Modern Life Is War: 2002 - 2008
 |
Yesterday I awoke to the sad news that Modern Life Is War is breaking up. I've spilled much ink on MLIW - here and here - so I won't spill much more now. Suffice it to say that MLIW was one of the few bands that have meant anything to me.
We are, we are, we are unbreakable...
Destination: Death or Better Days (from Modern Life Is War)John and Jimmy (from Witness)Humble Streets (from Midnight in America)
Of my three favorite lyricists of all time, Lance Hahn recently passed away (RIP), and now Jeffrey Eaton is checking out (leaving Suzanne Vega to carry on the good fight). The mighty Allegiance is also calling it quits, playing a final show at legendary 924 Gilman on 29/2/08. Why must the good die young?
Labels: clee, features, hardcore punk, usa
10 Comments:
I so completely and totally loathed this band but I still feel for your loss, if only by proxy. I guess the best eulogy I could give is that they tried.
Without being offensive I'm a little surprised you were so into them, given your proclivity to other genres.
I'm curious why you loathed this band, Johnny. Some people seem to have beef with them personally, but I never interacted with them on that level, so I have a more pure experience of knowing only the music.
I also have a proclivity to practically every genre of music - including hardcore punk. Andrew whups my ass in terms of knowledge about it, so I generally lay off writing about it, but at heart I'm just as much a punk as I am a metalhead.
While I did have a couple of sorta negative interactions with them personally, nothing really that serious and I almost NEVER let that reflect on my judgment of a group's music on its own. I've had issues with a number of groups ala Social D (later redeemed), Bane and the Anti Heroes but have persisted in loving their music. Hell Hank Sr. was one of God's Great Bastards but that doesn't take anything away from his musical genius and legacy.
I think to begin with, check out my review of their last one here:
http://livefastracing.blogspot.com/2007/12/music-review-modern-life-is-war.html
It provides a good summation of why I really, really disliked them and that record in particular.
In short, I didn't get the hype, the music was barely mediocre melodocore and the lyrics I just feel like I'm on the Planet of the Apes on because I seem to be the only person who totally saw through them. I mean did they not just seem a graze of every Gen Y pop lit to you? The Outsiders, The Stranger, Ann Rynd, Charles Bukowski, Kurt Vonnegut, et all. And I mean on top of that, in as non accusatory tone as I can muster, I'm curious as to how those touched you. And how you got past the "poor pity me" ethos of it all.
I don't want to come across as some snob who demands some kind of literary purity (likely too late for that, haha) but I just don't get what he was doing that was that individualistic to garner such praise and acclaim from people whose tastes I so deeply respect. And his weirdo Paul Simenon worship was just funny, and I can't have been the only person to have noticed that.
And I didn't mean anything by genre, it just surprised me a band as generally sugary as them in the sound dept. grabbed such a metal head. I'm the same about pursuing all kinds of stuff and also in FULL agreement about the overall supremacy of Allegiance, even to the point I dug their last record.
Johnny, I feel that on MLIW's last two records, they stopped referencing hardcore, and that's where they came into their own. Thus, comparing them to Comeback Kid to me seems quite off. CK is more your typical speed, precision-oriented band, while MLIW slowed down and essentially became Neil Young's electric side with beefier distortion - that whole one-chord, minor-chord mid-paced riffing. Maybe they use some of the same scales, but I would compare MLIW to, say, Hope Conspiracy, and never with Comeback Kid.
This Neil Young feeling, combined with the literary references and the artwork - essentially these kids became old souls. Eaton is painting pictures with the songs. He's not going for "ideologically confrontational" or whatever - and that's the innovation away from hardcore. I see absolutely zero "pity poor me" (hell, Converge would be a lot more guilty of that) - if anything, there's a general sense of uplift and encouragement running through the songs - "you can make it, kid."
Very few songwriters conjure up pictures with their lyrics, and for me Eaton perfectly captures the Midwestern blue-collar surroundings I grew up in. And instead of saying, say, "people were poor," he's giving looks into their windows, and you can see for yourself. He's showing, not telling. He's taken a verbal photograph of a reality many - too many - people know. And if he's read a few books along the way, even better.
The sound - to me, it's hardly "sugary". Comeback Kid is a lot more streamlined and smoother than this. I mean, you called Demiricous "antiseptic" so our ears are just very differently calibrated. At first, I thought this was a Kurt Ballou production, like if Neil Young stopped through Godcity.
So, to sum up - what people (including me) see in MLIW - evocative, empathetic lyrics that go beyond hardcore's typical sloganeering, and a top-flight band that's essentially Crazy Horse with balls. There's a lot of details and sensitive dynamics tucked into the playing, and the rhythm section has incredible feel. People may or may not remember Comeback Kid in 20 years, but they will remember Modern Life Is War.
Wow, awesome answer. I still vehemently disagree, but your reasoning was sound.
We definitely have different ears and I think in the review I was fairly clear in that anything even remotely melodic (within the punk/HC/metal realm) is almost never my thing, thus I think my overly broad comparo w/CBK was probably too blunt a tool, but to my ears, that stuff generally burns at the same rate.
Anyway, no hard feelings or anything, if I didn't respect your opinion on stuff I wouldn't be on this site and certainly wouldn't be prodding you with questions of this nature.
I don't have super strong opinions on this band one way or another. I was pretty into their earlier work, but I have to say that I found their latest album to be quite dull musically. It just didn't do anything for me. I could still tell they were shooting to branch out and step away from the hardcore thing, or at least the standard hardcore musical backbone, and that's cool, but the songwriting just didn't really hit me at all.
Nice essays, though, guys, heh... I smell a roundtable!
Andrew, it was actually your writing on MLIW that got me into them :)
Johnny, no hard feelings at all. In fact, kudos for asking legit questions in a civil manner in a situation where many people would have (and indeed have) just called me names (a practice I don't understand at all).
I'm up for a roundtable, guys - any ideas how we can coordinate/work this, I'd love to hear!
Haha, I'm ALL up for doing some kind of a round table. Print, voice, anything...thoughts guys?
Johnny, let me think for a bit about how best to do this...
Hit me up with thoughts at sportbikeattack at gmail dot com.
Post a Comment
<< Home