Lost in the ozone

I've always believed in the maxim that writing is a practice. It's one of those things where, the more you do it, the better at it you become. At least in theory.

As you may—or may not—have noticed, I've not written much in this space these past few months. Aside from my interview with Aaron Turner, a piece I'm quite proud of by the way, it's been a bit quiet around these parts. Obviously, that's neither my goal nor my intention. After all, I'm paying for this domain and newsletter service, and I should be putting them both to better use. However, I'm learning that this time of year looks like it will only ever be hectic for me.

Why's that? Well, Nina and I now spend most of the spring and summer organizing, booking, and managing a free summer concert series in the park by our house. Oh, you haven't heard about it? Here's an article from the fine people at Block Club Chicago that explains just how cool of a thing it is. Despite all the fulfilling elements of such an undertaking, it's also a fuck-ton of work. From April through July, it essentially becomes a second job for both of us. Because of that, I opted to be kinder to myself this year, allowing some mental breathing room in ways I never really had previously. Unfortunately, even with a more permissive approach in place, I couldn't stave off the crash. I was overwhelmed and failed to acknowledge how underwater I actually was. For long stretches, I thought about hanging up this newsletter entirely. But I'm not going to do that.

There are a handful of reasons why I feel Former Clarity has become less vital over the years, all of which seemingly take up residence in my head and no one else's, so I guess that should say a fair bit about my ego. As the years have crawled on, I feel less inspired to create [deep, unending sigh] content for the internet. I know, I know, I know, saying that is defeatist and self-flagellating, but the pure fact of the matter is that I don't particularly enjoy contributing to internet discourse anymore. When I do have some semblance of a timely piece in my head, I walk myself back from it, because I just want to say some stuff, I don't want to get stuck in a week-long discussion about what it all means anymore.

Beyond that though, I've never been much for self-promotion. It's not because I don't believe in what I do, but it often feels like I'm shoving pamphlets in peoples' hands convincing them to please just listen to me for one second. Lately, as I see what it takes to be traditionally successful in this industry, I find myself running the other way. I want to make something, post it, and let it be done. I truly respect the hustle of everyone else out there, but I think I'm no longer built for it.

So what's the point of all this? Beyond pure indulgence, consider it a little bit of air clearing alongside a recommitment to this thing. If I learned anything from my time away, I still love writing and I still love doing this. The realities of the world—working a job that often leaves me completely drained, booking community events, and doing another time-consuming thing I'll talk about more in the near future—leave precious time for me to sit down and do this. Yet, when I do, I feel strangely whole. Knowing that's the case means I'll be back again before long with a mix of new music recommendations, interviews, and maybe shorter, smaller dispatches of half-formed thoughts. We'll see what strikes me at any given moment.

To put it plainly: I've missed this simple act of writing. I've been doing it for such a large chunk of my life that getting away from it felt freeing at first and then, suddenly, incredibly stifling. I guess it's important to learn what you actually value every now and again.

To prove that I'm still out here having thoughts about things, let's talk about some music. Today, I want to talk about Motörhead.

Why Motörhead? Well, the fact I spent the last month listening to their entire 23-album discography feels like reason enough. This is not going to be some qualitative assessment of the Motörhead discography—though I do have many, many thoughts on the subject—but just some high-level observations about why I've found them so appealing as of late.

If you asked me six months ago if I was a Motörhead fan I'd have said, "Yeah, sorta." What the "sorta" in that sentence signified was that I owned a couple of records, but they were No Remorse and No Sleep 'til Hammersmith, a compilation and a live album. This effectively put me in the camp of "guy who owns the greatest hits album," which is a tragic place to land for anyone You can fake your way through a conversation about an artist for a little while but, inevitably, you know deep down in your soul you're faking it.

It's fitting, then, that my first series exposure to Motörhead was through a double-disc greatest hits-style compilation I had when I was 12 or 13. Being into a bunch of first-wave punk and UK hardcore, I saw Motörhead's name a lot. Also, being a kid who watched Airheads on Comedy Central at least once a week, I had a pretty good picture that Lemmy seemed to be a pretty cool, important guy. But god, that greatest hits collection felt like such a slog. I liked the fast songs, but I couldn't stomach all the bluesy, rock 'n' roll shit. I thought this was supposed to be the heaviest band on the planet! The one that, as the old line of press copy went, if they moved in next door to you, your lawn would die. And then the dude's just doing Chuck Berry riffs? And doing them… faithfully? Pass.

Yet, this initial punk rock revulsion aside, I did always have a tacit respect for the band. They influenced stuff I loved, they had a cool—if not occasionally problematic—aesthetic, and they stuck to their guns. Aside from grabbing those aforementioned copies of No Remorse and No Sleep 'til Hammersmith somewhere in the intervening years, I assumed this would be the extent of my Motörhead fandom until I was down in the dirt. Then, one Saturday morning, I woke up and wanted to listen to Motörhead. Before long, I found that I couldn't stop.

Maybe this is the type of music I just needed to grow into, or perhaps my interest was spurred by my utter disinterest in certain genres that I've loved for so many years. Despite all the commercial success and critical accolades, the current state of modern hardcore is, in my estimation, quite dismal. It's a topic I could speak about at length but, to summarize, as the pendulum swings back to all-heavy, all-mosh, I don't see much musical progression or songwriting prowess on display. In many ways, the success of big-tent hardcore feels like watching the EDM boom all over again. It's music optimized for a live moment and little else.

People who disagree with my assertion will say that's always been the case, and perhaps that's true for certain subsets of fans, but I still find plenty of value in listening to a Kriegshög record at home, a thing that I don't think I could ever say about Pain of Truth. Watching clips of the recent Have Heart shows reminded me that hardcore used to be about people communing around ideas and shouting them with their full chests into a shared microphone. Now, it's about who can hit the best spin kick and get it caught on video. Worse yet, as crew membership is on the rise again, you'll soon see more toxicity injected into the scene. The fact I could point to several bands and labels that are all but safeguarded from critique due to their affiliations means we're in a much worse place than we were five years ago. I lived through a version of this once already, and I'm not particularly thrilled to be doing it again. Add onto the fact that hardcore and death metal are continuing to merge into a riff-less miasma devoid of actual songwriting, I was desperate for something to get me excited again. That's where Motörhead fits in.

While I have never had much of an appreciation for classic rock, and blues-based rock bands make me want to send mysterious white powders in the mail to Third Man Records, on that Saturday morning, Motörhead finally made perfect sense to me. There's that old line about both Motörhead and the Ramones, that they just wrote the same song over and over again. This is a statement said by people who either A. like saying jokes people have said for 35 years or B. don't know fuck about shit. The reality of both these bands is that they do have a sound, not unlike almost any other artist with a distinct songwriting hallmark, but there's actually a good deal of variance between them all. More importantly to me though, these are people who just did the fucking work. While the Ramones tried harder to upstream themselves with Phil Spector and big, reverb-coated drums, with the exception of a handful of tracks from the early '90s, Motörhead just did their thing from beginning to end. At times, they appeared more punk, more metal, more rock 'n' roll, but they were always themselves. If you liked a record they released in 1977, you'd probably like the one from 1991 or one from 2013.

This got me thinking about modern bands that fit this bill, the trend-averse folks who just make music because they like making music. Cloud Nothings jumped to mind immediately, as a band where each record doesn't feel like a huge pivot as much as the band exploring a new facet of their sound. In a similar way, they can often be undervalued, but that desire to stick with it in spite of whether or not it's in vogue is really refreshing. You get the sense this music would be made whether or not anyone was listening. It's there because people get some innate pleasure from just doing it, and I find that deeply inspiring.

Perhaps I've telegraphed the conclusion of this too overtly but that's fine, there shouldn't be some big twist anyway. I guess what I found myself drawn to when I had my own crisis of faith were things that assured me it's often better to just do what you want as long as you get some joy out of doing it. I'll see you here in 20 years, yeah?