Of Note 014: The Grief of Sufjan and Ben Kweller, Coming Out Set To Dad Rock
Howdy folks,
Welcome back! We’re still waiting for summer to arrive here in Chicago, but I hope warm weather greets you where ever you are.
We’ve all heard variations of “it’s what the artist intended.” We hear it in advertising for headphones and speakers and we seek it out in interviews and critical analysis.
Much of what I read this month - particularly Robin Hilton’s interview with Sufjan Stevens and Niko Stratis’ new memoir - got me thinking that our personal experiences of music and how we receive should not be diminished just because of artistic intent. The combination of the two makes for a richer experience. We have to take it all in and make sense of it.
This month, I’m also sharing stories about how Ben Kweller is recovering from his own personal tragedy, Lido Pimienta’s classical turn, another great Caryn Rose live review for Salon, and - if you must - one thing worth reading about Morgan Wallen, who is regrettably so big you can’t not be aware of him.
Sufjan Stevens: “I'm kind of embarrassed by this album”
Robin Hilton got the interview of the year for NPR. For the 10th anniversary edition of Carrie and Lowell, his raw 2015 album in the wake of his mother’s death, Sufjan Stevens wrote an essay where he calls the album a failure. It’s shocking to hear an artist feel so negatively about an album that is beloved. I remember Carrie and Lowell being the album that got friends of mine who I had never even heard say the name “Sufjan” start crying to his music.
Hilton delicately, but directly, probes Stevens on his feelings and his answers are thoughtful, stunning, and beautiful
I was trying to make sense of something that is senseless. I felt that I was being manipulative and self-centered and solipsistic and self-loathing, and that the approach that I had taken to my work, which is to kind of create beauty from chaos, was failing me.
When you love an album and read that from the person who created it, it can make you question your own feelings.
But as I read on, I started to feel a freedom: Stevens can feel this way and this album can also still be meaningful and important. Both of those are valid. Hilton gets there with Stevens, too:
I believe the music has a consciousness beyond me, and so I'm grateful that the songs can exist regardless of my failed intentions or my bad intentions.
Ben Kweller’s Peace
Remember Ben Kweller? I happen to because he was at his peak right around the time I was in college radio and his shaggy main from the cover of his 2006 self-titled album, for some reason, rents space in my brain. I hadn’t heard his name in a while so I was surprised to this profile by Jayson Green on him for Vulture. I had no idea the tragedy Kweller had been through.
A couple years ago, Kweller’s 16-year-old son Dorian died in a freak car accident (the piece has the gory details if you want them). As I worked through the shock of reading about the incident, reading about how quickly Kweller has turned tragedy into motivation felt like whiplash and wisdom.
Greene, who had his own child die in a freak accident as well, finds Kweller’s emotional state a bit perplexing and he bravely seeks to learn more:
As we talk, I come to grips with an odd truth about him: He seems to feel no angst. Throughout our conversations, no matter how many times I ask him a dark question about his grief or prod about his musical process, I get an earnest, upbeat, uncomplicated answer. Feeling increasingly morbid, I go fishing in the depths. I ask him if there’s been a time in his life, prior to Dorian’s death, when he felt psychic torment. I ask him if making music has ever felt like wrenching the faucet back on or if it’s always been frictionless. But what I take away from his answers, again and again, is that Kweller is frictionless. He’s sad about his child’s death in an almost childlike way, without any of the adult contaminants of rage, bitterness, or self-recrimination.
Reading this and the previous interview with Sufjan hammers home the truth that the process of grief is individual and universal all at once.
Book of the Month: The Dad Rock That Made Me A Woman by Niko Stratis
One thing about me: I enjoy a coming out story. The act of somebody showing their true selves to their friends and family is incredibly brave and there’s something we all could learn from those courageous acts. We’re all hiding some part of ourselves.
Niko Stratis’ The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman is like an essay playlist. Each chapter centers around a particular song and artist that prominent during a part of Stratis’ story. It proceeds mostly chronologically as Stratis lives and learns while growing up in the Yukon, moving back and forth to Toronto, and trying to make it as a hard-partying blue collar worker. There’s no real triumphant moment, no bigger than life movie ending. These are small, personal stories that none the less feel meaningful and complex. I’m grateful Stratis shared them. Interspersed among them is some great writing about the music itself.
The artists and songs selected are a modern interpretation of dad rock, but one that is pretty well agreed upon. Stratis and I share similar taste (Wilco, Neko Case, Bruce Springsteen, Sharon Van Etten, Waxahatchee to name a few) so I flew through the book and even made a playlist from the songs mentioned.
What I love about the book is that it allowed me to add Stratis’ stories and what she took from these songs to my own memories of them. Now when I listen, these songs feel even bigger and I feel like I’m tapping into a collective consciousness. This is why I think it’s important to not just understand the artist’s intent, but to give space for your own and others’ feelings, so we can be connected to something bigger.
Bonus Links
“But then, you know, when you're brown and you do anything that's European, it's like, ‘Wow, thinkpiece.’” Lido Pimienta takes on “world music” in this Hearing Things piece from Julianne Escobedo Shepherd.
Another great live review, this time of Nick Cave in Columbus, by Caryn Rose at Salon.
If you must read anything about Morgan Wallen - I get it he’s popular and sometimes we have to contend with popular things - read Craig Jenkins at Vulture.
Thank you for reading! See you next month!
Justin Anderson-Weber
