Foxing — Nearer My God Review Notes

My friends always had better taste in music than me. In fact, I can remember one of my friends telling me outright. “That’s because you have no taste.”

I woke up this morning especially hungover. Last night, I came up with the mathematical formula of taking a shot of Old Crow with each beer I had left in my fridge. I couldn’t use my debit card because there had been a data breach at the bank I frequent — and when they’d sent out a new card, it never reached me. I preferred the bank didn’t know where I lived.

So, this morning I wasn’t prepared to be asked or told or recommended to listen to some new music. I don’t particularly care for new music all that much. Too many selfies, a bloated ego type of thing going on nowadays.

I’m the dude who thinks that Lorde and Taylor Swift are overrated. I find Kings of Leon to be part of the bubble of society. As the whole thing fills with hot air, they are on the surface edging out toward infinity. Sooner or later, it’ll all burst and they’ll be left with a lot of royalty checks, uncashable. I just made that word up.

I woke up, hungover. I made some coffee. While it rumbled and rattled (?) in my kitchen, I sat down to check my social life. What social life?

“Listen to Foxing. Nearer to God.” My friend posted that to my Facebook timeline. Like I said, my friends always had better taste in music than me. I’d been listening to Fall Out Boy for a week straight. Before that, it was the Misfits. And before that, it was the Beatles. Well. What the fuck?

I put the record on, Foxing. A picture with four hipster dudes. With beards. And there was a dog in their picture on Spotify. The dog looked like a fox.

I ended up writing 14 pages of notes while listening to the record. Also, I’d been trying to get my work day started before going to the bank. It was hot. And I was hungover. But I said that already.

* * *

Foxing — Nearer My God

(If the record was called “Nearer to God”, I would never have listened.)

TENSION. That was the first word I wrote. The record has a sense of tension, which is a mathematical formula that gets lost on most bands nowadays.

The second song, “Slapstick”. That’s the title to a Vonnegut book I’d been reading recently. I gave up on it because it felt like work reading it.

“I like this,” I wrote that in my notebook. Because I’d said it aloud. I was sipping coffee and trying to get started with working.

The vocals intrigued me. How’d they get that sound? Some kinda crazy chorus effect.

“New ways to take old drugs” — a good line.

“I GOT A HOUSEPLANT” — they scream.

Rock out — yes!

Gameshark.

Favorite song so far — wild, entrancing. I feel like I got lost in the jungle, tripping on acid, wearing 3-D glasses and playing bass guitar.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS SONG’S ABOUT (that’s a good thing). I laughed when it was over — whatever you do DON’T SAY GIGGLED.

Whoa — spacey!

I actually thought about new dimensions, this morning. I was thinking about being multi-dimensional beings. Beings. Being. Just being. Underlined. An imprisonable being, suffocated into thinking too much, over-thinking, doubting, shoved into areas, poor, rich — but what about stargazer?

Here we go, a 4/4 rock song. Sometimes, that’s everything. A groundswell of emotions, the title track. FORGET EVERYTHING for a few minutes, which — of course — is an eternity.

FIVE CUPS — A nine-minute song. They’re launching me into the clouds. It’s very distracting. I’m supposed to be working. I have to go to the bank.

PIANO — THUNDER.

New dimensions…

“I wanna drown with my eyes closed.”

METAPHOR. (I circled this word in my notebook.)

Boogers, too. But that has nothing to do with this song. — SCREAMING INTO THE VOID.

Eerie sonic soundscape. Like a tribe of bandits, tripping. Lost. And unashamed. Hollering, and then the sound is warped, bending through time and space. This would terrify the shit out of a mouse or raccoon. Good.

“I DON’T NEED TO BE SAVED.” TRIPPY. I feel changed.

Fuck, a commercial. ABOUT ACNE.

They keep saying “BS”.

MUTED.

Back to the record. “Heartbeats”.

Strings. Beat.

Some good singing.

And the sparkle of grandiose emotions of sound. All mixed together. This is a good song. Everything drops out. Screaming. Singing. To the beat. The strings, synths. The beat gets louder. Okay.

“You’re not in love-e-e-e…”

The strings kick ass.

“Trapped in Dillard’s”.

I may have stumbled upon the slow song. Cool bass lines. Their formula = synths, piano, drop out of instruments, or the beat, the beat comes back…

A line about God.

Hmmmm.

We’re all climbing this pyramid. This mountain of pain and sacrifice. So get a fucking synth and a drum program. Make some music. What the hell?

“I didn’t really like that one.”

“Bastardizer”.

Feels like a new band’s song. Honest lines over the plucking of notes and a cool chord change. This song has its two feet firmly planted in the Earth.

“You think I must not remember. But I do. O, I do.”

HITS RIGHT AT HOME. I mean, my heart. A coda to lost love. MY HEART. FUCK. There’s bagpipes!

Crown Candy.

Are we lost in the woods again? A minor chord. I heard it in there somewhere. Strumming acoustic guitars, with reverby electronics atop the rising, racing somewhere beat. We’re marching. Confused. Falsettos on horseback. It’s like a song you listen to when you…

When you have no words. Just shut up and listen. (Strangest song on the record.)

Won’t Drown.

Synth, impending. Screaming again into the void. Drop the beat. The guitar notes follow the words. Thumping on the drums. Almost like a trancy chanting. Like space creatures, we are. This is a song for the moonlight. Five-minute chant. With drums and bass. Okay.

Last song. I’M NOT GETTING ANY WORK DONE.

Here we are, trapped. In LaGuardia? Lambert? Is this song about cheese? Were those the chords from Wonderwall? It’s like a hipster dude talking into the microphone, “the invisible face.”

Maybe it’s the echo of this song. Flailing synths. Building drums and guitars. Drop that heavy beat. Wailing guitars. Heavy reverb, effects. The vocals into some atomizer. The stars are singing AND WE ARE THE STARS.

Forgettable.

But if you wanna take a trip through the stars, then this record is there.

Back to FOB. Why?

It’s the cutting lines.

Dance, Dance. Bitch.

AM I MORE THAN YOU BARGAINED FOR YET?

(I’m only going to the bank because I’m outta beer.) A poet needs his beer. Yes, he does. (Don’t worry. I’ll cross this out later.)

As you were…

“And the poets are just kids who didn’t make it, and never had it at all…”