Song of the Day: "Jimi & Stan"

Here's an honorable mention from the Top 20 Songs of 2021, a feature that will be published toward the end of the week. I'm folding honorable mentions into our Song of the Day column today and tomorrow. If you wanna see previous Songs of the Day/Week/Whatever, click HERE. If you wanna see which 20 songs were better than this one in 2021, then you're gonna have to wait baby.

"Jimi & Stan"

Strand of Oaks

from In Heaven

2021

I wasn't able to connect with In Heaven as much as I have with some of Strand of Oaks' previous albums. It could just be that I haven't given it enough time—these rock songs have some height to 'em, some fucking grandeur, maybe it's a grower—and that would be fair. There's only so much time in a year. But I still like it a lot so far, and it's given me kind of a weird thing to chew on in the meantime. What I'm proposing now is that maybe I haven't been able to connect with In Heaven because of the motivation behind the creation of this album, and how what matters to Tim Showalter might seem a little weird to me? Or, like, a little silly to me, whereas, no, Showalter is taking this shit very seriously.

I'm talking about the fact that this album is pretty much about the death of Tim Showalter's cat.

That's not to downplay Showalter's grief. Or maybe it is, I dunno. I've never liked cats. I've never felt a connection with a pet at all, to be honest. Not to a serial killer level where I was assaulting cats when I was young, but, like, for instance, when my childhood dog Mollie died, it was more like "Damn, that sucks," and then my life went on.

Fuck, this is sounding so callous. I'm sorry. Let's validate Tim Showalter's pain: I acknowledge the fact that for most people, the loss of a pet is devastating. Here's how devastating it was for Tim Showalter when his cat died: the dude straight-up stopped drinking. He is sober currently. His reasoning was that he didn't want to experience the grief over the loss of his cat while intoxicated. Now that's approaching a subject matter I can begin to understand. I know what it feels like to turn to alcohol in moments of pain, and how hard it is to face something sober, and— but okay, that's not why we're here. We're here about the cat.

The cat is this song's titular "Stan," by the way. ""Jimi," of course, is Jimi Hendrix. In "Jimi & Stan," Strand of Oaks paints of a picture of what it might be like if Jimi the guitarist and Stan the cat became friends in the afterlife.

 

I like this song because, on paper, it sounds preposterous, but when you take a step back, you start to understand what a power coping technique it must've been for Showalter. It's not outrageous to use dreams as coping mechanisms to manage stress and grief and whatnot. This amounts to a more complex version of the "he's in a better place" statement humans have made to themselves for millennia.

And it really helps the listener that this deeply personal vision about a cat in heaven is actually couched within a mid-tempo rock banger. When Showalter croons "Now I don't have my buddyyyyy!"—yes, he's talking about his cat, but man, the pain comes through, and that pain might not be as powerful if this wasn't a towering rock 'n' roll ballad.

I think if you're initial reaction to In Heaven's theme was "Wait, it's about his cat?", then that's pretty understandable. That's what I thought. And it's easy to hold this album at arm's length because of that! But it's certainly hard to completely dismiss. I understand the need for comfort, and some day—not today, not any day in 2021, but some day—I'll need the comfort that Strand of Oaks is providing here.