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I Miss New Wave
Artist: Matthew Good Band
Album: Beautiful Midnight
Year: 1999
♥: There's a passage in Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines -- deftly "covered" by Our Lady Peace on their Spiritual Machines album -- where Molly, the technologically-enhanced "protagonist", starts talking about music. She discusses the artificial restraints that can now, in 2099, be placed on music -- that is, creating music that would be palatable or even audible for fully-human humans (we've evolved, you see, we're all electronic now and humans of the 2011 variety wouldn't even be able to follow what machines listen to). There is one phrase* that's stood out in that passage for me, always playing at the back of my head: "New music for old minds."

That means a lot of things, but tonight I can't help but think of the reverse: old music for new minds.

Returning to an album or a song is usually a very memory-laden experience for me; I can relive the states and experiences most strongly attached as if I'm back there. Sometimes, though, I'll go back to an album where I skipped a few tracks, and then it's a completely different world. The feel of the album still brings me back to the person I was when I loved it, but the individuality of the song is something completely new. Old music for new minds, an only-vaguely familiar song for a new person.

Seeing Matthew Good back in October was one of the highlights of my [fairly extensive] concert-going this year -- and we have seen some fantastic shows, so that's saying something. It wasn't bombastic or heartflooding, but it was one of the realest experiences I've had watching someone perform. I stood there and it was like he couldn't be anywhere else -- not that he didn't want to be anywhere else, but he literally couldn't be. His life is a concert stage, with a guitar, with that fucking voice. To share in that, with all his banter, was inimitable.

I think Avalanche is close to a perfect album, and Beautiful Midnight is a close second -- but I had no informed opinion on the latter until this weekend. I loved a few songs desperately, but I'd always skipped so many ---------- and then, among the mixes and Garbage and alt-country of my drive to/from Salem with Meg, we put in this album.

And my heart! I can't even. Last weekend was flawless, and Beautiful Midnight's raw, melodic, rumbling beauty was exemplary. This is the third year Meg and I have gone to Salem, though we skipped last year -- and I think that's what makes the tradition, you know? You skip it once, fine. The deciding factor is whether you let it slide again, or go back. Once you go back, I think that's it: concrete. And that's what last weekend felt like: layers of the most bubbling, vibrant concrete building up in my heart, independently and in my friendship with Meg. With so many people leaving, so many changes happening, it's good to know that some things will last. They won't stay the same, and I wouldn't want them to -- but they will LAST.
And that's why I love revisiting old music for new minds, because it is that constant. It reminds of who I was and it pushes me to be someone more.


"I Miss New Wave" was a constantly skipped song in the heyday of loving this album, and now I can't imagine why I ever would have pressed 'next.' The opening riff at 0:36 [and it really opens, like the floor underneath me], the building layers, his voice when he crows "I mii-ii-iss new waaaaave" [1:11 being a particularly wrenching example thereof], the chugging slowness, the feeling of being in the mountains -- and okay that might be biased given the I-89 context, but not by much, I don't think. The more I listen to Matthew Good, the more natural I find his stuff -- not necessarily folk and unplugged, that's not natural to me -- more that it comes naturally, in all respects: it is effortless.

"When the world is screaming,
I miss new wave, and real intent...
...see baby, I got something right."
Flawless.



*this has nothing to do with the post but there's another beautiful bit, actually, and I can't mention that passage without including it. Kurzweil, a citizen of 1999, is saying goodbye to Molly, who's evolved through the book to a mechanical human of 2099, and they wonder if they should kiss goodbye. Molly reminds him: "I'm ready to do anything, or be anything you want, or need."
"I'll keep that in mind."
"That's where you'll find me."

It kills me dead.