Music Merch Zen and the Art of From Im Dead Serious by Micah Schnabel

Micah Schnabel — I'm Dead, Serious . Out at present.

In case you're unfamiliar with my feelings most Micah Schnabel and his songwriting, you might want to get spend some time with the yard words I spent on his beginning solo tape, When The Stage Lights Become Dim, or the second m I spent on Ii Cow Garage's 2010 release Sweet Saint Me.

I thought about but turning on the camera on patti lee, my iMac, and filming a ten minute video of me waving my hands like an idiot, in lieu of this review, only while that might have conveyed how desperately I adore information technology, it wouldn't have necessarily conveyed how fucking brilliant Micah is on this one, every unmarried lyric and every single musical pick. I've always compared Micah to Brian Fallon of the Gaslight Anthem, considering they're both terribly clever songwriters, sometimes likewise smart for their own appurtenances, and definitively prone to dropping every bit many references every bit possible in their songwriting. Information technology's one of the few complaints I've repeatedly heard about Gaslight's 2008 masterpiece The '59 Sound, that it's likewise clever, likewise much wearing of influences on a sleeve, but I love it for that, because Brian Fallon does it flawlessly. Brian Fallon tin get away with that.

So can Micah, mayhap even moreso than Brian tin can.

It starts with anthology opener "Choir Boys", laced with song-title references to Two Moo-cow'south Columbus compatriots Ghost Shirt (anybody end reading this for a minute and go watch this video of "Southern Girl" from Burrow By Couchwest last year, ugh, that fucking song), and they're dropped throughout the tape — pretty girls make graves and boys like me become dauntless in "Burning In Water, Drowning In Flame", it'southward alright, Mama, I'm merely bleeding in "Th Heavy things". They're equally organic as everything else almost Micah's songwriting, which is i of the reasons he's my favorite songwriter working today: he has an ear for the most honest parts of fucked-up human existence, the parts where you fall in love and get your centre kicked in and spend a lot of time being a wallowing pit of regret and despair and still loving the person who kicked your heart in.

Thanks to some concerted touring past Micah concluding fall, I had heard most of these tracks before, simply they still surprised me with their power, and with the power that Micah has to stare death, the struggle of depression, the moments when you just don't feel like you can fight anymore, right in the face. This is a anxious album, and it even has a love song on it — more than on that in a minute — only information technology'due south also, between the title track and the gorgeous, heartwrenching "Th Heavy Things", an album near suicide and what information technology's like to face information technology down. "Thursday Heavy Things" is probably the best track on I'thou Dead, Serious, for the weighted style in which it handles the death of a friend, and the desire near depressives struggle with personally, to put that metaphorical gun in your rima oris.

It likewise has one of my favorite choruses from anything that Micah'south ever written:

I but want to write 1 perfect line
Something we all can hide behind
I for the lovers, 1 for the losers, ane for the girls

I dearest this chorus, considering I call back that Micah's done this time and time again, he's got plenty of perfect lines, but that he writes this again, that plea to make something perfect, it'south something we all feel — that want to keep making that keeps united states of america afloat. (Micah'due south nigh perfect line, past the style, is the opening couplet to Two Moo-cow Garage'south "Lydia": I want to be in love similar an old soul song/I desire to feel like the 2nd verse of Let's Get It On. Those lines are so perfect they make me feel sick sometimes.)

For me, the power in Micah's writing is lyrics similar that chorus, lyrics that are patently deeply personal but take a precipitous eye on the nature of humanity at large. They're all over this record, of course, because broken hearts are universal, simply Micah has this amazing power to take something we've all felt and turn it more than clever and more than sad and more true. Take "Ex's and Oh's", for case: nostalgia has a funny manner of forgetting/the awful things we used to say and do. Or the chorus of "Called-for In Water, Drowning In Flame": and oh, Juliet, are y'all dreaming?/slumber tight, go to hell. Or the finished line of "Zen & The Fine art Of": zen and the fine art of fucking upwardly your life. Accept we not all been there? Nosotros have.

I think that my favorite track, though, is "Sid And Nancy", past Micah'south ain admission the only love song he'southward always written — and it's called Sid And Nancy, you guys. That's why Micah is my favorite, because no 1 else in the world would write a love song — and with Micah'due south whiskey-scratch phonation and the tinny pianoforte melody and the ache of describing a relationship similar some Leonard Cohen vocal, it is a love song — and call it "Sid And Nancy". Because, homo, even good love can be sort of fucked up, and we all know it, Micah just lays it out there. It's a cute song. It'southward pitiful. It'due south true. It'south a love vocal, and I love information technology.

And if all those words haven't sold you all the same, y'all know I'm a sucker for a clever slant rhyme, and Micah knocks one out of the park on 'I'thou Expressionless, Serious', pairing 'songs' with 'Kings of Leon', and that'southward it, done, over, finished. Micah Schnabel is a motherfucking genius. And this is the simply album in my iTunes — 25K tracks, the only one — that has all five star songs. 11 tracks, every single one of them is worth 5 stars to me. Every one. That's loving a tape.

Yous can buy the record on CD from Suburban Home hither, or digitally through iTunes.

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Source: https://blog.brandnewkindof.com/2012/05/10/micah-schnabel-im-dead-serious/

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