Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Music: Nana Grizol

"This is the field where I realized I loved you/This is the diner where we learned that people die before their time sometimes/The impermanence of it all, don't you let make you feel too very small." Nana Grizol, "Blackbox"


Do you ever listen to music and find it acts more like a time machine than a piece of art? The lyrics and the rhythm surging through you conduct your mind backwards to a time when you needed that song. It's the time when the music took you under its wing and sheltered you and you are ever grateful--it has been ingrained in your very blood. And now it exists inside of you and when it is played, it is an anthem that no one else can understand. Through the pangs of nostalgia that run the gamut of emotions, the song soars and rises high above. I am constantly transported from my car or bedroom because a song has taken hold of me.


I associate the album Plans by Death Cab for Cutie with the second semester of my sophomore year in college and Stars and Boulevards by Augustana with the year prior to that. Then any Flogging Molly, Lagwagon, Blink, or Descendants takes me through most of my middle and high school years. And Defiance, Ohio brings me to driving around Auburn or the Coast with my friends, going to house shows, getting drunk.


In the past two days, I whipped out my Nana Grizol and have been playing the album Ruth nonstop. Ruth encapsulates the weeks in the summer that I spent in Atlanta missing people and quietly falling in love--though I didn't realize that it was love at all until later. I got to see them in concert with Defiance, Ohio in Athens, Georgia with my brother and his girlfriend. My boyfriend-to-be and greatest friend was supposed to attend, but couldn't at the last minute. And I realized then how much he meant to me. So the album used to make me feel very sad and homesick. But now......it has taken on an entirely different feeling that is akin to joy and surprise. 


Today, specifically, I have identified with the song "Blackbox" due to circumstances that have arisen and that I do not know how to react to. Without going into detail, listen listen listen to this song. The words are illuminating as is everything Theodore Hilton (lead singer/songwriter) touches.


Nana Grizol, "Blackbox":


1. Here's the live for Pink Couch Sessions:


2. And this is the song as it sounds on the album:

Have a great day!
-Becky

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