Make Mine Snocaps

The first time the Spotify algorithm went rogue and started playing a song I had not personally picked out, I flew into a moderate rage. At least I assume it was the algorithm, but it could have been Jeremiah Q. Spotify sitting at a refurbished 1930s switchboard for all I know or care. Whoever it was, what an arrogant little prick, I thought, presuming it knows what unknown-to-me music I would fall rapturously in love with at first listen and thereafter worship only at its altar of musical selection.

I think we all know how this one turned out.

First it hopped from my Jayhawks-Jackson Browne-James Taylor-Randy Newman-dominated playlist to Justin Townes Earle, then to Whiskeytown and Ryan Adams, then The Mountain Goats, then Kathleen Edwards. I loved them all, and dove fast and deep into each discography but stopped researching the artists’ lives after discovering that Justin Townes Earle died of an overdose five years before I first heard his music.

Then a couple of weeks ago it led me to a band called Snocaps and their song Heathcliff. I was initially amused as I have a running debate with a friend over movie candy of the same name. I argue Sno-Caps are objectively unappealing foodstuffs that people like only because they remind them of going to the movies when they were kids and either 1) their theater sucked and didn’t have any good candy; 2) they didn’t know good candy from bad candy; or 3) they really liked the word “nonpareil.” My friend argues, as apparently would my new favorite musicians, that Sno-Caps are in fact pleasurable to put in your mouth and chew and swallow. I understand eating nostalgia; I still somehow enjoy gefilte fish, for crying out loud. But let’s call it what it is.

Heathcliff begins with a quick, bouncy bass line and interesting lyrics about a failed relationship. Then the one-line chorus, one of those where the melody stays the same but the background chords evolve, beats its way quickly into your soul: “When you go down you take me down with you.” Or at least that’s how it went with my soul. The song fell into a familiar pattern, dominating my life for about three days.

I know nothing about psychology, which of course in no way stops me from constant self-diagnosis, and my latest diagnostic epiphany is that, at least in my case, it’s possible to have a unique disorder for each of life’s many corners. For example, I have music listening OCD, writing ADHD, and avoidant personality disorder for anything I think is going to be boring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW9t_5_5UCw

I bounced off Heathcliff one day and onto Angel Wings, and while I have since taken short and rewarding detours with Doom, Avalanche, Brand New City and Cherry Hard Candy, never in my memory has a song gripped me quite like Angel Wings. Maybe American Pie when it first emerged in in 1971, but it’s apples and oranges as my 15-year-old self had to constantly spin the AM and FM dials in search of it, while I’ve listened to Angel Wings at least 50 times alone while writing this. From my nucleus accumbens to my orbitofrontal cortex, the song taps every pleasure and reward center my brain makes available to music, which seem to be many and varied. And while I’m pretty sure it’s unlikely to be so for any of you, for me it’s about as close to perfect as a song can get.

It starts devoid of introductory nonsense, as a perfect song should, jumping in with a strumming pattern that lets me know professionals are at work and starts my kidneys to happily throb. Within nine seconds, a drummer cements the beat, we’ve hit our first minor chord, and Katie Crutchfield’s gorgeous-to-me voice sings the following line: I delight in the spectrum of this yearning.

Okay, so now my synapses are firing about as quickly as they do anymore, because I have landed on someone who seriously loves language, has human emotions and is terrific at mashing them together. And someone who appears fond of the same chord progressions I have always loved, but who has somehow wrung from them a magical alchemy that has closed my eyes and set my extremities to tapping. Speaking of, when and if you listen to the song, I’ve found a three-four head-bobbing pattern works best, as in left, right, left, left…right, left, right, right, etc. But you do you.

In another 10 seconds we run across this gem of a couplet:

I drew you in And I let you down Think about it often Let it hang around

So this Katie Crutchfield person apparently wasn’t a great girlfriend to someone, and instead of jettisoning the guilt or whatever other bad stuff she feels about her behavior, she keeps it with her, seemingly as a reminder to be less shitty next time. Kids these days.

At some point in there, my left earbud picks up this wonderful electric guitar counterpoint to the still-cool acoustic strumming. Soon my right ear gets a different counterpoint, and if I wasn’t all in before I surely am now. The lyrical hits keep coming, and because somehow she knows I love an internal rhyming scheme more than just about anything, Katie throws this in:

I ache for my pride’s sake
I break my psychic intuition
Some spark broke us apart
Doors unlocked, keys in the ignition

I would think that was showing off, as it certainly would be if I had written it, but for Katie and her twin sister Allison it’s all apparently in a day’s work. I found my reaction to it interesting, as in I seem to have graduated from another pathology, obsessive comparison disorder, as in I no longer wondered why I hadn’t been a brilliant songwriter like these two, and instead, since I’ve written two songs I’d say were lyrically very good and musically mediocre, find myself fascinated with what it must feel like to write something exceptional, then stand back and admire your work. It’s kind of like how I’ve hit some terrific forehands in my time, but I’d still love to know what it feels like to crack one with Carlos Alcaraz-level perfection.

Just before the two-minute mark all three guitars, both voices, and the drum kit build to a moderate but for me lower lip-biting, pantomime-drumming, dancing-in-my-kitchen crescendo that I find, as I find everything else about this song, just about perfect. These seem to me uniquely self-assured musicians who don’t need to smash you over the head with a slow build to a cacophonous climax, followed by silence, then another slow build like a certain emotionally needy Boss fellow some people seem so taken with, and I only mention this to see if my brother-in-law reads this far down.

Here’s how I know Angel Wings is a truly unique song. Usually when I get stuck on a song, I break the spell by playing it on my guitar and singing it. I’m not terrible, but the drop in, well, everything has never before failed to move the needle. But even after playing my cover version half a dozen times I did not emerge unstuck.

Angel Wings has just enough country for me but may be too twangy for some. A friend described Snocaps’ music as jangly, which is perfect and I think one reason it so easily penetrates my psyche. But it’s a relatively genre-bending album, with some punk, some pop, and wall-to-wall crazy fun music and crazy smart lyrics. And while I realize it’s not for everyone, my expectation is some of you will love it, and that makes it among the best gifts to give. No occasion, no expectations, no ribbons, just something one person loves offered in the hope that other people might love it too. It’s what makes discovering great TV shows or comedians or artists double fun, as you get both the joy of experiencing them and the joy of bestowing them upon your chosen people. It’s what distinguishes paying it forward from re-gifting.

When I wrote for museums my personal prime directive was to include as many fun, interesting nuggets/stories as possible that people would take possession of and spread around, taking credit as if they’re the ones who unearthed these factoids and spun them into golden prose.

Hopefully because you see value in this space, you give me the most valuable gift of all: your time and attention. And hopefully some of you will like this music even a small fraction as much as I do. As for me, for now and the foreseeable future, make mine Snocaps. All thanks to Jeremiah Q. Spotify.