286. Song Nos. 4,334 & 4,335: “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,” The Anniversary
Designing a Nervous Breakdown, 2000; Devil on Our Side: B-Sides & Rarities, 2008

This song has sounded like snow-covered Christmastime to me for just about as long as I’ve been a fan of The Anniversary, almost entirely because I escaped into the vast synth-pop delights Designing a Nervous Breakdown on one of those interminable, profanity-laced winter-break drives northward to whatever winter wonderland my repressedbyterian parents thought would magically generate the delusion of a picture-perfect holiday season they could wield as some kind of proof of being a happy family doing quintessentially happy-family things. As a life raft shutting out the worst of forced facades and my least-favorite season, the album benefits from an association gratefully transcending its circumstances to cast its songs in a decidedly favorable flavor of nostalgia.

It seems to be entirely up to chance what songs, albums, bands and genres retain some kind of seasonal or geographic or biographical gravity and palpable sense of place, but an awful lot of music that formed the foundation of my musical taste as it shifted from classic-rock excavation to possessive emo kid mid-high school certainly seems to be imbued in those flashes of oddly tangible memory. And it’s all for different reasons, or no reason, or cascading reasons. Regardless of where or when or with whom I was in those amber-preserved snapshots of Younger Me, they all come screaming back with the same shockingly vivid intensity.

It’s hard to shake those reinforced recollections that become an integral part of the song and the experience; it’s also a little physically uncomfortable to encounter those songs that are, say, drenched in winter and frozen noses in the warmer months, like the bone-deep chills that accompany running for shelter in a too-air-conditioned building to escape a soaking summer storm. What helps, though, is discovering a key band member’s decidedly more current musical project in that time of polar-opposite seasons, even when it takes you an embarrassingly long time to make what should have been an obvious connection. And it’s been a lot of fun to be reminded that, no matter how deeply rooted in me a piece of music has become, it always has the potential to grow and shift with time and experience, which I’m sure is a metaphor for some kind of life lesson I need to revisit.

Of course, alternate versions of familiar songs make for a novel experience and hold up an all-new lens to view them through, too, and discovering Devil on Our Side as a reluctant adult was the first nudge toward adding some new dimension to a collection of songs that feels more like one of those album-long suites that just makes the most sense and sounds the best experienced as a unified whole.

As the first song on Designing a Nervous Breakdown, “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” carries the responsibility that all lead-off tracks have: setting the tone for the album to come. And it does that so well, from its fuzzy intro to the call-and-response vibe nurtured by some well-layered vocals to the laid-bare lyrics (ye gods, the number of times I have sob-sung along to “And I know you will be leaving soon, my dear”) to the synth-fueled breakdown that all embody everything The Anniversary accomplished with this album (which sounds nothing like their much more traditional but still stellar sophomore album, Your Majesty—an album that sounds like summer vacations in New England I found nearly as intolerable as their yuletide counterparts, but is still imbued with a grateful escapism elevating it beyond forced family interactions with the loud and proud fascists who tried to raise me in their hateful image).

As one of the many and charmingly unpolished gems populating the mammoth Devil on Our Side, it’s still a standout track, steeped as it was in nearly a decade of well-reinforced associations and memories and shared moments before our paths crossed here. A little more raw and a little less polished, it’s an alternate take that shares so much of its studio version’s DNA and heart but offers up a stripped-down sound all its own. The best part, though, is it’s got plenty of that first-draft energy a demo or not-initially-intended-for-release version tends to possess, which I am absolutely wild about for feeling like a combination of peeking behind the curtain and getting invited to enjoy something not completely finished but the band trusts you enough to both love and see the potential of.

(This blog has turned four years old since I last posted!)