Song of the Day #184 - The Go! Team - The Art of Getting By (Song For Heaven's Gate)

Hiding us from the past, diving into the future

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ank_QY8MpFk

I just finished my second last essay for my degree and I'm feeling some type of way about it. Unclear exactly what that type of way is. I feel like I can explore the feeling and embrace it but I dunno I could also just try to remain productive and focus on unilaterally positive things, like the possibility of more free time and more productivity. My essay was on Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth, which is definitely my favorite Western comic of all time and prolly is in my top 10 books period. But it was also just a 6 page pooper undergrad essay so what does it really matter what it's about? Someday I'll write something long and rambly about it that might not make sense to anyone else but satisfies me in some way. There's no end to the things I want to write about such that I feel I've done them justice. And that's fine. But I just want to have as much free time as I can so I can do my best.

When I first read Jimmy Corrigan I was listening to a lot of The Go! Team, so here's a deep but fantastic cut from their overall pretty good recent album. The title is shared with a 2011 romcom that I don't have any interest in watching but seems weirdly relevant to my feelings/this post based on the imdb summary. I don't know what the movie has to do with the lyrics of the song, though. Nor do I know what the title has to do with the cult Heaven's Gate. Nor do I know what Heaven's Gate has to do with the lyrical content of the song.

And I don't really care because the song is perfectly fine not knowing any of that. Why I like this sort of indie rock, which I think does maybe have something like "jank" in it, when other types of "janky" indie rock are basically my least favorite thing in music, is also mysterious, and I don't really have the energy to investigate it. It's just that this one is hype and many other bands are lame. The beginning is sorta corny but I'm OK with it 'cause it always makes me doubt for a second how good the rest is gonna be, so that when it first goes into the "Hiding us from the past" part, I'm still surprised by how awesome it is. I love how the structure is like A-A-B-A-B-B-C-B where B and C are my favorite parts, perfect hype progression.

There seems to be some core of melancholy here that makes the entire song feel rich and meaningful but it's pretty well hidden if you just want to jam along. It's evident in the lyrics but you can barely understand them and they're being said in such a cute voice. And sometimes it's okay to let all the deep down feelings be touched only by deep down things, while on the surface you have fun and do whatever you want. Humans are capable of that duality and it's pretty sweet imo.