Will Schube christens all blog posts with a beer bong
A roadside grave suggests the opposite of what good music accomplishes, that is, something of permanence, distinction, and care. A roadside grave is temporary, an afterthought—a placeholder for something to come. The Roadside Graves—the band, not the highway rest stop-adjacent stone—turn the grave-in-passing into something far more enticing. Their music is studied, both ambitious and restrained. They’ve been floating along the periphery of indie rock for years, eventually picked up by Aquarium Drunkard’s Autumn Tone Label, and releasing record after record of indistinguishably solid music.
Maybe it’s a lack of flair, but The Roadside Graves have always struck me as a band we’ve yet to catch up to. They managed to make a record based on S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders , in which singer John Gleason constantly shrieks “Stay golden Pony Boy!!” and “DO IT FOR JOHNNY!!” that was both original and fair to the source (which is certainly easier to do when the works exist in different mediums, but is still a feat). All this is to say that The Roadside Graves have just released a new track, and it too is very good. “Body” finds the band pushing their sound into new terrains, with a piercing synth jittering along with Gleason’s pleading voice—the singer is constantly in between whining and a state of exasperation—but the tone works with phrases such as “Tell me if my body is too loud/I can always use a reason to shut it down” and “I want to wake up a better man than I am right now.”
The synths often take on a Nintendo-esque timbre, which tends to wear on a listener after two or so minutes, but the track’s pulse and understated organ offer enough to overlook the brief intrusions of ear-shattering 8-bit. The track ends in a wallop, with ramshackle instruments thrown together as Gleason sings enviously of those who are “young, bored, and wild.” This seems to be the elder’s lament: Gleason shaking his head at those disinterested and disenchanted; wasting days of youth in the thick of ennui. “Body” is a push against that, but it’s also a reminder that being bored and stoned in mom’s basement, sweating in the summer heat is a place we’d all rather be.
