Earlier this year Daniel Dylan Wry wrote an article in the Guardian, asking why people in their thirties are giving up on music. After attending Warmduscher’s Electric Brixton show I have two responses to Wry’s article.
Firstly, is to tap into Wry’s rallying call that the thirties are not the time to give up on music. Wry calls it premature – not that one should give up on decent tunes when they hit forty either. Premature it certainly is because there are many bands that make the ageing outsider and the baggage that comes with it their main concern. Warmduscher are a fine example, consider front man Clams Baker pondering age in second album track Standing On The Corner:
Pushing forty and you’re facing parole
You got six months clean, but you gotta pay rent
And everybody’s saying you’re too old
So you take a quick hit just to kill the pain
And go and do what you gotta do
And it feels so good when your eyes roll back
That one, sometimes a two
Far from new music fractiously rubbing up against your maturity, it can help you unpack, arrange and repack the luggage that you have carried from your twenties.
The baggage was light on the back of Warmduscher at Electric Brixton. Their energy is at once loose and contained. What the hell does that mean? Well, they got them arpeggio synths that mean you have to play proper in time but they also have a guitarist with loads of distortion and some times, like when the synth aint doing that arpeggio thing, the drummer speeds up, oh and the singer is enjoying himself, not like that year the Strokes were at Reading Festival and no one knew if the singer’s nan had died or if he just wasn’t a very happy bloke.
So yes, in that regard, keep going with the music thing into your thirties. I’m thirty and I will go and see Warmduscher again and not only enjoy the tunes but also feel a kinship with the songwriting. I will probably get some ear plugs soon though.
Now, to my second response. Yes pack it in. You’d be insane to enjoy music into your thirties. You’re going to need to get a seventh job soon just to pay your EON bills and twitter subscription. It’s okay though, you can plug that leisure time you used to call sleep. Music will only complicate things. Make you feel things that don’t generate any income. Can a song fix inflation? Maybe it could, I don’t actually understand how any of that stuff works. I just know that staying in and sitting costs less than enjoying life. So best you forget about late nights with Warmduscher, forget about the time you felt like you were in a plane taking off and all from the descending intro to I Got Friends. Forget the faces you imagined as Clams strutted through a fog of war veterans and prostitutes in album opener Live At The Hotspot. Most of all forget the joy of seeing a band enjoy themselves and not take them selves to seriously while being one of the all time greats. Best forget all that stuff.
Article by Patrick Malone
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