Record Club covered this album exactly five years ago. I gave it another listen this week. Here are some thoughts.
Tentanda Via
American Trappist
Week 42: November 17-23, 2019
Tentanda Via was probably the first RC album that both was from an artist completely new to me, and also made a big impact. I like that, because I occasionally need reminding that there is so much good music out there, so much so that sometimes you need the hand of fate to get it in your ears. I would have lived my entire life with every hearing about American Trappist if Record Club hadn't come about the way it did, and I would have been worse off for it.
My deep appreciation for this band came in time. It was not immediate. This was my fault, not American Trappist's. Technically, my newborn's fault. I listened to the album in the week leading up to my middle child's birth, and she was born the day before Tentanda Via Week began. But I kinda already touched on that last week.
Something that was happening around this time, definitely in the background for me (because of the baby), and possibly only learned in retrospect, was a very mild backlash was brewing against RC. 42 weeks in, it was developing a reputation as a "boy's club." The evidence thus far: more guys write reviews than girls. Can't dispute that.
But the idea was more starkly displayed during the back-to-back weeks of MUNA into American Trappist. Both weeks featured reviews from three dudes and one chick, and the opinions were reversed. Men liked Tentanda Via and shrugged at Saves the World. Our brave woman rep Rachel S. carried the torch for MUNA and felt a distance from American Trappist. The proof is right fucking there in the words of the reviews.
Probably didn't help that Sam specifically drew gender lines in his review. It's tough to remember, five years later, but in pretty sure I only thought about any of this because Sam told me that Rachel had emailed him about it?
For the record, I think that Rachel is 100% correct in calling it out, "it" being RC's tendency to be skewed male. It's a question I've struggled with, both in general and with Rachel herself, since RC's inception. We've both tried to get more women involved, and both efforts have been in vain. I do not think that it's a matter of "men just like to write about music more I guess!" I think it's actually just a matter of coincidence that the very few people in my life that I've managed to convince to write for RC also happen to be male. In a world where we have 100 writers every week, I think you'd see it skew closer to 50% female.
I also hold firm in my belief that none of this should necessarily inform one's opinion about the music. I like Tentanda Via at least twice as much as I like Saves the World. I am also a cisgender male. I think the two ideas are related but I don't think they depend on each other. Like, I'm not denying that Springsteen on a shoestring budget is more appealing to me than queer Found Drama pop, but that's not COMPLETELY because I'm a dude. To say would mean that you are dismissing my opinion as invalid. That would mean that album reviews are objective, not subjective. But they are subjective! I like Tentanda Via a lot! For many reasons!
I wish that American Trappist had even a fraction of MUNA's modest popularity. But I also wish that we lived in a blog that regularly featured 75 women collectively shrugging their shoulders at music from the likes of American Trappist. The two are not mutually exclusive. I want more people to listen to good music, and I want more people to write about music. I just wish there was a club for that.
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