232. Song No. 3,495: “Following Days,” Kind of Like Spitting
Bridges Worth Burning, 2002

Let the following days always remind us
Of the present we face, constantly dazed…

Ooooh, Kind of Like Spitting. I listened to this band as hard as its kickdrum when Bridges Worth Burning marked their one and only release on Barsuk, my favorite record label, but found the rest of their discography too hit-or-miss to really keep up with. A college friend whose tastes veered far more toward melodic hardcore than mine ever have or will had similar feelings when we realized the other liked this band no one else seemed to know, noting that she used to love KOLS until “that song where he starts crying while singing” (I used to know what track she was talking about but that little bit of indie-rock trivia got taken out by alcohol and countless other brain-cell-killing vices I’ve embraced across the intervening years).

But Bridges Worth Burning is packed with tons to love, from morose ruminations that lyrically teeter on Bright Eyes’ domain to the kind of righteous anger that would be right at home in early Alk3 albums, with a few rollicking tracks thrown in that embrace the entire gamut of human emotions and give them all a dizzyingly upbeat tempo beat demanding a listener’s attention before boring directly into that place where earworms go to settle in for a while.

“Following Days,” in all of its one minute and 50 second entirety, is right up there with “We are Both Writers” and “Crossover Potential” and the holiday mainstay I always enjoy a few too many times that is “Tyco Racing Set and A Christmas Story Fifteen Times” that all give the flurry of feelings their brutalizing lyrics itemize the validation and almost anthemic melodies that make them impossible to ignore (and even harder to get out of my head). It is emotional but frank, frantic but measured, short but impactful and, most of all, instantly familiar despite getting a little lost over the years. It’s not the visceral smack of nostalgia that rode in on “Five, Eight and Ten” (which I’m still processing), but more like those times when a fuzzy memory that’s never far away but not always in focus comes screaming back in all of its slightly discombobulating high-definition splendor.

While KOLS had fallen off my radar in the late aughts, this album and especially this song at least enjoy occasional excavation, enough so that “Following Days” getting its turn in the 12,700 Songs playlists made for such a lovely moment of instant familiarity and genuine fondness that it had me flipping through the virtual record bin of the band’s back catalogue and digging up some really excellent stuff, including a Death Cab cover that rivals the original by taking its musicality in a subtly but significantly different direction. I’m really trying to be more diligent with this blog this year, and starting off 2023 by discovering that this band that I like well enough not only is worth giving another try but also seems to have gotten better with age is an auspicious, motivating nudge in that direction.