Being So Normal, Joe

Good stuff! I liked this one.

"It's never a straight line with the bozo" I can hear you say, under your breath, as you read the opening lines to this album review for Being So Normal by Peach Pit. "What's the catch?" There's no catch. There's no punchline. I'm stating my opinion, from a place of honesty and a wish for purity. I liked the album. I thought it was catchy. Four young lads putting together some nice tunes, that fit firmly and comfortably in the zeitgeist of the time into which it was released. The mid-'10s. It rises to the middle-top of the heap of the thousands of bands like them, and the spotlight placed upon this work of art this week in the ritual of Record Club made it rise a little more, made my appreciation for it grow. This is a good thing. It's a good album.

Still waiting for the But? It's not coming. Don't get your hopes up, okay?

I have often espoused the theory that the album review should offer a view of the author, as opposed to the music itself. You can gather your own opinion about the music from just listening to the damn music, but you can only gather an opinion of the author through the specific words that they write. So, often, my own personal album reviews have acted as a big blinking arrow light inward, toward my own innards, the guts within me that make me who I am. When I don't like an album, that means that the blinking arrow sign is pointing toward the rotten part of my slimy heart that dislikes albums like that, and the review offers a view of that rot and slime. That's what I choose to expose. To be offended by this view means you're doing it wrong. It means you're misunderstanding what I'm trying to do here. It means, in short, that I am a shitty writer, but there's not much we can do about that now, this late in the game.

It should work the other way too. When I like an album. Like I do now.

I was thinking about the video for "Drop the Guillotine," which I watched a few times (because my iPod is acting up again, and so I did the thing where I'm listening to my new (to me) music in embedded YouTube playlists sans commercials), and liked it better each time I saw it. In it, the frontman breaks away from the rest of the band and goes on his own little adventure. He makes his way through the theater department of his school and is placed in costume and forced into a mock tribunal in which he's yelled at by a bunch of other students in powdered wigs, and eventually banished to the pillory, a fate that he's mighty upset about. And I was thinking about how maybe that whole thing mirrors some part of the process here, how we get so passionate about this shit but ultimately it's all just playacting, we're all just wearing costumes, yelling because it's part of the theater of it all. And how maybe I don't need to put on the powdered wig every week, ya know? How maybe it would be nice to sometimes just say that an album is good, is nice, is pleasant.

Like, I don't have to turn over every stone. I could find flaws and talk about them here if I wanted to. But then, you see, the flaws become my own, and that creates drama and misunderstanding within the cracks of the artistic machinery, this being flawed design anyway, and I come off missing the target, which should be "what do I think about this album" and end up with some paltry version of "how am I feeling about myself this week," which is pretty stupid, overall. But I'm stupid, and this is how I've operated for 390 weeks in a row now, and it's just something we all gotta put up with for the remainder of my life.

I'm not talking about the album, by the way. Nothing negative to say. I'm not even worried. But if I did have something bad to say about it, then that would be reflected onto me. I don't, so it doesn't. I like this album and so I am feeling good about life. Or maybe I am feeling good about life and so I like the album. Either one, it doesn't matter. It's just nice, sometimes, to listen to an album, and be like, "oh damn, that song 'Chagu's Sideturn' is so catchy, I like that." Without the drama that becomes necessary when I don't like something. The drama that I create, in the act of turning the criticisms inward. There's nothing curdling this week, no negativity to stuff deep. It's not that type of album. It's just good.

I don't have much of a job when it comes to these types of albums. It's not revelatory, and so I don't need to explain why it is. It's just a normal good album. And, as I've already said too many times now, it's not bad, so I don't have to explain why I'm a piece of shit for not liking it. It's just a nice, pleasant album. We've covered plenty of artists of this quality in this dinky little music club before—your MJ Lendermans, your Jalen Ngondas, your EarthGangs, your Haitus Kaiyotes, your Districtses, your Footballheads, all of them good in the classic sense, all of them nice to listen to, all of them pleasant, none of them really inspiring anything interesting to say, just normal pleasant goodness. And typically, I think I default to something negative in this context too. I.e. if there's nothing interesting to say beyond "it's good," then that must mean "it's boring," which is in itself bad.

But I'm not gonna do that here, with our pals Peach Pit. I do not think there is anything interesting in the music itself, but I do think it's interesting to strip that expectation away every once in a while, and just view the quality of the music for what it is, not what it means. If I'm listening to this indie rock album and I like it and it's pleasant and I don't have any strong opinions about it in either direction from that starting point, then instead of asking myself why those opinions aren't strong, I'm just taking it for what it is. That this is just a good album, and I like it, and it doesn't have to be any deeper than that. Accuse me of using this as a defense mechanism, I don't give a fuck. I don't need to put up with strong opinions this week. That is my choice. I'm choosing to say that I like Being So Normal by Peach Pit, and that, for this week and maybe possibly only this week, is enough.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5