Ah, quiet/loud/quiet/loud. Where have we heard me talk about hearing that before?
I can’t claim I planned it, but the one-two quiet-loud pinch-punch
of these last two songs makes for a nice sign off to a playlist defined by the border
between misery and anger. It’s a long border, of course, covering a wide range
of terrain. “The Quiet Things…” is a multilayered mapping of cross-currents and
riptides, swirling just between the surface. “F.O.D” is a man telling his
about-to-be-ex to fuck off and die.
There’s a power in simplicity – “F.O.D.” doesn’t even bother to go quiet again. The sheer broadness makes the song feel like it belongs to you alone, and does the same for everyone. The steps may have been different for all of us, but we’ve almost all seen a long, juddering dance lead us here. The last thread snaps, and you're left with only the layers of Sellotape and rows of safety pins you'd put in place to hold everything together. Just the outline of what used to be there.
When that happens, there’s nothing to do but take that last
snapped strand, that final frayed straw, and burn it to ash in front of your
new/old enemy’s face. You can’t even explain why this time was different; it
just completely, obviously, is. You want a justification? Justifications
are for the people I can still respect. Just fuck off and die.
One thing that I love about this song is how the chord progression actually gets more complicated as the narrator lets his fury slip its mooring. The obvious thing to do would be to go the other way; to lose complexity along with composure. Inverting this makes it clear how much this guy has been holding back. How careful he’s been to present only a part of himself. It's not so much a switch as an expansion, hence the repetition of the need to destroy the bridge between them past hope of repair. Besides, we often repeat ourselves, when we're that angry. When someone has made us that angry.
I listened to "F.O.D." while driving across an actual bridge once, belting out the words to myself, the river, and the night. I remember that every time I hear this song, even though I don’t remember which bridge it was, or which river. I can't even remember the car. The association remains, but not what lay on the other side of it. Just the outline of what used to be there.
I can’t remember whose face was in my mind I as I sang along, either. Who was it I had so completely had enough of their daring to be in my life? Who was I so desperate to have gone, hat the memory of my exhausted, burning rage has so outlasted the name of whomever I'd directed it towards?
Just the outline of what used to be there. Just fuck off and DIE.
No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.2: Louder Now
B-Side:
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