Snail Mail
There are albums in my life that act as a therapeutic friend who I only see a couple times a year, but is always there to pick up lost pieces of me. They don’t put me back together, they gingerly place the pieces in my hand and offer directions to a way back. One album in particular has grown with me over two decades and knows exactly when to play for me, usually at my loneliest. Like many native New Yorkers, I’ve never gotten a driver’s license, so I’ve no other option but to walk. Walk to get to or leave places. Walk to discover or hide.
Back when I toured as a poet, I often spent hours of days walking around new cities and towns. There were a few albums that always traveled with me, but one specific album made being alone into an art. The first time I left New York to go somewhere where people paid me to read poetry was in December of 2005. My first tour stop was for the DC slam on 12/18/05 at a restaurant called Teasim and the second was for Slamicide in Baltimore at a spot called X&O on 12/19/06.
After I arrived in DC’s Chinatown and before I got to the first slam I rode the DC Metro to a friend's house, walked a bunch, visited with friends and rode it back to DC. I was scared alone but I figured I was NY tough. I had been riding the train by myself since I was 11 years old and that should’ve been enough to prepare me for any rapid transit. While I did the DC/Baltimore gigs I stayed at my friend’s parents house in Chevy Chase Maryland. I never heard of that place, and wondered if it was named after the Actor. At some point while there, I remember running out of cigarettes, wanting a drink and deeply desiring a walk. My hosts pointed me to “main street” and sent me on my way. Chevy Chase is the suburbs of TV shows I grew up on. I might’ve walked an hour or more through streets without sidewalks, with massive manicured hedges and amazing house after house. This is where I imagined all the DC chief’s of staff lived. Maybe it’s larger and more grandiose in my memories, but back then I couldn’t really say I’d seen much outside of NY, not yet at least. That entire time I had one album on repeat. Maybe there was more variety on that trip but all I can remember rocking was Give Up by the Postal Service.
Over and over again, everywhere I went. I played that record till I knew every pop, beat and lyric. All over the DMV (just a bit of the D and the M) I looped Give Up in my headphones, holding onto it to curb my loneliness. I’m sure I was broken hearted then, I mean when wasn’t I in those days. I remember obnoxiously singing “D, C. Sleeps, alone, tonight.” out loud every time that song came back around. I wanted everyone to know that I had a DC connection and that maybe they should be aware of my knowledge and celebrate my excellent musical taste. I wanted people to see me and know that I wasn’t lonely, just deeply into my solitude. That’s how I spun it back then, but I was definitely lonely.
I returned to NY on December 20th, right on time for the 2005 MTA strike. Mind you I took the Chinatown bus that dropped me off right on Bowery next to the Manhattan Bridge, and I lived in the Bronx. More walking was afoot, and the Postal Service was right there with me. Sad music with an upbeat. Exactly what I needed back then. In the years to come, poetry took me to Santa Cruz, the Bay Area, Portland, Eugene, Seattle, Albuquerque, Austin, Boston and Honolulu. I’ve ridden the DC metro, MTBA, Max, Bart, Sound Transit, Amtrak, Greyhounds and anything else I’m not remembering. On all trips I played Give Up at least five to eight times. It’s a comfort record like that. If I ever felt lonely but didn’t want it to bring me all the way down, I went to Give Up.
The Postal Service is a supergroup made up of three musicians, Ben Gibbard on vox, Jimmy Tamborello on production and Jenny Lewis on backing vox. While making the album Ben and Jimmy couriered DATs audio files back and forth from Seattle and LA, adding edits and vocals until the album was completed. Gibbard is the lead of Death Cab for Cutie, a band I never connected with. Imagine my surprise when a friend introduced me to the Postal Service, and the album left me gobsmacked. I mean this is lonely music with an irresistible beat your feet could never ignore. Tamborello’s production combines Gibbard’s indie rock style with his own poppy electronic music. The result is a masterpiece that pierces right through expectations and serves you emo feels on the dance floor. Think My So Called Life goes to the rave from the 2000 film Groove. That’s where it exists in me, tucked under my left ventricle.
The album starts with The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, which is a total break up song. It’s not an angry break up song though, it’s an apologetic one. The singer openly admits that he was the one worth leaving. It’s the point in the break up, where you either know that it’s your fault, or you blame yourself because that’s what you do. And there are times when you’re all broken up and that’s your focus. But other times it’s not the break up that hits you, and you focus on one line; “That tells your new friends, I am a visitor here, I am not permanent”. And how many times have you thought that to yourself? Being always a tourist and never a local in most circumstances. And that’s your line for as long as you torture yourself with these thoughts. These are the impressions of the lonely. But you’re dancing the whole time. The beat bulbs on itself and doubles. The voice is sad and enthusiastic to say these words. Almost as if the singer is resolute about the break up. Just has to say his piece, and give that feeling a song, to be done with it. But he aint gonna be done for a while now is he?
Next up on the album is Such Great Heights. This is a love song, of a love divided by distance. It’s fast and poppy and has great cute lyrics that feel earned and sincere. It’s a bop. But then, if you have the deluxe edition, which is not rare so I don’t see why you wouldn’t, and you look towards the last track and see the same song is on that album, but only it’s performed by Iron & Wine, and it’s a completely different song. Same melody and lyrics, but it’s stripped, slowed down and unplugged. It’s like the Postal Service gave it to Iron & Wine and they were like, so can you give this the DJ Screw treatment. But you can’t deny this is a completely different song. Sometimes I wanna hear the full dance track, and sometimes I want to contemplate my breath work as I listen to it. Distance does that though. It feels urgent and upbeat at times and sometimes it’s a bit more pensive and melancholy. They both work for Sunday mornings. Sometimes you want one, sometimes you want the other, but most often, I want both of them, separated by the rest of the album, but still right next to each other.
The songs that follow; Sleeping In, Nothing Better, Recycled Air, Clark Gable, We Will Become Silhouettes, all explore loneliness in different tones. Climate change comes up a bit, but I never felt like it came up as a way to bring awareness to the planetary crisis. It came across itself as a way into loneliness, or a way to exasperate it, or a way to accept it. An idea that we will always feel lonely. Not all the time, but through all times there will be lonely moments. I’ve been intimate with loneliness since 1986. I know it so much that sometimes I find myself creating it for some dark comfort. I shut down or shut up and not so much push people away but become impenetrable. That’s where the next song comes in:
And now I am actively performing loneliness. The first time I really paid attention to this song I knew there was a real message there for me, that I was not ready to absorb. It would be another two decades of living this song. The drunk lonely dilemma. You go out and drink cause you’re lonely and you need a bandage over it and by the end of the night you’re probably even lonelier. Even if you didn’t end up alone, still lonely. This Place is A Prison fits in the theme of this album by being a cold hard song after a bunch of bopping around. It’s dark and dour and sobering. I love this song and I’m still scared by what I feel when I hear it by myself. Today, this song is a reminder of my lowest of times, and all the actions I am not proud of and all the mess I will return to if I don’t stay the course. Sometimes I choose to be lonely as a reaction or defense mechanism. Got a little serious there huh. That’s exactly what this song does at this point in the album. But fear not brave emotional explorers, hope is just a song away.
Brand New Colony is that love poem I wish I'd written. Okay I’m not crazy about the name and the whole colony thing, but the song is a gem. It’s about a love that wants to help and repair any damage they can think of. It is a very sweet song and the beat feels faster than the ones before. The vocals seem to glide over the steady drum and bass beat that rides the song until they smooth it out. This is the first song in this album that actually feels like hope. And what a great place to be. I mean I was just so very sad, and they managed to turn the feelings all the way around and left me better than when it found me. It’s the sun breaking the night and rising right into Natural Anthem.
This is how you bring an album like this to a close. Natural Anthem is a pure club dance track that ends with cheeky lyrics. They’re funny and kinda cold. I mean you want to connect it to the rest of the album, but I think the lyrics are just a little icing on an already delicious cake. The real feature is the song, from beginning to end. It will be the “Natural Anthem” that somehow will fix all other problems for at least five minutes and eight seconds. Whenever I reach the end of this album I feel like my being went through all these stages of loneliness and on the way out found some real catharsis and maybe a hopefully new vigor and resolve. That’s where I marvel the most at this album. Its complete ability to take me through my lonely spectrum from absolute despair to fresh new start.
As I mentioned before, the original “deluxe album” has a slew of covers, remixes and B-sides. The 10 year anniversary deluxe edition has a few more songs to it as well. They are all worth checking out, but for me, the magic is in the core album and everything else is a much earned bonus. If you’re not feeling particularly lonely on this Sunday Morning, you can still enjoy the music in this album without paying too much attention to the lyrics. The one serious song aside, the rest of the album is a tasty treat. You don’t have to be lonely to appreciate this, but any connection to the subject will definitely enhance your experience, and I promise, if you make it to the end, there’s a delicious shot of dopamine waiting for you at the finish line.
