[Editor’s Note: Starting this week, The Deli Portland will be presenting our first weekly (or bi-weekly, depending on life and liberty) column, "Chappy’s Dishes." Chappy is a Portlander who likes to do dishes, listen to music, and wash dishes while listening to music (or vice-versa). He also likes to write about the music he’s listening to while washing dishes – but not at the same time. When the Deli Portland learns more about Chappy, we will be sure to fill you in. Until then, enjoy this first installment of "Chappy’s Dishes."]
About once a week, my wife and I fix a complex meal that involves a lot of dirty dishes, and on the following day, I take it upon myself to tackle the pile. It’s one of the few occasions when I’m forced to stand in one place for more than an hour and attend to some mindless work. It’s usually in this time that I really listen to music and am forced to confront what that music pulls out of me. Last night, I made pizzas from scratch and for some reason I dirtied every dish in the house along with most of our utensils and glasses. Today, while laboring away, rather than putting on some cacophonous black metal or meandering free jazz to occupy my mind and confront my demons, I threw on Lovers‘ Dark Light for something different.
While washing, my hands may have been immersed in scalding hot and soapy water, but my mind was reconstructing the first mixtape I made using my parents’ tape player alarm clock. I was trying to be cool and find the most “new wave” stuff scaning the FM dial, when I stumbled across a college radio station playing an hour of New Romanticism. Of course, I had no idea then what I had stumbled on, but you better believe that mixtape was a hit and landed me my first girlfriend.
The bouncing ’80s synth of Dark Light‘s "Figure 8" further immersed me into the fantasy of late elementary school. The best pop music then (and really, now) will attach itself to particular memories and live there forever. Lovers are on to this.
If I were in 7th grade algebra class, "Shepherd of Stray Hearts" would be just one of those pop songs. "Shepherd…" is where everything is leading to and falling from. “I wanted you” would be the chorus rolling in my head while watching the seagulls bank on the wind to scoop up half-eaten French fries and pizza pockets from the quad, me fantasizing about girls instead of understanding integers and formulation of functional relationships.
Don’t take this the wrong way – Lovers aren’t just some ’80s revisionist dance band. They definitely seem to be forging their own territory, which is best exemplified on the last track "Cedar Falls." Here, the synths are still used whimsically, but there’s a certain maturity to this song that I didn’t catch on the rest of the record. Maybe it’s because I’m washing the wine glasses now and thinking of getting a little tipsy with my wife last night, or that this is the kind of music I imagine real adults listening to. Whatever the case, this closer had a distinctly different feel.
Just as I was cleaning the last surface, my wife walked in to a replaying of "Cedar Falls." The look on her face was astonishment, as it wasn’t mind peeling acid rock or reverb-drenched garage rock, but some new kind of adult music – Lovers for my lover.
"Figure 8":
– Chappy
Don’t miss Lovers this Saturday, September 11 at Rotture as part of MFNW 2010! They’lll be sharing the stage with MEN (Le Tigre’s JD Samson’s side band), Boy Joy, Sista Fist, and Permanent Wave! 8:00 p.m. $10 at the door, or free with MFNW wristband.