I’ve been mulling this post all the time lately and the new Frank Turner, Undefeated, just came out so it seems like time to pull the trigger.
Actually though, this train of thought came primarily when I was working out to HateBreed and the singer yelled “this is for the kids who have nowhere to go!” And I was like “dude, I’m 40, I have an apartment”
All the standing-up-to-authority in the lyrics just feels like it misses me. I’m not a 16 yr old living at home with parents who don’t understand, I’m not in my 20s dealing with horrible bosses at shit jobs – if you’re 40 and you’re grumbling about your boss while listening to metal core you are fucking cringe – I’m self employed with a job I love. There’s no hard-core punk or metal for the anger that I feel. No artist to articulate the things I’m struggling to say.
Because let’s face it, emo, bless its heart, is always for kids. I got into a great band Hot Mulligan last month and I can identify with them but only in memories. I remember what it’s like to scream your heart out about loving someone who doesn’t love you but I feel an adorable nostalgia for it, not actual painful yearning catharsis. I’ve been in a healthy, stable relationship for 8 years; for all intents and purpose, my love life is done. I’m married, I won, I got to the end of dating and I’m living happily ever after.
There’s no singer screaming their heart out about the very subtle nuances of how co-managing a modern household effects your single-partner-forever sex life.
And that can bring us to the new Frank record.
Because the first songs that came out for the record were the first Frank Turner songs to ever disappoint me. Do One and No Thank You For The Music are retreads of so many songs he’s written before, primarily Four Simple Words which wasn’t insightful new ground even when he wrote it. But it was Girl From The Record Store that actually gave me cringe; thinking “dude, you’re a 41 yr old married man, don’t be this guy.”
But the record went public on the same morning I had a 7k run scheduled and I thought that was perfect so I listened to it under ideal conditions. And it was all take-it-or-leave-it for me until the final, album titling song, Undefeated. It really got me in the feels right away even though I thought immediately about my inability to identify with the lyrical theme. My first thought at the refrain “independent Undefeated” was mine would be “codependent losing streak”
I can’t imagine what it would be to feel Undefeated. Even the first song, Do One, which I’ve come to like so much more than when I first judged it, has lines about being still standing when haters knock you down and I’m like – I don’t have haters, I’m not a musician standing up to snobby critics and punk pretensions. It feels good to sing “I’m still standing and there’s nothing you can do” but really there’s no one trying to knock me down and there never really was, not in my adult life certainly. And I can’t say I’ve ever been standing in any rhetorical sense. I never stand; I walk away. Always have. I’ve let down everyone who ever tried to give me a chance, including myself.
Where’s that song? (A contender is It’s Alright by Mother Mother, now that I think about it)
Even Cease Fire which is about Frank talking to his 15yr old self – a very relevant topic to all the self-parenting talk I’ve been about lately – sort of misses me because Frank was a punk rock idealist who grew into a successful musician; problem I’ve always desperately wanted to have. In my case, I don’t owe my young self any apologies and I don’t think my young self would hold me to the fire – because I think we’d both be equally disappointed and not surprised by how things turned out for us.
Back in those days I look at my life as a split in the road between hope and fear. I hoped it would go the route of successful musician and I feared it wouldn’t; that my cowardice and fault wouldn’t win out over my hopes and ambitions and… they did. Hope lost. I turned into what I thought all the adults around me were. And what they were counselling me to be.
I feel sorry for my childhood self and they feel sorry for me. No cease fire about it.
(Specifically to the record, since I’m listening to it right now, East Finchley is good and all but it makes me want to listen to District Sleeps Alone Tonight and Smiling At Strangers On Trains that’s what I mean about it feeling like a retread.)
And back to Frank and growing up music – it’s tough to push for more of it because the growing up songs on the last record weren’t good. Moving to London and being a London guy is so important to the Frank lore that he had to write about moving away but then those songs on FTHC are dull. But that record does have good growing up songs, in Resurrectionists, Haven’t Been Doing So Well, and Punches.
And I’d be remiss not to mention the man, dare I say the boss, who’s been doing this genre since day one… I was thinking about this topic on a run, listening to Springsteen, and Racing In The Street came on and I thought yeah, this is a song for me being middle aged. Bruce was writing poignant songs for middle aged men even when he was in his 20s.
I don’t really know how to wrap this up, I guess that’s why I was thinking about writing it for so long. What point am I making when I say music I like feels immature? We turn to music, to art, for solace, for guidance, for hope and I’m yearning for any of those things these days but the things that used to work no longer do. That’s not a tremendous insight worthy of 400 words. I guess it’s that I don’t want to have a pathetic mid life crisis, trying way too hard to pretend one is still youthful and vibrant.
‘Cause, like, I hated being young. If I recaptured my youth I’d be exactly like I am now – miserable. I want there to be a next chapter after my youth. I want to be a 40 year old man, I want dignity and wisdom and peace, that it was I’d like to feel.
And since I’ve shouted out a lot of music, I’ve been hearing So Long by Donots feat. Frank Turner a lot lately when Spotify goes on shuffle after I listen to Undefeated and I gotta say it would be a great funeral song.
Author/Athlete, Thinker/Doer
Alastair's Ego 