Unbest

Heather Hansman on Dawes’ “A Little Bit of Everything” (from Nothing is Wrong, 2011)
(iTunes, Rdio, Spotify) 

notlike-love:

2011 was the first whole year I spent at a desk, which is to say that 2011 was the year I learned to be semi-productive with headphones on. I’d spent the past six years bouncing between seasonal jobs, working summers on rivers and winters in the mountains, but I decided it was time for me to be a grown-ass person and settle down a bit. That came a serious case of life FOMO.

And this song, Dawes’s “A Little Bit of Everything,” which is equal parts narrative and darn good music, stepped me through my apathy for my situation, and my large-scale concern that, by staying in the same places, I was blowing in eight million different other places.

I heard it for the first time live, at the Fox in Boulder, the kind of place that, regardless of the show, is always filled with shrieky girl and stoney, rhythmless college kids. Equal parts gross and antiseptic; it’s not the kind of spot where you’d expect a musical upwelling. But Dawes played a bunch of dancey songs, then the lights got red and it got quiet.

I am a sucker and a half for the one guy, a guitar, and a story routine—I got raised on John Prine—so Taylor Goldsmith playing “A Little Bit of Everything” on his own is right in my musical headspace, but it hit me up in my ribs hard. That night it made me feel so unhinged it hurt.

In an interview with Jambase (and yes, I got so obsessed with this song that I was researching it’s backstory),  Goldsmith called “A Little Bit of Everything” a song full of answers. It’s fine if he feels that way, but I don’t agree. For me, it’s about lacking answers, and not being able to commit to the choices in front of you. That song Swiss-cheesed my already thin feelings of, “things are OK, my life is stable, and I’m on a path to somewhere that I’m sure is good.”

And then I couldn’t stop listening to it. That song played while I brushed my teeth, and it played when I rode my bike. And it sure as hell played when I sat in front of my computer stringing together html.

It’s not just about signing up to join a demographic, or feeling so overwhelmed by what’s in front of that you can’t say no, it’s about how the choices you make move your forward, whether you get everything you want or not.

Heather Hansman is a word lover and an outside kid.