And a "fuck you" to your father.
Driving down I-94 this evening, on what might be the least busy freeway drive of my life, the weight of "American Radass" really hit me. Well, perhaps not the impact itself, but I found the ability to articulate why this album was clinging to me so goddamn hard.
There is this gutwrenching honesty in the songwriting, easily on par with the best work from the Replacements or Bruce Springsteen. And Christ, that is a damn bold claim to make. But that's exactly the point. Dads has created what is quite possibly the perfect document of being in your mid-twenties in the 10's.Â
The things in my life I've made important have all been touched on rather heavily. Love, loss, infidelity, identity, and the overall clusterfuck of emotions that actually carry real, pained weight that someone in their High School years just doesn't have experience with. By the end of the first track, they've proclaimed the sad truth our generation seems to just be too chickenshit to say for themselves. "Only you can change yourself." And goddamnit, they're right.Â
And throughout the album, it gets incredibly personal, without hiding behind layers of metaphor and bullshit one would expect from an emo record. ("I sleep in a bed and home that we made but I’m left alone with your scent on pillow sheets. Rearranging furniture to forget my past mistakes, covering up the walls in an attempt to create something that will make me forget who you’ve become, something that will make me forget what you’ve lost.")Â
There's a very, very thin veil of "like", "as", and "is" to be found, and it's never used in an unnecessary spot. It comes out exactly as it's felt. No scrambling to make it sound any prettier than it actually is. ("It shouldn’t be this forced to not act so upset every time I hear your name. Since you’ve left the home we made you’ve been out fucking someone else.") By the time you hit thirty, you will probably have encountered these experiences and emotions in some way, shape, or form. And you'll probably look back to this record and think about how you managed to survive it and grow as a person ultimately from it.
Then there is "Shit Twins". I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing about this on here by now, but it really is the strongest track on the record. Not because any of the other tracks aren't strong tracks, but because it's so goddamn charged. We need not dwell, for christ's sakes, but, we all do. We all want to recapture the magic. In this instance, a failed relationship, but to yourself it may be trying to hold onto your youth and innocence. But it won't be the fucking old days.Â
The issue? It's seven minutes long, which, much to everyone's chagrin, means it probably will not be seeing much live time, which is a bummer. It's understandable, the guys really want to cram as many songs in a 25 minute set as possible, and a 7 minute song is not a small chunk of change. Hopefully they realize what a goddamn monster this track is and relent. Without a doubt, this is the "Thunder Road", the "Baba O' Riley", the "Yellow Ledbetter", it's the track that every Dads fan is going to come running back to in 20 years when they're having their doubts about being a "real grown-up". What they've managed to do in seven minutes, could not have been done in five. Not in three. They didn't waste a second of tape on this. And I don't think anyone is going to complain if it takes up a third of their set. This is really the song that disenfranchised 20-somethings like myself have been looking for but never found.Â
Ultimately though, they have covered so much ground in 31 minutes, that even without the inclusion of "Shit Twins" they would still have arguably one of the best emo records since "Diary" came out 18 years ago. It just happens that a seven minute epic of being lost and trying to find something from the past to hold onto is exactly what the whole genre is about in the first place.
"Who the fuck am I? Where the fuck am I going? How the fuck did I get here?"
And as posted on the Dads page a few nights ago:
I'll confess, Anonymous was myself. I was a little drunk, a little bummed, and a whole lot of confused going into the night. But shit. They seriously did it. I don't feel alone. And one day I'll look back on this and think "Thank God I have that record to remind me of where I've been. What an incredible mile-marker in life."
Go order it. Get the record. Show it to your kids one day. And someday they'll be looking for something to speak to them. You'll remember that feeling.
Easily in the top slot for my album of the year.Â
