Unbest

Susannah Young on EMA’s Past Life Martyred Saints (2011)
(iTunes, Rdio, Spotify) 

Totally out of step with Unbest’s mission, my thoughts for this piece actually stemmed from writing my year-end album blurb assignments for Prefixmag. This year, I totally won the lottery and got to write about St. Vincent, PJ Harvey, and EMA.

In writing about St. Vincent, I started thinking about the notion of music and movement—then later realized this was a pretty apt metaphor for my current listening habits. 2011 was the year my music preferences most resembled the place where I’m at in life: I was uncharacteristically down on amorphous guitar haze in favor of music that’s either gloriously kinetic or accurately mirrors my current situation: working really hard toward something bigger, but at present stuck in frustrating stasis.

On paper, 2011 was a successful year for me. I have a job that comfortably pays my bills and a roof over my head at a time when many don’t have either. But it was also the year of my life I’ve worked the hardest, longest hours—and emerged twelve months later without much in the way of milestones to show for my efforts.

In the middle of October, I turned 29—and noticed a change in people’s eyes when I talked to them about future plans. When you talk about your dreams at 24, people feed on your excitement and gush support. At 29, furrowed eyebrows and hesitancy accompany conversations of this nature, like Age 30 is a window slamming down on your neck as you’re trying to snatch the pie cooling on the sill.

Even though I 100% think the notion that you have to achieve everything cool you’re going to do before you’re 30 is total bullshit (BREAKING: we no longer die at 35), plans are fragile and people are suggestible, and looks and offhand comments like this have a way of subtly undercutting your confidence—“life negging,” if you will. Other people’s opinions and unintentional douchebaggery aside, if your efforts aren’t translating into something tangible, over time they start to seem kind of futile.

My favorite album of 2011 was EMA’s Past Life Martyred Saints for the very reason that in a more youthful (and more interesting!) sense, Erika M. Anderson seems to be in a similar place: eager to move beyond where she is, but held at bay by the past, drugs that make you sad, fucked-up boys, and life in a bland, temperate state. Even at her most riled, she sounds as though someone’s squeezing the breath out of her, like she’s struggling to get the words out, like voicing her thoughts is taking every ounce of physical strength.

But she’s doing it nonetheless! She’s exorcising her moodiness and dissatisfaction by giving it blood and guts and making it real. Anderson is just a goddamned genius at writing about “feelings” like they’re something corporeal without making the resulting lyrics sound like high school poetry. Every significant event in her “past life” she carries on her body—scars, blood, bruises and all.

When a source of fear or anger has a physical form, it seems more like a foe you can defeat. A tangible target is something you can see and kick and bleed dry; something immaterial is more insidious. There’s no way to pin it down and no way to keep track of its movements. To make the intangible physical helps us make sense of something too big to understand or largely out of our control. It’s the guiding principle behind all the iconography that accompanies sainthood. It’s why we write in diaries. It’s why we write and cross things off To Do lists. It’s why some people feel compelled to print out emails. In order to feel accomplished, we need real shit to show for our efforts because our caveman brains still don’t completely trust what we can’t see, smell, hear, taste, or feel.

For that reason (and about a million others), this album resonated with me in a huge way this year. I craved something concrete that would justify and mark the passage of frustration and hard work instead of nebulous anxiety and a feeling that if I could somehow do more with my time, I’d be closer to reaching my goals. PLMS sleeper track “Anteroom” is a favorite of mine, because Anderson doesn’t just reference the titular place as a temporary stop. “I am in the room/ I am in the anteroom,” she whispers, and it’s unclear whether it’s a holding pen or the ultimate destination.

Susannah Young’s writing has appeared on Pitchfork, Prefixmag, and KCRW. To get that paper, she’s a senior writer at a communications agency. If you enjoy portmanteaus, it might be worthwhile to follow her on Twitter.