This week’s mix was inspired by that Kylie had never heard Bone Machine. I felt this ought to be remedied, and conceptually everything grew from there.

I’m a fan of pop songs that dip into religious tradition. Here, we have Tom Waits singing what, lyrically, is a mostly devout sentiment, but which is peppered with Mr. Wait’s typical standoffish would-be believer character’s cynicism: “Hollywood be Thy name.” The character in Dylan’s “Tryin’ To Get To Heaven” is equally distant from plain piety, but more as a typical blues character; one who believes he’s guilty, accepts the Christian mythos without question, and only hopes he can squeeze by anyway. That same worldview often occupies the minds of Nick Cave’s characters; in this case, our jilted lover attributes his loss to a stark, Lutheran theology — people just ain’t no good, even when they intend to be otherwise.
From there the concepts and music slid into songs of loss, especially romantic loss. Frightened Rabbit, Tegan and Sara, Modest Mouse (twice, because Sun Kil Moon’s covering) all try to deal with the grief of loss in varying ways (respectively: it wouldn’t have worked; it so would have; no, it wouldn’t, and I am going to have a few or move north). Then we have Death Cab: Ben Gibbard, master of objective correlative, has no idea if it would have worked or not; all he knows, or rather, feels is, it’s over. But, everything will be fine, whether or not it would have worked.
From there, the redemption is musical: The Bees, Alicia Keys and M. Ward all share Gibbard’s ultimate optimism, and it’s Ms. Keys’s gospel-tinged delivery that incarnates that hope: life is bittersweet, but it tastes good to me.

to watch it all burn

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