I Cold War Kid you not.

By gaiJen

like stories. Written, I like them long, short or novella length. I like them structured with archetypal characters. I like them Henry Miller-esque, frank and graphic and masterful. I like them mindless and fun, fluffy plots blowing around poolside like dandelion seeds. I like them as poems; as brief six word sentences; as slogans and cultural touchstones. I like them earnest and unashamed and entertaining and sad and funny and scary and over-my-head. I like stories that are painted and sculpted and collaged and spray-painted. I like them read out loud and performed on stage. I like them consumed late into the night, the dawn breaking over the last pages. I like them cheaply read in bookstore coffee shops and in window seats while rain like static streaks the glass and hours slip away unnoticed. A good story is a fever dream that clings to us even when awake.

In contrast, music has never been a big part of my life. I can’t read and listen to music at the same time. I tune out the radio while driving. I never consciously notice the musical scores of movies. I don’t have a favorite song and I can never remember the lyrics to anything. But one day, while walking home from the train station, I started to pay attention to the words of the song filtering through my earphones. I replayed the song. Then I listened to it again. I thought, “The story in this song would make an excellent book.” The story in the song! It had never actually occurred to me that songs are stories too, perhaps the closest in form and function to the true stories, the oral traditions of our ancestors from before we were literate, before written history. That song was “Saint John” off the Robbers & Cowards album by Cold War Kids.

“Saint John” is an old story with old themes: honor, vengeance, retribution. The song opens with this line, “Another suppertime in the hole…” as the music winds up and abruptly stops, a strange stutter-step, as if the music itself is falling into an abyss. Then the first verse starts; we are transported (in my fever dream) to a small southern city, the white boys home from college on summer break and getting drunk late-night in town. The second verse ushers in a young black woman, walking home after the night shift at Pennington’s Place. She rounds the last corner before home – each footfall a pulse of pain in her old shoes, eyes itchy and bleary with exhaustion – and walks directly into the path of the boys. The boys circle her like sharks and grab at her, their “hands all fidget electric”. She struggles. That girl’s brother is on the front porch of his father’s house, yelling out. He picks up a brick and throws it into the tallest boy’s face. The third verse is two lines repeated: “all us boys on Death Row; we just waiting for a pardon”.

In 3 minutes and 36 seconds, an entire world is created – these characters are called into existence and their lives are laid before the listener to peer at, to wonder about. I was astounded – was all music like this? I quickly started at the beginning (a reasonable place to start) with “We Used to Vacation”, the tale of an alcoholic family man and the effect of the force of his addiction on his family. “Hang me Up to Dry” about an indecisive lover, “Hospital Beds” is a reflection on being helpless. And so forth, song after song stacking on top of one another, solid in execution.

Robbers & Cowards is not something you put on as background music to play while you try and do anything else. It is a series of short stories sung and it deserves your time and attention.