Review Summary: Noise is noise is noise is noise is noise is noise is noise is…
Voracious wrapping paper annihilation
Glitter and pine needles and shredded paper and ornament shards embedded in my bare feet
Santa chuckles from the other end of his nanny cam, I’d been good this year, but not good enough for what I thought I wanted
Mom and dad beam above me as I uncover my final treasure, a precious cassette of the sophomore effort by acclaimed early-nineties noise rock/ shoegaze outfit… Swirlies.
My heart dropped out my
asshole, as documented for all eternity (or the equal concern of all future family gatherings) by my dad’s fancy new digital camera. Later on mom explained that our local record store didn’t have
Loveless or
Daydream Nation, but the guy at the register said Swirlies were just as good. He looked like he lived in a well, she said, which she assumed was a plus for recommendations on fuzzed out, glacial noise rock albums. Plus it's conceptually very tight and accomplishes most of the things bigger, similar bands did. Maybe it’ll even give you some credibility on an internet for…
But mom was frothing from the mouth now and her ramblings became feral and unintelligible. I put
Nowhere on the record player and made for my room as mom’s delusion settled under sacred noise.
Stupid bitch.
I didn’t listen to
They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glistening Parlors of Salons for several weeks. Partly to spite mom and partly to spite Santa but mostly because I hadn’t heard any of the songs on the radio. Why buy an album without a “Where is My Mind”?
Goo was the only Sonic Youth album I owned then and it was because it was their best. I’m underground because I like Talking Heads. So it goes.
Then one day in February the snow came and blanketed the world. Massive orange trucks spewing salt and slinging road grime came and defiled the wintry serenity of my suburban streets for the utilitarian good. Great piles of exhaust blackened snow bordered the roads and blocked driveways, once melted and refrozen, impenetrable ice walls to direct sorry adults to their sorry jobs in the subzero temperatures. I spent a solemn moment on pity before I closed my blinds. wrapped myself in my blanket and sank into my mattress, just for dad to burst through the door and inform me that it was my job to shovel the driveway and make myself useful. Phooey. Three layers went on,
Souvlaki went into my Walkman, and I stepped out of the garage to face the bitter reality of winter whimsy. “Alison” instantly screeched and stopped. I retreated to the mild discomfort of the garage to examine the cassette. The tape had pinched from the cold. I swore and went inside and grabbed
They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glistening World of the Salons in case the cold decided to destroy another cassette and mashed it into my Walkman as I grabbed the shovel. The atonal opening strum of “In Harmony New Found Freedom” hit right as the frigid air battered my exposed nose and cheeks and forced me to squint. I ignored my numbing face, focused on the comfort of my warm core, and got to shoveling.
Afterwards, upon examining my fine work – a spotless, frozen block of concrete –, the final notes of “Sunn” played me into the garage and I danced along with my snow shovel mistress holding nary a care in the world. Mom wasn’t entirely wrong. Swirlies had crafted a great sophomore album that blended elements of shoegaze, dream pop, and noise rock into a captivating experience. I liked the heaviness of “San Cristobal De Las Casas”, the layered guitar riff at the center of “Two Girls Kissing”, the focus on dueling contrasts between of female and male vocals, and the angelic clean guitars and dirty, atonal noise; and so,
They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glistening World of the Salons found itself in my Walkman on and off for the next several months, until I turned sixteen in April and it moved into the cassette player of my ‘91 Toyota Camry. I listened to it nonstop throughout the summer and into the first months of fall, when one day I stopped at that local record store on a whim.
A bell chimed and a short man with a large beard hefted a warm “WELCOME” at me as I stepped through the glass front doors. I took a second to digest the atmosphere: the shelves of “tobacco” paraphernalia behind the register, a precarious stand of exotic incenses, obscure and coveted posters, a display for the celebration of the tenth anniversary of
Daydream Nation… Oh sh
it! I immediately bought it on cassette then and there and
They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glistening World of the Salons was tossed headfirst into the backseat, where it was then lost under the backseat, and then finally wormed into some irrevocable crack beneath infinite aeons of cushions and metal and plastic.
Until, five years later, when “Two Girls Kissing” returns like some horrendously tardy carrier pigeon. “Are you still alive?” becomes an unrelenting question asked by some source not myself. I hum and hum that delightful riff as I tear the cushions from my car and rip the seats from their restraints, but there is no Swirlies cassette in the backseat. It fell through a hole rusted by the road salt. Crushed under the tire of some eventual passer-bye. And so I bought a second copy of
They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glistening World of the Salons, because it was one damn alright album.
