279. Song Nos. 4,195 and 4,196: “Halls,” Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness
Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, 2014; The Canyons EP, 2015

Getting to hear this song first as its polished studio version and then as a rawly stripped-down acoustic reinterpretation was one helluva trip, given how well the pairing underscored that there’s more than one way to get an emotionally resonate point across without diminishing its impact. The studio track was another example of understatement conveying more than a superficial and thematic tonal match could—where playing through the pain does the heartache more justice than openly mourning that instigating loss through the healing aftermath of time’s slow crawl—while the Canyons version serves as a quiet testament to how introspective rumination is a pitch-perfect vessel to showcase how heartbreaking quiet intensity can be.

Whether the gently wistful melancholia I’ve come to associate with just about any post-pop-punk Andrew McMahon project is an inborn characteristic, a listener imposition or a commingling of forces coming from all directions, it’s palpably lived-in enough and, more importantly, so faithfully, fully and effectively encapsulated in so many of his songs that it infuses them with this sense of texturized sadness that’s almost a privilege to live through, and I have never felt something consistently radiate off another artist’s songs with such universal dimensionality.

I mean, I’ll never not wonder if it’s the product of my peak obsession with this musical outfit fatefully coinciding with catching my first-ever all-consuming, long-distance feels for another woman and trying to navigate that emotional complexity while also being in a happy hetero marriage, and how that’s forever amplified the feelings of loneliness crowding those empty spaces where warmth and a singularly beloved person once existed not nearly long enough for a desperately treasured flash of time that so doggedly haunt so much of McMahon’s music.

Because even without poignant personalizations casting everything in the pall of autobiographical associations, no one else so routinely fills their songs with those lines that take shape in the heart and come screaming into the world after tearing their way toward actualized expression in full-throated declarations steeped in the ache of absence like “You echo through the halls!” and “I see your picture on the blank page” and “But on this airport morning will you wait for me?” do here.

  

_{(Happy 300th post to this blog!)}