We Are Our Only Saviors

"I didn’t make this myself but I’m gonna do it. ‘Twas a man he had a pretty wife and she went and losed her mind, about her husband. We’d go out and play for the insane asylum people and they would dance. She was there and her husband would go and sing to her. And two weeks after he sang this song, she came back to her senses and they got back together. That’s to show how music can bring you back….if you ain’t too far gone."

Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter talking about the song Dancing With Tears in my Eyes.

Was there really any point at which a song saved your life or was it just self aggrandizing hyperbole? I’ve spent so much time this week, when I wasn’t sleeping, thinking that there was such a thing as a song that was keeping me alive. Maybe it was me the whole time and the songs were just reminding me.

For the last month I’ve been on a search for a new really great summer album. The album that provides you with a single that gives you a real survival anthem. I’ve combed through the bins at every record store in this sad little city on what I feared was a futile search, and then all of a sudden the great Steve Lee reminds me that the Hold Steady have a new album out and I gave that bastard a listen

Even though at their worst, songs by the Hold Steady just kind of sluggishly relay on power chords and roll along like the worst lay ever, at their best you realize they’re writing hymns. Big power chord fuelled hymns. The kind of songs that can keep you alive. Or that remind you that you need to get out in the street with the kind of people that keep you alive.

I’ve cheated this week and put up You Tube posts when I could have been writing something better. I’ll try to be less lazy in the future. At the best, at least I've kept to a week long theme.

In closing I will give you what I think is the best survival anthem I’ve heard in some time. A very nice reminder. We are our only saviors. Let's see how I do next week.