disaster music, from ethel cain to vengaboys

We were driving away from our place in Northeast L.A. and the sky was the color of rust. The power had been out all night but we'd been up, listening to news reports via the hand crank radio I'd literally just bought from the Red Cross website after finishing an emergency preparedness course (life comes at you fast, man) and looking at the "how big is this wildfire?" app while keeping an eye on our draining phone batteries. Was I feeling awful because I hadn't slept? Or because the air was full of smoke? I thought about Liam Gallagher thinking he got Covid but actually his house was just hot: "It's confusing and scary." We all laughed at the time but is he so wrong?

My friend had texted as we were packing some shit up—the plan was to go south-ish, but not so far away that we couldn't turn back if things chilled out—and it made me laugh. "Not to trivialize the situation but of course Ethel drops today." Now all the stoplights were out and we were playing a fun game of four-way-stop chicken with everyone, trying to get to the freeway. I put Perverts on, kind of as a bit, and the first thing I heard was a recording of "Nearer, My God, To Thee," sounding like it was played via a warped old record found in a haunted house. That was followed by some ambient noise and eventually some demonic gurgles.

It was too damn real to be funny. My husband requested "a song that has some music in it" and I put on an old favorite that involves complex live drumming over millennial mashups, the Beatles into a Bingo Players Diplo remix into MGMT, that kind of thing. It worked as a diversion, and we could switch easily enough back and forth to the news. Moving slowly but steadily down the 5, we ended up behind a car that had modded the letters on its trunk to spell T W E R K instead of T E S L A. And then I thought of Phoebe Bridgers' "I Know The End," a song about not being able to escape a certain kind of garish American taste even when the end is near. But actually playing that song felt a little too on the nose: "Drivin' out into the sun / Let the ultraviolet cover me up"...

Music for disasters is always a weird concept for me. When a situation shifts dramatically, when expectations are disrupted and life gets flipped sideways, I end up getting kind of picky about what I listen to. Part of it is feeling like I'm curating a vibe for something whose vibe cannot and should not be curated—DJing the apocalypse, yelling "NOW EVERYBODY PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR! SOMEBODY SCREAM!!" at the beginning of the end of the world. Part of it is questioning what music is supposed to do for me. I enjoy music, but am I supposed to be enjoying myself at a time like this?

During early Covid in New York, I would go for walks at night (less people around) and play Dua Lipa's Future Nostalgia over and over. It didn't make a lot of sense that I was finding so much comfort in an album of frothy disco pop when everyone was so confused and paranoid. But there I was, stress-stomping down Eastern Parkway, listening to "Hallucinate" and thinking abstractly about going to the club, rather than concretely about being in the epicenter...a few weeks later, Fiona Apple unleashed Fetch the Bolt Cutters, which sounded like her busting through the walls of a self-made prison like the Kool-Aid Man, only instead of saying OH YEAH she was saying I WANT YOUUUUU TO LOVE ME and then making dolphin noises. I guess the theme that tied those two pandemic albums together for me was "women doing whatever they wanted," and even though nobody could do whatever they wanted, I liked imagining that it would be an option again someday.

A few years later, my friend had a medical emergency and I went from "nm just chilling" to "visiting the hospital almost every day." I hadn't been to a hospital since I was literally birthed. It was a sobering shift. The day it happened, when I was sitting on my hands and waiting around for news from my husband, I went for a walk and picked Trouble Will Find Me by The National as my soundtrack. (If there is a problem, I suppose you will find me somewhere, walking about it.) I'd just seen The National play a festival in Cincinnati and the commanding presence of Matt Berninger was fresh in my mind. Even though the album is kind of liminal and grim, I figured that baritone would soothe me, and I was right.

I guess when something bad happens and I can still listen to music, I'm looking for some combination of comfort and distraction. "Learn to appreciate the void," Berninger sings on the first track of Trouble Will Find Me. I don't think he meant it aspirationally or anything, but it's something I've found myself needing to do regardless.

We ended up staying in Anaheim until they turned our power back on and the air cleared a little. It was the perfect wonky location for semi-distant catastrophe. Everyone at our hotel besides us was bound for Disneyland. The continental breakfast was full of parents with their children, consuming the first and final thing of the day that wouldn't cost them any extra money. The waffle irons were shaped like Mickey Mouse—four little Mickeys per griddle.

We walked around Downtown Disney, an outdoor shopping mall adjacent to the park, and they were blasting peppy Mario Kart-style jazz. When we left, the music switched to "Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!" by Vengaboys, and a security guard mistook it for "We Like to Party! (The Vengabus)" and murmured "Wrong theme park, bro. Six Flags is 60 miles north of here." Is it weird to blog about music at this time? I guess I can't help it. I am always trying to feel a little more normal during Unprecedented Times. Then I can figure out what to do next.

There are lots of ways to contribute to wildfire relief but here's one that recently stood out to me—a way to donate directly to some of the incarcerated people fighting the fires.

This Mutual Aid L.A. doc is tracking orgs that need donations and volunteers.

Also want to highlight the Altadena Girls Fire Recovery Fund, started by a local teenager as a way to restore some normalcy for young women who lost their possessions in the Eaton fire.

Thanks for reading! Love u mean it ❤️