Author: DC
Date: November 2011
Word count: 1,026
A wise man once said “all good things come to an end” - or at least, Nelly Furtado did. And while Miss Furtado has a sketchy track record when it comes to truth-telling[1] she is absolutely right about this. Sometimes relationships don’t work out, people die, start-up businesses fail, and bands break up. Not only do we understand that these things will happen but we actively expect them to, and in some cases wish that they would sooner[2]. That understanding, however, doesn’t stop us from being sideswiped when something that really matters to us comes to end. While at a rational level we may be prepared for events, we may not be emotionally ready.
I certainly wasn’t ready this week when on consecutive days two of my three favourite bands of all time broke up. To be clear, I’m not saying that band break-ups are as tragic as deaths or relationship breakdowns. While art is a vital element of life, art isn’t equivalent to life or love, and shouldn’t be treated as such. I rationally accept that, but emotionally this week has been a tough one. I have lived with these bands for longer than my longest relationship, for longer than my professional career, and for longer than my time at high school and University put together. While I never expected them to keep recording forever, I still wasn’t ready for them to stop.
One of the bands was the first experimental, heavy, generally weird band that I ever really fell in love with. My early teenage years were soundtracked by US radio rock[3] and some deviations into the back catalogues of the Offspring and other Epitaph / Nitro punk bands. I liked music but I hadn’t yet found the sound that I’d fall in love with, and that would become something that I’ve been obsessed with for the last ten years. And then things changed, in the time that it took someone to burn a CD-R and scribble on it with an off-brand Sharpie that smudged to the point of illegibility before it made its way to me. The someone was my friend Dusty, the CD-R contained Thrice’s “The Illusion of Safety”, and that was that. The record was brave, exciting, technical, like nothing I’d ever heard before, and I loved it. It was difficult too, with its screamed vocals and knotty lyrics, but that didn’t put me off. I wanted to understand it, to be able to decipher the words, to hear the songs that inspired it and those that would be inspired by it.
A little while later I impulse-bought a CD, without knowing very much about the band that had recorded it. I recall thinking that they had an extremely dorky name – who would name their band after a day of the week? Did they not realise how much shit that their fans would get? – but also that their dove-shaped logo was beautiful, and that the album should be good given the positivity of the reviews that I had read. On listening, I quickly found out that this was another difficult record, or at least a record that I didn’t yet have the frame of reference to understand. The guitars screamed, the song structures were unconventional to say the least, and the singer alternated between choirboy sweetness and a scream that sounded like a raccoon caught in a trap. It took me many listens to get into it, but somewhere around spin twelve or thirteen things just clicked. The record was “Full Collapse”, the band was Thursday, and since then they have either been my favourite or second favourite band in the world, depending on mood and quality of most recent album.
This week, both Thursday and Thrice called it quits. In their closing statements, neither band was quite R.E.M.-final in their declarations, as they both stated that they may wish to play together again at some point in the future. But nevertheless, they are dropping out of the album-tour-album cycle, and have acknowledged the possibility that they may never play or record again. They both have perfectly justifiable reasons for doing so: young families, the rigours of the touring grind, the financial challenges of being in a mid-level band on an independent label. Admirably, both bands also say that they want to go out on an artistic high, and the stellar reviews of Thursday’s recent “No Devolucion” and Thrice’s “Major/Minor” allow them to do so.
And this is where it comes back to rationality versus emotion: rationally, I accept that the bands have good reasons for doing what they are doing, and making these choices. If the band members were my friends, I’d probably be telling them that they were making the right decision, that which will make their lives easier and help them to grow as people. But when it comes to these bands, I find that I can’t be rational. It’s emotion all the way. They have brought me so much joy and so much excitement. They have given me some of the best nights out I’ve ever had. And as clichéd as it sounds, they have taught me a lot about life, and about the way that I want to live mine. Thrice’s “The Weight” was the song that made me realise that I was ready to get married, and Thursday’s Geoff Rickley expressed more clearly than anyone else has the core values that I want to live my life by in “Stay True”. So right now it does feel like a breakup, like a little death, as I don’t know how I will replace what they gave me. All good things come to an end, we know that – but that doesn’t stop us wishing that the opposite were true.
[1] I’m fairly sure that she’s not actually like a bird, that she has never really eaten a man, and that she’s not promiscuous. Oh no, wait, hold on...
[2] I still have my fingers crossed that the rumours that Nickelback will break up after this album cycle are true.
[3] For the record, I still love Everclear.
