Music: mewithoutYou

I am now back. But I don't feel like blogging tonight and it's getting late anyway, so I'm going to post some angsty beautiful music instead.

I discovered mewithoutYou through a friend of mine, and listened to their song O, Porcupine about a dozen times asking myself "Do I like this?" and being genuinely uncertain of the answer. Eventually I concluded that I did, and have acquired a slightly broader taste since then in their odd genre of underground indie hardcore alternative folk punk (for lack of a better way of describing it). This particular song, Carousels, from the album Catch For Us the Foxes, is one of my favorites; it exhibits their remarkable lyrical blend of intense, depressive darkness and suffering with an equally intense -- even perhaps mystical -- spirituality. It is, to my mind, head and shoulders above most contemporary Christian music, if only because it doesn't follow the cookie-cutter Shiny Happy People pattern that most Christian music does (which is done well by some groups, like Hillsong, and extremely poorly and/or with insufferable cheese by others who shall remain nameless).

On a bus ride into town
I wondered out loud
"Why am I going to town?"
And as I looked around
At the billboards and the stores
I thought "Why do I look around?"
And I kissed the filthy ground
The first dry spot I found I laid back down
And I didn't have to wonder
Why I was laying down

Before long I was too cold
Took a bus back to the station
And I found a letter left by a payphone
With no return contact
And it read like a horn blown by some sad angel
"Bunny, it was me
It was me who let you down"
It was the shyest attempt
I'd ever seen at conversation

But if I didn't have you as my guide I'd still wander
Lost in Sinai
And counting the plates of cars from out of state
(How I could jump in their path as they hurry along)
You surround me
You're pretty but you're all I can see
Like a thick fog
If there was no way into God
I would never have lain in this grave of a body for so long

And Bonner Fair always came through
The first week of September
But it's already the nineteenth
And there's no sign of it
Yet I have a hard time
Remembering all the things I should remember
And a hard time
Forgetting all the things
That I'm supposed to forget

Christ, when you're ready to come back
I think that I'm ready for you to come back
But if you want to stay
Wherever exactly it is you are
That's okay too
It's -- it's really none of my business

But if I didn't have you as my guide I'd still wander
Lost in Sinai
Or down by the tracks watching trains go by
To remind me there are places that aren't here
And I had a well
But all the water left -- I'll go ask your forgiveness
With every breath
If there was no way into God
I would never have lain in this grave of a body
For so long, dear