Sing out, Milwaukee! My column could be your life!

In the press release for their recently released album, Stay Positive, Brooklyn-based rock band The Hold Steady offer up this positively barf-inducing nugget:

“A great American philosopher once said ‘Our band could be your life.’ We think that is true. But ‘Your life could be our band’ is also a true statement. We know this because we have lived it. These are our lives. These are your lives. This is our fourth record. Stay Positive.”

Christ, are they fucking serious? (In case you were wondering, that loud groaning sound you heard after reading the above paragraph was you.)

For those not in the know, The Hold Steady are a critically adored and rarely enjoyed band that fancy themselves the indie heirs to Bruce Springsteen. They’re indie-rock populists, you see, because they write songs about getting high in boring towns, getting drunk at all-ages shows, passing out and making out in “chill-out tents,” and a whole bunch of other dumb shit you probably forgot you did when you were 17. Their albums have titles like Boys and Girls in America, and they use the word “we” a lot – a lazy writing trick I admit to using in the past, and one that I vow to never use again. Promise.

Anyway, in the interest of science, I recently decided to conduct a wholly unscientific experiment. I would listen to nothing but Stay Positive for a week – taking in all the songs about townies, cutters, and, um, staying positive – and compare it to a week spent listening to another seemingly indie-populist album, Decibully’s Sing Out America! Would I get drunk a lot and make an ass of myself? Would I stumble across some heartbreaking revelation that would define a generation? Would I just stay at home and decide to listen to some Allman Brothers instead?

Well Milwaukee, the results are in. These are my words. These are your words. This is my fortieth column. SubVersions.

“We’re gonna build something this summer!”

So ends Stay Positive’s leadoff track, “Constructive Summer.” My summer – far from being constructive – has been all sorts of crazy, filled with enough drinking and general high school-level drama to cripple your average pre-teen. Fittingly, during the first week of my experiment, I got fucked up even more.

I drank. Christ, did I drink. I blacked out on two occasions and threw up on one. Most nights involved the Y-Not II, Jamo’s, The Social, Fat Abbey’s, Landmark, Foundation, and Jamo’s again. I passed out in the back of a pickup truck and did a fair share of ill-advised moped riding. I also took a lot of cabs.

I went to my second roller derby bout in as many months, and remained clueless as to what a “lead jammer” is. I continued drinking. I lost track of how I got home most nights and ended up blowing half a paycheck on Patty Burger. I alienated friends, family, and the occasional house pet. Like the album I was listening to, I was shameless, pandering, and more than a little bit embarrassing. The less said, the better.

Week 2
Decibully

Sing out America!, on the other hand, really surprised me. I had neither seen nor heard Decibully before this shabby little experiment, yet I found their album to be extremely likable and even downright brilliant, especially this passage from “Notes to Our Leaders”:

“We choose a different voice / we chew on our choices / swallow the knowledge and the experience / that we make for ourselves”

Yeah, like The Hold Steady, there’s a lot of presumptive “we” stuff in the lyrics, and the presence of a goddamned banjo severely dates the album, but the overall tone is one that strikes a deep, satisfying chord that stays with you long after.

Likewise, my week spent listening to it proved positively idyllic. I took a lot of walks. I went to a baseball game with my girlfriend and her parents, and cried during a Corey Hart homerun to deep right. I found a Pomeranian dog roaming alone on Farwell one humid night, and gave it some water provided by former Decibully bassist – and current Comet bartender – Justin Klug. I welcomed a new roommate, and embraced plans to move to a new place for the first time in six years. I saw my younger brother off to a new job in Montana and attended a “Friendship Party” thrown by a group of Riverwest acquaintances. I even decided to give roller derby another chance. Seriously, it was a good fucking week.

In the end, however, my strong feelings for both albums – and both weeks – were tempered by a few days worth of reflection. Gone were the initial highs and lows, only to be replaced by a more calm, reasoned appreciation. It’s like a lot of things, I suppose: a doomed summer romance, an accelerated new friendship, an unlikely coming together of tragedy and joy. I’ve experienced all these things at one time or another, have learned from them or not, have always made it out alive. Oh, who am I kidding? We all have. VS

Matt Wild is still planning to build something this summer.