last night

Last night I was at home reading Sarah Vowell’s The Partly Cloudy Patriot which Morgan had just gotten signed at Tuesday night’s reading. The Current turned on in the background for music and I grumbled once or twice about how Mark Wheat seemed to be talking too much. At one point he announced that he was going to be playing a song off the new Atmopshere album that they’ve been hawking quite a bit (and I have been listening to for months – first off a crappy internet copy – then finally off the real deal). The song he said was called “That Night”. I scrunched my face and looked up at the ceiling for a minute trying to figure out which song that was, I’m never an ace at song titles, but I just couldn’t place which one it would be. That is until the familiar sorrowful first lines of music came on followed by the driving beat and those lines of memoriam for the girl who lost her life two years ago in Albuquerque.

I was stunned. I sat there for a minute not knowing how to feel. Maybe it was the chipper way Wheat had announced the song. Maybe it was the fact that this song had struck me as painful. No, it’s not the best song on the album, but it recollects a real moment when a girl was raped and murdered after an Atmosphere show and the honest visceral reaction to this occurring. Of course as all good songs though it is more than just a recollection and reaction – to me it feels like a prayer, a eulogy. It is sorrowful, confused, and angry and private, as private as a song can be on an album that is trying (and doing a decent job) to get national recognition.

When the song was over there was an emptiness unsuccessfully bridged by the next song on the radio. A vacuum which on the album they (I’m going to give Ant credit here) do such a great job at filling with the next song "Get Fly". Redemption I think at the first couple bars.

There is suffering, but there is also redemption.