The Decemberists, Engine Driver, & The Angst of Teenage Musicianhood
9:50 AM
Disclaimer: When I'm not writing my weekly album updates, I want to take a stab at writing about some things in music that define my mediocre personality. If you follow me on twitter, you might as well turn back now. This is just me being unfunny without a character limit.
The song "Engine Driver" by The Decemberists has a particularly special place in my heart because it was the first I ever learned to play on the guitar. Being a music-obsessed teenager is a rite-of passage, but being a teenage musician takes that pretentiousness and multiplies it by infinity. Before I delve into the melancholy that is this band and how they've made me one of the most insufferable people to make small-talk with, let me give you a brief history of my guitar-ing and what led me to this particular song.
Long ago in the early 2000’s, my dad bought me a classical guitar at a garage sale. My father is a dedicated guitar-player, and has given me an incredible music education over the course of my life. Despite all this, the road to my musical competence wasn’t easy for him when I was a tween.
I was a whiner, my pride and joy was a razor scooter, and I was completely consumed by trying to convince my mom that I was old enough for Abercrombie, when I was simultaneously still too scared to sleep with my door closed. You would think that this was more baggage than any parent would be willing to take on, but for some reason my behavior never stopped my dad from trying to mold me into a less disappointing child. In his mind, the nylon strings of a classical guitar would be perfect for my delicate fingers and simple mind.
The song "Engine Driver" by The Decemberists has a particularly special place in my heart because it was the first I ever learned to play on the guitar. Being a music-obsessed teenager is a rite-of passage, but being a teenage musician takes that pretentiousness and multiplies it by infinity. Before I delve into the melancholy that is this band and how they've made me one of the most insufferable people to make small-talk with, let me give you a brief history of my guitar-ing and what led me to this particular song.
Long ago in the early 2000’s, my dad bought me a classical guitar at a garage sale. My father is a dedicated guitar-player, and has given me an incredible music education over the course of my life. Despite all this, the road to my musical competence wasn’t easy for him when I was a tween.
I was a whiner, my pride and joy was a razor scooter, and I was completely consumed by trying to convince my mom that I was old enough for Abercrombie, when I was simultaneously still too scared to sleep with my door closed. You would think that this was more baggage than any parent would be willing to take on, but for some reason my behavior never stopped my dad from trying to mold me into a less disappointing child. In his mind, the nylon strings of a classical guitar would be perfect for my delicate fingers and simple mind.
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| Exhibit A: The year is 1999. Fashion has run amok. My father is so done he can't even open his eyes. He is tired because 1. I am a nuisance and 2. He just finished filming "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids." I am maintaining fierce eye-contact even though I've done nothing with my life and have exactly zero things to be smirking about. |
I spent the next few years playing exclusively Somewhere Only We Know on the piano while the guitar gathered dust in a case that I had prematurely bedazzled (i.e. why 12-year-olds don’t deserve any possessions) until I neared the end of high school. My father didn’t look at me for 6 years. I developed a Mulan complex1.
The summer before my senior year of high school, I came to two important realizations: 1. I had signed up for way too many AP courses considering I never planned on amounting to very much
2. People that play guitar are objectively hotter than people who don't
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| Photo Cred: Getty Images Singer, song-writer, guitar-master and seductress Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, proving my point |
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| Photo cred: One of the dark corners of the internet Also proving my point is this gangly, piano-man I have named Gene. I don’t know him, but I’ve created a life for him in my head, and it’s not good. |
Mid-Puberty, I awkwardly realized that if I ever wanted to become the hot, nose-ringed and musically savvy chick that I always dreamed of being in college2, I needed to learn how to play something that wasn’t Wonderwall on an instrument that was portable enough to carry around with me and my ego. Not looking at you, piano, keeper of my virginity. The guitar was my ticket.
This brings us to Engine Driver: Let’s not mistake it for being the first song that I wanted to learn how to play. Nobody just picks up a guitar for the first time and knows how to play like Lindsey Buckingham.3 Regardless of this, Engine Driver has the perfect blend of learnable chords, angsty lyrics (Colin Meloy says “rid you from my bones” 7 times) and the verse/chorus/verse/bridge format that makes it accessible to the fresh-faced babes looking to make waves at coffee shops that have open-mic-nights (rated 3-stars or less on Yelp), and gatherings where people are high, but not really drinking that much. You better believe I learned the hell out of those five chords and played them every chance I could get. These chords were a gateway to songs by Bon Iver, The Shins & the beloved cross-genre acoustic cover of "Hey Ya"
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| Here is a photo to illustrate that my infantile college dream was briefly realized until my mother disowned me and my face. This is me and my boyfriend the night we met. I wooed him with a combination of a new nose ring, a disdain for smiling in photos, and a proficiency in bar chords. |
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| If the walls of my dorm could have come to life, they would have smothered me in my loft-bed with my body pillow. |
On a completely serious-ish note, by starting this blog I want to make one actual point : I am a Decemberists nut and will love them eternally, even if in a future life I am reincarnated as Garth Brook's dog.
Anything I say I love, I promise I don’t love as much as these morose, Portland-dwelling weirdos. To elaborate: I follow Colin Meloy’s wife on Instagram because she posts a ton of photos of the inside of their house with their children. I re-watch the Portlandia sketches featuring Sparkle Pony probably on a weekly basis. I cried when I found out Jenny Conlee had breast cancer. What I’ve got going on is not healthy.
I recognize this, and yet I am still unapologetic. Instead, I will do what I do best: overshare to friends, coworkers, loved-ones, and complete strangers. Seriously, you wouldn't believe how many close friends I've made standing in the bathroom line at a bar.
What I’m saying is that you should love them too. I totally get that it’s 2016 and this is not a secret underground band that no one has heard of. I’m sure they’ve made it on to your Death Cab Pandora station more times than you would like and you’re like “come on, music algorithm, these guys aren’t that similar!”.
Although persuasion is my goal, ultimately I understand that everyone reading this most-likely has a firm opinion on this band already.
They are as follows:
1. Not a top 40? Why am I even reading this? Wait, is this a blog? Where did my pinterest tab go?
2. Twee as hell
3. Are they the group that has like, 20 sea-shanties about assault?
4. I un-ironically love whimsy.
XOXO,
Not Gossip Girl
(but still likes gossip)
Colin Meloy, casually busking Engine Driver in Brooklyn
1 Insisting on being the most independent woman there ever was, while simultaneously needing validation from her parents. The U.S. was already liberated from the Huns at this time, so I didn't have that much to do. ↩
2 Don't worry. I have since read "Gone Girl" and no longer subscribe to the "cool girl" philosophy.↩
3 Too many people have seen me over-imbibe and dance to "Dreams" for me to talk any more about Fleetwood Mac in any capacity. Shout out to Red River Gorge Trip 2015. ↩
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