Track Review: "Exodus Damage"

I’m pretty into this song “Exodus Damage” by John Vanderslice and, based on its strength, want to listen—and subsequently review—the entire CD, but at the same time, I’m in the middle of a phase where I’m not permitting myself to buy new music—kind of like a fast—so it will have to wait. Instead, I’m focusing this review on the lone track "Exodus Damage" which is available for free download on Vanderslice’s website. I should point out, however, that if I was going to spend money on music, Vanderslice is probably one of the most deserving recipients out there.

Vanderslice is the owner and manager of Tiny Telephone, a recording studio located in San Francisco’s Mission district that has been providing "affordable hi-fi recording to San Francisco's independent music community" since 1997. As a producer, Vanderslice has worked on albums by notables such as Spoon and the Mountain Goats.

"Exodus Damage" is simultaneously a really pretty and somewhat disturbing song, so at the very least it’s interesting to listen to: it makes you think. The production on the album is fairly elaborate. Layers of strange, warbling synthesizer slither behind, over, above and in between the steady strums of an acoustic rhythm guitar. It’s fairly obvious that the practiced hands of a chronic sonic doodler are on the knobs here. Vanderslice seems to love sound itself as well as the instruments that make it and burn it to tape—the more obscure the better. That’s all well and good but what’s really noteworthy about the song are Vanderslice’s voice and lyrics, and his empathy for his narrator’s point of view.

The song is about a young, vulnerable, anti-government, right-winger’s reaction to 9/11. Vanderslice has a bold, emotive voice. You might even say he has a really nice voice. Yet, like many male singers, his is not a particularly strong voice. In fact, the somewhat weak and sharp characteristics it displays seem to suit his character’s vulnerability and confusion. (On an unrelated note, Vanderslice also has a peculiar, subtle accent when he sings, which affects pronunciation, so that "time" is more like "toyme." I don’t know if that's because of where he's from or if that’s just what happens when one sings.)

These are my favorite lyrics in the song, and the ones that I keep coming back to (capitalization—or lack thereof—courtesy of Mr. Vanderslice himself).

so the second plane hit at 9:02
I saw it live on a hotel tv, talking on my cell with you
you said this would happen, and just like that, it did
wrong about the feeling, wrong about the sound
but right to say we would stand down

an hour went by without a fighter in the sky
you said there’s a reason why
so tell me now, I must confess
I’m not sick enough to guess

I like these lyrics because they’re deeply embedded in the point of view of a narrator different enough from me that they’re utterly surprising and yet they smack of a certain, scary authenticity. I don’t mean because America secretly stood down, but rather because 9/11 changed the parameters people use to construct their realities: When the unthinkable is actually possible, the door is open for infinite other threats to take shape, other perversions to fester, other events to come to pass.

There's something deeply unsettling about this (and here I admit to doubting my ability as an essayist to describe why this disturbs me so, but I am trying). It gestures at an instability in the amount of potential in the world, simply because on a mass level the perception of that potential changed.

I interpret the chorus of the song as pointing to this same instability:

dance dance revolution
all we’re gonna get
unless it falls apart

That's our generation. Everything is just going to continue the way it's been going, with us sitting around playing video games and reading about celebrities in People while we pollute the world and squander resources—unless or until something fundamental changes in the American attitude.

Sometimes I’m astonished that when I was born in 1980 it was only 35 years after World War II, a war which always seemed to have occurred in a past as distant as, say, feudalism. I’m serious. But now it’s been 26 years since I was born and that seems like basically yesterday. I read an article the other day about Alan Turing, the British mathematician who broke the naval Enigma code, which changed the course of that war. He and his cryptographer colleagues were stationed in a Victorian estate north of London. When they reported for duty, the locals, unaware of their purpose, promptly began to gripe about "able-bodied men not doing their bit in the war." The British were going to starve to death, and it was just accepted that everyone had to do their part. Now, here we are fighting an unworthy war, but a war nonetheless, and everywhere I look I see able-bodied men and women sitting around, drinking coffee, watching TV, walking dogs, reading the New Yorker and pretending its not happening. We’re so soft here and we grew up believing that we’d never have to fight for our way of life. Maybe we will and maybe we won’t. Then there are those days when the power goes out, or a building falls down, or a bus explodes, and the air crackles with the question.