It's sad because I want it to be sad, not because it is necessarily so. Wait, no—I need it to be sad, to attach some weight to it, to buff out the flaws and make it feel smooth, heavy, purposeful. This is not a new tale, either in music or in this music club specifically. Otis Redding never saw "(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay" hit number one. The Exploding Hearts all died in a car crash years before I even knew their name. We still don't know where Connie Converse is or what happened to her. Death gives fresh meaning to life. It's just one of those facts that exists; it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth but it's true. I don't know if we'd be listening to jaimie branch this week if she didn't pass away at a relatively young age. I don't know if quantitative reviews of her 2023 posthumous album were jacked up because of that death. I don't begrudge anyone if they were. That's how the story goes.
I wonder if I would've even heard this album at all. Take a step back, and it's a pretty good jazz album that only sometimes actually sounds like jazz (either that or I don't know what the fuck jazz even is). Then take a step forward again and you start to hear the notes as echoes of a life whose flame was snuffed out. I hear "baba louie" and I hear a New Orleans funeral procession. There is no way that jaimie branch constructed it as such, or if she did, then there is absolutely no way that she could've imagined that the funeral was to be her own. This is just meaning that we ascribe to the meaningless. Death is random. It is cruel in its randomness, but still undeniably random. But we need it to make sense. We need it to be sad.
We say that jaimie branch died too young, and that she had so much to give, and you absolutely get that sense when you listen to FoDx3. This is music like nothing I've heard before. I take other people's word for it when they confirm for me that that's true, else I'd have to assume I'm just ignorant. This is jazz but it's not. This is certainly not like the jazz we've heard before, here. This is something else. And if we imagine a world in which jaimie branch received the care she needed and imagine the music had she flied not died, then we can imagine music that doesn't exist yet, and now never will, probably, and we can grieve what we lost because we live in this universe, where jaimie branch died at 39.
In some ways, death destroys limitations. We can imagine that jaimie branch could do anything because now she never will. In other ways, death creates limitations. I have criticisms regarding her final album, but because it is her final album, those criticism seem ill-fitting for the ostensible album review. "the mountain," for instance, is rough. Rough guest vocals, rough bass playing, rough rough rough. In death, though: maybe not so much. Bad songs become good in the afterlife. Lines like "If the climb becomes too much / I can always turn around" now bear a terrible irony, which in turn metastasizes into a terribly sad yet beautiful new work of art, would-be lightheartedness crushed into the blackest, densest coal.
I think about the old refrain as repeated by all new members of Record Club: "This is music that I will listen to while I do chores." Stripped of all context, I could see a scenario in which I'm washing the dishes to the sounds of "bolinko bass," walking the cat to "burning grey," getting pissed off waiting in a ridiculous line at the post office with "take over the world" pulsating on both eardrums. And I grieve in this way as well—those opportunities are gone, or found in purposeful ignorance. I know the truth, and the truth is that jaimie branch is dead, and there's no going back to a time before I knew that truth.
I grieve in my own way, not for a soul I never knew in life, but for the life I could've had if she didn't die. I miss something I never had. In this way, a spiritual bond is formed with those who actually did know jaimie, and helped her finish the album during her life and then posthumously. They knew her, and they miss her and grieve all the moments they'll now never get again. It's like death creates this great monstrous chasm and all we can do is stand at its edge and look toward the other side and just... wonder. What if, and so on.
There's no responsibility on the audience's behalf to honor this album or think about it in this way. Most days, I don't even do it. If I felt like it was necessary to mourn every artist I'll never know, then I'd spend most of my time weeping, and there is much too much joy left in the living of this life to waste it with that mindset. No, most days, Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)) is just a pretty cool little jazz-ish punk album that seems catchy in small ways and might make a good soundtrack for polishing the good set of silverware or dusting the shelves or taking out the recycling bin or thinking about the frailty of human existence oh no wait what am I saying.
I guess I'm saying that, if necessary, we could easily assign this album a heft borne of some terrible truth. In life, jazz punk, whatever the fuck that is. In death, an expectation that it's going to somehow summarize life, or make some sort of grand statement, or provide peace, or some shit like that. Maybe not even possible, I don't know. But if we're talking about my feelings about this album, then, as numb as I am, I'll probably still try. Feeling sad feels right in this moment.
GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5
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