Sunday Music: Militarie Gun

I don’t know what they were going through when they wrote this, but I know what it feels like they were going through: 

I’ve waited long enoughThe plans are offAin’t nothin’ to do in the dayAin’t nothin’ to do but waitFind myself just sitting aroundPush me up, push me outWaste my time, waste my lifeAs I sit and wait for youI don’t see why it’s up to meWhy I got to be your stooge

Why does anybody wait for anybody else when life is so short? 

Yeah, sometimes there are good reasons. Teamwork. And family. Time is a thing that gets spent. Time is a thing that also gets invested. 

Time isn’t hard to quantify, but its meanings can be. 

Militarie Gun is wrestling with it. Those two opening guitar chords? Notice how tentatively unsettled and shifty they are. 

Feel the drums come in. Like a clock. Tick tock. 

Even the chorus, when the harmonic root and progression lands, there are a bunch of open strings ringing out. Let me translate for the non-guitarists/music theorists. A bunch of strings keep ringing out and join in the other chords, even when they don’t belong, as a muddied-mix of ambiguous texture. 

Shifty nerves to a beating clock. 

In the lyrics, rhythms, harmonies, melodies, and sounds. 

They captured it. 

Very much digging this band lately. They’re just enough distant past (old Replacements? Post-hardcore in general?), just enough near past (Title Fight? Some Pup/Rosenstock?), and plenty of distinct present.