Never Be Bored
21 November 2020
Let's dance, off the beat
Go Farther In Lightness by Gang of Youths. On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden; The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ & Amal by E. K. Weaver; Strange Desire by the Bleachers.
The latest album I've been listening to on repeat is Go Farther In Lightness by Australian indie rock band Gang of Youths. It's a wild, wonderful album whose songs range from rock anthems to orchestral interludes, and from grief and loss to love and hope. I've watched a couple of their concerts on YouTube and they're excellent live—check out this clip from a performance of "Let Me Down Easy" to watch singer and main songwriter Dave Le'aupepe moving and grooving and dancing across a stage.
It's an excellent album beginning to end, worth listening to all in order. But if I had to pick just one for someone to start out with, I'd say "Keep Me In the Open" is the archetype of a Gang of Youths song—beautiful lyrics touching on struggles with faith and relationships before ending with a repeating line: "I deserve better than this."
If your favorite song off this album was the title track "Go Farther In Lightness," you might like Tillie Walden's sci-fi On a Sunbeam. The song, with its poetic lyrics and slow piano, and the graphic novel, with delicate line work and a limited color palette, both create a bittersweet mood of searching for peace while feeling a little bit lost. On a Sunbeam follows a young woman named Mia—chapters alternate between her present, living on a spaceship and working construction restoring crumbling architecture, and her past, falling in love as a student at a small private school.
If you love the story of Achilles and Patroclus, your favorite song off this album was probably "Achilles Come Down." You might also like The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ & Amal by E. K. Weaver, a webcomic which begins as Amal's seemingly perfect life implodes and he ends up going on a cross-country road trip. Particularly at the beginning, it's got that same self-destructive energy as "Achilles Come Down" but it ends in a beautiful place of healing and possibility.
I also recommend Strange Desire by the Bleachers, and not just because both it and Go Farther In Lightness have album covers featuring a black and white photo of a person sitting on a bed against a white wall. If your favorite song, like me, from the Gang of Youths album was "The Heart Is a Muscle," try "I Wanna Get Better" from Strange Desire. Both have this straightforwardly optimistic energy, of being at a low point but still determinedly looking up—"It won't hurt this way forever, it ain't worth the overtime," promises Dave Le'aupepe; "I'm standing on the overpass screaming at the cars hey, I wanna get better!" sings Jack Antonoff.