge. It’s slick and clean and free of the signature distortion of even the era’s indie hits. It’s singular, but it still evokes the exact cultural moment surrounding its birth.
Thanks for tuning in to the latest installment in this…. much-longer-than-planned series! Work ramped up for me big time, but should be back to normal soon. I’ve got some standalone pieces that have been in the works for some time, though, and am excited to be ready to share them soon.
Until then: Breathe. Rest. …That’s all I got.
Clare