Sun Coming Down, Nate

With the maw of history opening ever-wider, it can be said now that Sun Coming Down by Ought is not a great of an album, despite containing significant greatness. 

Aesthetically, there are some choices that feel less challenging and more amateurish. A small example would be the slow fadeout of the album's galloping closer, "Never Better," which whimpers to the finish line after roaring out the gate. A larger example would be the whiplash break stomp of vocalist Tim Darcy, perhaps most graphically displayed in "Celebration," a song which finds him finding every flavor of sarcasm available to the human spectrum and giving them all a try. Where will you, dear listener, get fed up with this shit? How much irony is required to enjoy the specific delivery of "Okay / I'll take it?" Is it enough to acknowledge a joke is being told without finding the punchline funny?

It's easy to forgive amateurism when a band is at the beginning of its run. It's easy to forgive it later, too, but hindsight can recontextualize youthful exuberance and curdle it. What does a line like "there were men for miles / there were men for miles / and doesn't it bring a tear to your eye" mean to you now in the blasted future? How does it feel different considering where it came from ten years ago? What is the nature of those tears now? How trenchant is that observation in retrospect? Is it an observation at all?

Maybe better to run right at the thing. "Sun Coming Down" and "Passionate Turn" are all-time rock songs, standing chest-out and chin-up with anything else you'd consider art in the cannon. Put 'em onto the golden disc. The former is the most obvious accomplishment; it updates the suburban spiritual disaffection of Talking Heads and squeezes that sentiment through post-punk rather than world music. What comes out the other end is a darker answer to eternal questions, and that irony again, the kind that could only come from a young person born into a dying world that just keeps dying: "I'm no longer afraid to dance tonight / 'cause that is all that I have left / yes!" 

"Passionate Turn" is the one I had forgotten about, and the one I returned to a lot this time out. This song is the promise of Ought achieved, and the spirit the band has tried to carry through to mixed results in its new band, Cola. Structurally, it achieves balance between the band's spikier, art-punk arrangements with a more pop-and-melody-forward, creating something that is challenging but approachable, and setting a template for the stoned-robot vocal delivery. Lyrically, it's a tragic story of someone who is numb, but not so frozen as to not understand something is missing, not so dead as to not long for it, but none too hopeful that what is missing can be achieved. It's dead-town and haunted-house imagery also goes a long way toward forwarding my "weed culture sucks" agenda. 

Ten years ago, I thought Ought was the future. The band's legacy since then has dimmed, and what remains is a hit-or-miss catalog with a handful of songs I'll remember forever. Okay, I'll take it.