We leave our higher educations that we all ‘must’ get
Our Lives Would Make a Sad, Boring Movie
With a signature stamped paper and a mound of debt
The bank has got us by the throat and then we’re forced to settle
For the jobs we hate, 9 to 5, 40 hour, 40 years ’til the day
We are too weak to work, too frail to play
No friends or lovers because they all passed away
We’ve waited for this day all our lives long
And on our death bed the stereo plays our favorite teenage anthem song
And we sing along
We into the top ten, God dammit! With, another album was wasn’t actually released this year: The Hotelier’s 2011 debut album that I just needed to complete my set.
You’re so old now
Your bearings are shot
You’re a caved in roof
You’re falling apart
Your nights are spent lying on the couch
Hoping to forget…You can’t fix this
Vacancy
Because it’s burning down
You can’t fix me
Because I’m so burnt out
Did you celebrate Goodness Day in 2022? Oh, is this not your particular faith? I’m sorry, I don’t want to sound boorish and make out that your own religion’s little special days like Hannukah, Diwali, Christmas or Black Friday are in any way less valid than Goodness Day, I’m sure they are, and that’s just adorable. I guess Goodness Day is a little different, because it deals with facts and logic, because I am very smart. Politically, I’d say Goodness Day was more centrist, yeah? Or maybe classically liberal? Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of that, not many people are as smart as me. Fascism?? No, Goodness Day doesn’t officially subscribe to that. The name, I mean, everyone here is absolutely happy with the rhetoric and ideology of fascism, we’re just very aware of our branding.
It was live, it was all live
Weathered
Ammunition in the gun
And I meant it, every bullet, and I hope they all stung
Because that’s what I deal with every time I lift up the back of my shirt and I show you
What you drew that night with a Swiss Army Knife saying “it was only maps of constellations”
Goodness Day has been celebrated in this house every May 27th since 2017 marked the first anniversary of Massachusetts’s The Hotelier seminal* third album ‘Goodness‘. An album that I would honestly credit with changing my life. It was an extraordinarily important album for me. More generally, it’s an insanely accomplished set of absolutely magical songs, with achingly incise lyrics, that exhibited the full potential emotional heft of stupid simple rock music. They make brilliant… emotional… rock music.
Until the night when it got way too serious
Ode to the Nite Ratz Club
And you showed me your damaged wrists
And you broke down and we embraced
And nothing at that time meant more to me
And if I had only known
That it would be the last time
We’d be on that level with one another
I would have never let you go
(and semenal. Because it was covered in my semen. Because I came on it so much. No, I’m not deleting that, why should I? It’s a clever line)
Alright fine, it’s fucking emo! I admit! You happy now? Here I was, a guy in his early thirties, getting into a freaking emo band! Yes, ha ha, let’s all laugh at the middle aged fat knacker emo over there, awkwardly fiddling with his studded belt in the corner and intermittently blowing his jet black fringe out of his eyes. I don’t care, you can call this ’emo’ like you can call David Bowie glam rock, I don’t care. Some things might escape their binary classification, y’know? I had found one of my favourite bands unusually late in life, I pledged my absolute devotion to them. I celebrated that first Goodness Day back in 2017 by getting my hands on their even more critically lauded previous album and, yeah, fucken luved dat too (Oooooh-PEN the cur-hertains! Singing birds! Tell me “TEAR THE WHOLE PLACE DOWN! ). But that album was, like, a little more obviously emo, so I felt I needed to stop there, as the band’s first album would obviously sound like I Write Sins Not Tragedies. “What a shame the poor groom’s bride is a whore”?? No thank you. Just needed to wait until that fourth album came out, likely 2018 but i wouldn’t be waiting past 2019 at the longest.
If blue skies have taught us anything, it’s that there is no such thing as purity
Without the occasional rain cloud, or the winds from the coast that bring in the hurricane that settles the eye, and stirs up the ocean for the waves to arise, and the earthquake that brings down the house that we lie in
This still-water world just contrasts our minds…That are chaotic, and they’re wild, and they’re free, and they’re nothing like they want them to be
Still-Water Spectacle
And its pulsing and its true, the heart of the beast is in you
And we feel it and we know, and we just have to let it go
And it’s living and it breathes, our inner peace love and anarchy
And it shines through the clouds, and she lets us all know that she’s proud
Jesus Christ, Introduction to the Album actually made me choke up a bit What is wrong with me?? These are the first band I saw live after my suicide attempt crippled me for a few years. And, yeah, cried like a baby then as well. “Make me feel alive/Make me believe that I don’t have to die“? What did you expect me to do? For fuck’s sake I’m welling up again! I hate this band so much.
So Goodness Day 2018 passed without incident. OK, not too long after the album’s release. Then Goodness Day 2019 flew by. Hmmm, would have been nice to get a mention of something at this point. Goodness Day 2020. 2021. With Goodness Day 2022 fast approaching and marking seven years since the album’s release, I thought, fuck it, may as well go back to that cursed debut album.
I was born on a set of stairs,
Higher than I was even aware.
I looked down to enjoy the view,
And I caught a glimpse of you.
You were tired, and hungry, and cold.
Your hands were hard and your face was old.
Your legs collapsed as you fell and spat,
“Have you found what you’re looking for yet?”My hands hold letters from an old past self.
I’d say we’re all alone, and I’d know how it felt
To be one who’s lost, and cold, and empty.And I would sit down on the ground.
And the system would say
“Move on! Move on! Move on! Move on!
There’s nothing to see here!
We’ve got to keep this engine going!
And this resistance has us slowing!
And if he’s more for you, then he is less for us,
And that’s exactly the kind of people we can’t trust!”And now I’m moving at the pace of the surrounding freezing air,
Desiring to spit straight into the face of billionaires.
But oh too damn far cowardly to do this on my own.
I’m clinging to my theory books, Nietzsche, and Thoreau.My life’s a flower and it’s growing, but I’m oh so insecure.
And the trick is always knowing, it’s the rain that keeps us pure.
It’s the food for my mind and body, and it brings me back to Earth,
So when the sun rises I can shut out all my doubt.
There is a light and it never goes out!I’ll burn a hole in my chest so you can see through.
Title Track
(There is a light and it never goes out!)
I’ll tell you things I thought I never knew.
(There is a light and it never goes out!)
We’ll build a home for me and you.
(There is a light and it never goes out!)
I see the world for what I want it to be, and nothing else.
And yeah, it’s fucking amazing. Like, ridiculously so. The band have always been this good their entire career?? That’s just filthy! When I list the Gold Star Artists sometime in 2023 I’m going to have to rank each artist’s discography, and… I don’t know how I can do that with Hotelier! Like, one of these has to be last??
Oh yeah, now I mention it:
Oh my God! That entry was actually the first time I considered records not released that calendar year?? Well that snake released from Pandora’s Box certainly began chewing on its own tail this year, didn’t it?
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