plastic death, Joe

I am told that I need to examine my shadow self. I am told that there are parts of me that I unconsciously repress, that much of that which is repressed is repressed for a reason, e.g. the part of me that wants to inflict harm upon those whom I feel deserve it, or whatever. I am told, however, that to gain the truest understanding of who I am as a person, I need to take a good hard look at that repression, get to know it, understand the hows and whys, and that only then will I be my full self.

I am told this as I am listening to the new glass beach album, plastic death. I am told this while reading an interview with the band. I am told by J that they intend the deep-sea imagery to be representative of our shadow selves, the parts of us that we need to acknowledge and audit. I don't think that this is something that I have ever previously ignored, though maybe no one has put the idea into these exact words before. It is interesting, though, to run this idea through the process of listening to a new album. Could an album like plastic death work as a metaphor for that exploration of self? In other words, what about glass beach enables my abilities to examine my flaws and become a more complete version of myself?

I think I would typically use such an album to say something like "I don't have time to understand all its intricate details and themes!" Which is bullshit. Not that this is a simple album, by any means. But ignoring the task and not totally untruthfully saying that this is a deep and rich album that requires way more attention than I can give it in five days is also totally a cop out. It's cowardice. It's being afraid to take the leap, to give an opinion and allowing that opinion to be tested by many subsequent post-RC-week listens, and either standing tall or withering. Either way, I acknowledge the shadow self is probably the knowing that I'm not a good music critic, and I acknowledge that seeing the shadow self means maybe I should just go ahead and repress that impulse to hide, and just write a regular goddamn album review. Maybe the album on hand is so good that it deserves plain words and simple opinions.

Maybe it's time to say that complexity in music is a good thing. Sure, I love my simple power pop jams like the rest of 'em. But an album like plastic death requires work, and putting in the work is a good thing, a worthy endeavor. There are complex time signatures, there are overlapping and very loud guitars, there are deep and occasionally obtuse lyrics. There are songs that explode at the end; there are songs that explode in the middle and then take four more minutes to build themselves back up. There are very few songs that feel like anything from this band's first album. This feels darker, on purpose. There are songs on which glass beach sounds like the Voidz; there are songs on which J sounds like Thom Yorke; there are songs on which J proves they'd fit in well if glass beach was a screamo band. "puppy" feels like a straightforward song, comparatively speaking, but if I tried telling that to someone minus the comparison, I'd get laughed out of the room. What I'm trying to say with all this is that these things take time, and effort, and after a while, the complex starts to feel simple. You just need to invest that time and that effort, that's all. It's the album you need to listen to 200 times to get completely, and it's the type of album that's worth listening to 200 times.

So you take a song like "200." The members of glass beach claim that this is the song on which they tried to sound like a jazz quartet playing in a dark club late at night. When I'm told this, I can hear it. Kind of. For maybe a minute. Then a quick loud blast of guitar, then a shimmering keyboard descending, then huge floor tom hits so that it's sounding like a black mirror version of a big Broadway showstopper. Then any traces of jazz are shredded as we climb toward a very noisy and very cathartic climax, with requisite implosion and screaming. It's like the quick little quote at the beginning of the album—art feels tenuous, but never is, and so what does that say about the artist who is so adamant on attempts at destruction regardless?

Hence the term "plastic death," referring to how plastic cannot be easily broken down, which means that there are millions of tons of plastics just chilling in great big piles and are so abundant that it starts to enter our bloodstreams, literally, and so, like, maybe something that last forever is not always a good thing. We think of terms like "rot" and "decay" in negative terms, but when a piece of wood rots, that means it's changing and that means it's participating in the circle of life, decay and growth and decay and growth. It makes me think about how the songs on this album allow themselves to participate in that same cycle, rotting and then flourishing and overall just changing, constantly. It also makes me think about the act of listening to music in general, how it's fleeting in the moment, even the good parts, and we feel something when we hear music like plastic death, and we love it so much that we don't want it to end, which is fucked up, because everything ebbs and flows and grows and decays and changes and there is nothing we can do to stop it and art manages to really reach its full potential when it's allowed to participate in that cycle and so we need to just let it do its thing and not fight against it and not be so goddamn selfish about it.

glass beach becomes, by choice, a martyr at the altar of this idea. It's a worthy idea, but at the same time, the martyrdom occasionally comes at the expense of the music being catchy. If you're asking me what I'd choose, simple hooks that mean nothing or complex sounds that mean everything, then I'm taking the latter every time. I just wish that not every moment on this album was an either/or choice, that we could more than just occasionally have both. This albums meant the world to me this week and will also be very difficult to return to at any point before March. 

Because change is important and it's fucking hard. It's hard work, and this album about change is fucking drenched in sweat from all the work it's doing. But not in a gross way. More like in a way when you see a high-tier professional athlete drenched in sweat from giving it their all, and they collapse in exhaustion, spent, all in the name of achieving greatness.

Part of my shadow self, I think, is the belief that I will never amount to anything important. Some core part of myself knows it to be true, but I repress that feeling, because it's not helpful. I wouldn't be able to function that way, knowing that this is all for naught. I'm not pretending the opposite. I'm not pretending anything. I'm just repressing it. I'm repressing the future failure and I'm sitting down at the keyboard and I'm typing a review for the new glass beach album to the best of my ability. I'm saying that it's a great album. I'm trying to say why. I'm trying to let you know how it makes me feel. I know the shadow self, and I know that I know that I know that I'm no good, but, like glass beach, I'm not letting it consume me, but rather allowing it to fuel me to get to where I want to be, to make me a complete person, full and true.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5