michael-dean-k/

Our last meal as pre-child adults was at Panera—something quick and light on the way to the hospital (plus she craved it)—and as we ordered our “pick twos” on a digital menu, I was struck by the beauty of a jazzy Christmas song that would have otherwise been extremely ordinary. It was “White Christmas” by Booker T and the M.G.s. My guess is that the stakes of an extraordinary moment—in this case, one of anticipation—can totally rewire musical taste (or preference in anything, really). Works that we attribute meaning to sometimes have nothing to do with objective qualities of the art, but in the circumstance in which you experience it. 

My wife and I joke that when the obstetricians ask her, “what is your pain management strategy?” she’s going to say “Led Zeppelin,” which cues me to blast “Immigrant Song” at 100% through her BOSE speakers. In all my baby-book reading, when they’ve mentioned “music” during labor, I imagine soothing, meditative music—like Enya or flukes—to calm the screaming mother; but maybe the other direction is more productive? The experience is so intense that Zen garden music could potentially feel toyish and tone deaf to the experience at hand. If you’re experiencing the extremes of pain, it might help to have blaring technical instrumentation in your ear, to moan in harmony with Robert Plant. I mean, the whole strategy is to distract your mind from pain by focusing on specific things, and it does in fact require 100% of your bandwidth to really listen to Bonham fills of Page riffs. She wants me to make her a hard rock playlist.

On the new Geese album: I’m definitely a fan of the vocals, melodies, instrumentation, layering, song structures—basically everything except the lyrics. I wondered if after multiple listens, they would eventually click. Individual lines have, but none of them are coherent as a song. They’re generally vague, cryptic, and dramatic, kind of like some of Thom Yorke’s lyrics, which work if I’m in a particular mood and willing to interpret and make my own meaning from it. Subject-wise though, pretty hard to relate to (bombs, avoiding taxes, suicide, Maria’s bones?). FWIW, I do like the sailor/car lyric lol, but not the rest of the song.