TAKING THE BISCUIT
Jenny And Johnny - Switchblade
Over the last month I have become somewhat of a broken record, reiterating with gusto to anyone who will listen about how I have been enveloped with a bad case of the graduate blues. A empathetic friend said to me not long ago that this year between graduating and achieving a stable life is probably going to be one of the hardest yet. I’ve found myself finally freed by the bounds of education and completely structureless for the first time since I was four, back when I couldn’t even go to the toilet unaccompanied. Like most other graduates, I have no idea what I’m doing, no money and increasingly, no remaining enthusiasm.
There I am on particularly dire afternoon, feasting on biscuits with the new man in my life, my bed, when the sultry tones of beautiful musical duo Jenny and Johnny meet my ears. Having been a fan of Jenny Lewis for years, I was certain her debut album with boyfriend Johnathan Rice, I’m Having Fun Now, would be a corker. However I expected it to be full of wise owl twitterings and the story of a balanced and successful life, but alas, they seemed just as lost as I was. I put down my biscuits.
The song this post is specifically dedicated to is sleepy, melodic Switchblade, where Jenny’s beast of a voice takes a backseat, backing Johnathan’s up with wistful harmonies and melancholic whispers. The song had me with its first line, ‘It’s been one long year of Saturday nights’, befitting as the new year had just been, and I was engaged in a hardcore reflection of the year just past, a year that seemed to consist of waiting for the next day to dawn.
Then we get to the deal breaker, ‘Sleeping through the afternoon, with your latest only one’. Johnathan’s deliciously gritty, lethargy-laced vocals dress this line perfectly, painting a picture of two people drugged by apathy, trapped in a world that is soaked in late afternoon sun, where dreams are better than reality. This is a picture too true for many people that I know right now, our pockets full of idle hands and our hoods full of lost heads.
I interpret this song as a burst of longing for the destitution and chaos they used to live in - “you used to dine out on a dollar, with a switchblade in your coat. You had your young mind in the gutter, you had your feet on the ground”. In hones the realisation that riches and early nights are not necessarily what I need at the age of 22, and that perhaps by blue state has derived from the fact that I am looking at things all wrong.
By far my favourite part of the song, both for the music and the lyrics, is when Johnathan wearily sings: “It was poverty that kept you sweet, and dreams that kept you young. The money started rolling in, you stopped having any fun”. For me this song encapsulates a person achieving the levels of success that they had always dreamt of, but it still not being enough. We have our entire lives to be comfortable and contented, but we only really have the chance to live in squalor once.
A track that I struggle to find any fault with, this cracking song tells me that instead of longing for the future, we should embrace what is happening now before we’re old and full of regret. It’s a song that says mate, stop moaning and start living. Which I will.. after these biscuits.
Rebecca Parnell
http://graduatesgrumble.blogspot.com/
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thursdayschild88 reblogged this from youtune and added:
brilliant review!...approach graduation. This review touched upon a lot
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youtune posted this
