Music Moots with Half Nelson
We are extremely back with Music Moots™, the blogseries where I ask someone to recommend me a song they like, and then I listen to the song and then write a little about it.
Today we have Half Nelson! Operating out of Louisville, Kentucky, the band—Ann Gilly on guitar, Megan Day on drums, Kelly Krucki on keys (and all three of those members sharing singing duties) plus Jessica Chao on bass—is going through some personnel shifts, with Krucki and Day departing, but they are striving onward with the release of two new singles, "CT2KM" and "Liar."
Bandcamp Album of the Day Apr 5, 2022
Their brand of punk music is earnest, heartfelt, and high energy in a way that makes me wish I could see them live. Which made me look up Half Nelson live sets on YouTube and I found a really fun one from last year that Señor Diablo, a Louisville local music documentarian, shot the hell out of. Concert videography is so alive and so well.
Ann from the band recommended "Universal Heart-Beat" by Juliana Hatfield.
Last Music Moots I wrote about Annika from Zachshots's pick of a 1996 song by Mathieu Boogaerts. "Universal Heart-Beat" is from 1995. Hard not to listen to the mid-'90s stuff and catch the vibe that everyone was in a pretty decent mood. Our collective fall from '90s grace is represented in the fact that it seems like hairdressers across the country collectively forgot how to do the Juliana Hatfield haircut (which took its final form in the 2001 Reese Witherspoon movie Sweet Home Alabama, then was entirely lost to time post-9/11). Whither the spunky, "piece-y" bob?
The chorus of this song goes A heart, a heart that hurts/Is a heart, a heart that works. Despite a hurting heart, Hatfield sounds downright peppy. Someone has done her wrong, but she "wouldn't have it any other way." It reminds me of a breakup I had in college, the Ur-Breakup, really. I was a junior, living in a crumbling block of upperclassman housing with squirrels in the walls. Five roommates, four girls and a guy. Our living room walls were decorated with cardboard DVD inserts that one friend had gotten in bulk from a video store going out of business. Ice Age 2. Season 5 of Weeds. It was the last couple of months of legal original formula Four Loko, and everyone held the enormous cans at parties in their fists like grenades.
A month into the semester, my boyfriend met me on the back porch of my apartment and broke up with me execution-style. I don't want to do this anymore. Now, I understand why he did it. Pop psychologists of today would call my problem at the time to be an "anxious attachment style," I would probably call it just "acting like a nutcase." The prior weekend I went vodka shot for vodka shot with my friend who was going through her own breakup, had a crying meltdown in the bathroom during a Janelle Monáe concert, and tried to drag the boyfriend home with me for the night. When he refused, I lost my shit. Woke up the next day feeling like I needed a blood transfusion, but still got it together to go apple picking with my friends. Ah, upstate New York in the fall.
At the time, I did not understand his rationale for kicking me to the curb, and the breakup was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. The pain of it was akin to doing one of those cold plunges, where the shock of it is painful, and then staying in it continues to be painful, and you tell yourself there are benefits to the pain, but you're lying, you're just cold plunging because you read about it in an Instagram carousel. But beyond that initial pain was actually amusement...even elation...because I had a reason to be sad. My sadness had a concrete source. Woo hooooooooo!! It was oddly thrilling to have such a classic excuse for being upset. It kind of carried me through the whole dark time. I am heartbroken! I would think, sad at a party, wearing a flannel shirt over a tube top for some reason. I have a broken heart. Right this moment.
I feel like I hear that feeling in Hatfield's chipper attitude. Oh well, she seems to sing, at least I'm not dead. Let's rock! Sometimes, there's nothing to do but keep on chugging (guitar riffs and otherwise).
Thanks Half Nelson! Check out their link aggregation here.
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