Let’s talk about Feed from the Floor. I have SO MANY THOUGHTS about DXH’s use of gold and its metaphor in videos and lyrics and in terms of the Javey relationship and the Jade x Marissa relationship–so many thoughts, guys–so you can probably imagine that hearing this song was like sticking my tongue in an electrical socket. I am only going to brush the surface today. Come with me!
This post is sponsored by the following image:
Cause of Death: GOLD
I am excited and honored to offer you another stellar, fan-in-the-pit, firsthand Blood Tour experience. I’m as excited as Davey in this picture.
I know–that’s pretty excited.
Anyway, read on to join intrepid reporter and total babe Aja (aka crhiscornell) at the Minneapolis show!
On January 28, we saw AFI play in Denver, CO.
It was the most unbelievable and perfect experience of my life, so I’m having trouble figuring out what I can even say about it that’s objective and worth reading and isn’t just me, you know, smashing the keyboard and screaming. (That’s right. My purpose here is to Create Journalism. To Journalize. Everything contained in this entire Javey Truther blog is objective and worth reading.)
If you’re seeing them and don’t want any setlist spoilers, turn back now, because below the cut there be spoilers and REAL PUGET BLOOD! My sources (and, like, the internet in general) tell me there is a good deal of variety in the setlists for this tour, the fact of which alone I could fill a post about (THEY’RE ENJOYING BEING A BAND AGAIN THEY’RE SO BEAUTIFUL TOGETHER AAAAH), but you deserve the choice. So, more about my experience after the break!
If you want some Javey and band-in-general feels, spoiler-free, let me direct you to this truly fucking incredible interview, in which the band–not just Davey, folks, the other guys even speak–do a nostalgic backstory for each of their 10 albums, or this one about the band staying together forever and ever and ever and ever. Continue reading
It will probably not come as a surprise to you that I have ten million thoughts and feelings about the current AFI happenings, with a lot of specific excitement around the bleed of BA tone and themes into AFI and what that means for the level of honesty and queerness we’re about to get bloody with.
Instead of writing about any of that, I’ve written a messy interpretive reflection on the track listing for AFI (The Blood Album). Hopefully you will enjoy it!
1. Dark Snow (3:18 – probably not a call to arms track based on length. The title is very interesting for its marriage of DU themes with the dark colors of STS and Burials)
2. Still a Stranger (could describe Jade, unknown to him after all this time, or more likely could describe Davey, feeling unseen and unknown by all the fans who worship our idea of him. I’m reading these mostly through the lens of 1) Javey loving and 2) this album as a performance about performance. Also relevant: “all my life I’m dancing with strangers.” ALSO could refer to ongoing trysting and pretending it doesn’t matter??? When obviously it does. I’m so excited to get the lyrics for this.)
3. Aurelia (does its release as a single highlight the importance of the songs around it? Will look closely at Still a Stranger and Hidden Knives. Overall I am unimpressed with the lyrical content of this one, it reminds me very much of First to Love, it is overwritten and simultaneously light on content. A continuation of wolf themes from BA and sounding much like BA lyrics, without the EDM complexity to flesh it out and make it interesting. Davey is clearly a furry, that’s what he wants us to get out of this album. Aurelia is the name of Sylvia Plath’s mother. It literally means golden.)
4. Hidden Knives (no current comment)
5. Get Hurt (I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THIS TITLE, Davey has spent years now insisting to us that he will never be hurt again, that he is a remote creature of sugar and ice and so warped by loss that he will never be touched by it again. In Medicate he insisted he was numb and could feel nothing, and Burials was an outpouring of all the hurts he accumulated that he meant to never feel again, that he wanted us to know he was cutting out of his heart along with all other weakness. So this title, to me, is evocative of willingness. Of Davey saying, I am willing to suffer, I am willing to absorb endless hurt, I am willing to wrench open my chest and get my heart fucked and broken again and again and again, because that is what it is to be alive, and I have been a fortress and it was emptier than anything. I would rather get broken, if that is the price of being touched; I am willing to endure pain rather than not be touched at all.)
(All that is wild, wild extrapolation. It could also be an insult, along the lines of I Hope You Suffer, sort of a “get rekt Jade” sentiment. I’m so excited to see where this goes.)
6. Above the Bridge (Silver and Cold video feels all over the place)
7. So Beneath You (I love the juxtaposition of these titles, from above to below. This reads like a double entendre to me, like Davey and/or the behavior described is beneath “You” (I will always assume “you” means “Jade”) in terms of ethics/morals/standards, but also in a sexy way. ^^ )
8. Snow Cats (no further comment on THE GAYEST SONG DAVEY HAVOK HAS EVER RECORDED, way to up the ante after your single about blow jobs David)
9. Dumb Kids (JADE, this pulls up 17 Crimes for me and nostalgia for their days as dumb kids, messy and in love with no idea what they stood to gain and then lose, with maybe a hint of recrimination and anger at the version of himself who was so careless and reckless and free with his heart, the one who spent out all of Davey’s youth so that now Davey is old and bitter-hearted and alone. Except we know, don’t we, that he’s not really alone these days. Material changed everything)
10. Pink Eyes (This is just making me think of rats and bunnies and Davey’s wild emerging animal kink, will have more thoughts when there’s an actual song)
11. Feed From the Floor (Feed -> audio/video -> The Conductor, The View from Here, all of Davey’s endless songs about The Audience and The Actor and The Performance and The Stage, I am so going to have to finally write my planned meta about that now that they’re releasing an actual album with that dynamic as a potentially central theme. Also a possible animal parallel here, with literal eating off the floor. The scorn flows off these song titles and I’m so excited to see where it’s directed.)
12. White Offerings (symbolism of this song released as an album-staging single? What does it mean that this 4th-wall breaking song appears so late rather than as a tone-setting piece? I was imagining the album with White Offerings as an opener and it has a very different feel if we don’t get the plot twist/reveal that Davey is singing satire about his own fame and fans, that he feels bled dry and fed upon by us, until nearly the end of the album. Its choice as a single was certainly deliberate, and it’s interesting that it was released simultaneously with Snow Cats: either on its own wouldn’t paint so clearly the picture of performance, of the hero-worship drag he’s adorned at our behest.)
13. She Speaks the Language (No speculation yet. Plenty to come.)
14. The Winds That Carries Me Away (At 3:39 as the announced song time, a hidden track is unlikely. It is Significant that they have not returned to the old format of starting with a call to arms, emphasizing that we are a unit, we are one, and ending with an elegiac hidden track. Davey does not feel part of a unit, part of a tribe anymore. We are apart or he is; certainly since he and Jade ruptured, the band no longer feels like a safe haven and home. As for the title, it is SO evocative of The Face Beneath The Waves to me; the wind is an impersonal force of nature and Davey is either allowing himself to be swept away, or is being forced away. The winds of fortune, of favor, of the public will? I can’t wait to find out)
Final thought: The release order of singles: 8-12-3? 12-8-3? What happened in 2003 davey, what happened in 2003???? Is this a tour date? They were on Warped Tour for the August date, I’m fairly certain. Anyway. I’ll get sleuthing. Hit me up with your thoughts!
Last night, a clip of Jade appeared, filmed so tenderly I was surprised we were allowed to see it. It was just… really loving camera work. (And the song clip! GUYS! I am so excited about the SOUND!) It has been a long time since we have seen Jade depicted through a lens of kindness—of anything but scorn and indifference at best and murder at worst. The Anointed video was astonishing for the same reason: it showed us a Jade who didn’t die, wasn’t substituted by a Murder Girl, a Jade who ended up on the same side of the narrative as Davey at the end, when they enter the Queer Matrix and presumably live happily ever after, with heteronormative expectations exorcised.
What I want to talk about today is white. By my count, Davey references the color white on six notable occasions (Girl’s Not Grey, The Great Disappointment, On A Friday, Fade to White, Down Here, and The Face Beneath the Waves). Some of these references pack more metaphoric punch than others; he also frequently references paleness, light, fading, and clean/dirty parallels that certainly intersect with his usage of white. I’m going to frame my exploration around the song Fade to White, which is one of the more impactful instances, for all that the word doesn’t appear in the lyrics themselves.
(Here’s the song clip released last night that I’ll be referencing.) Continue reading
This is an old interview, from when the boys were about to release Bright Black Heaven, but I hadn’t read it before and I thought you might enjoy it! The pictures are dorky and amazing and the highlight is when Jade says, “We’ll probably end up releasing it ourselves from our bedroom.” Bonus: this tear-my-heart-out-wedding-picture/BBH promo photo.
We made a cake to celebrate (in May, when we were together–not quite on time). Happy Decemberunderground to you all!
Post Pretty Precious Stone-Gate, I have begun reading the sequences of “oh my ____,” “my ____,” and even “oh _____” as addresses to Jade. Not because this is what Davey intended (or did he???) but because this is obviously what I have chosen to devote my life to and I’m not going to do it halfway. (Sorry not sorry.) Anyway, there are certainly a form of address to SOMEONE/(s), and I believe this to be meaningful. We see a lot of these addresses in Blaqk Audio in particular, which you can read my theories about over here. Here’s a catalogue of these instances:
AFI and Blaqk Audio have a very different writing process. How does that impact the finished product, the album that comes out of it? How do the differing creative processes influence the notable contrast in the feel and the sound, resulting in either the emotional, overwrought, performative poetry of AFI or the direct, confessional, unabashed Blaqk Audio? (To say nothing of the deliberate rawness of XTRMST, which I cannot speak to at the moment, but you can read a good Jade interview here and a good Davey interview here; listen to tracks here. The XTRMST album was written mostly during Burials, but recorded much differently, with each track’s vocal being the first recording.)
Can you…?
AFI: 37 mm, Third Season, Greater Than 84, Medicate
BA: Bitter for Sweet, Semiotic Love, The Fear of Being Found
Will you…?
AFI: Ever and a Day, Too Shy to Scream, Now the World, Morningstar
BA: The Witness, Cities of Night, Bon Voyeurs, To Be Alone, Black at the Center
Tell me…
AFI: (Kiss and Control), Cold Hands, Face Beneath the Waves, Medicate
BA: Bitter for Sweet, (Mouth to Mouth), Wake Up Open the Door and Escape to the Sea, The Switch, Anointed, Black at the Center
Please.
AFI: Dream of Waking, The Missing Frame, Synesthesia, Sacrilege
BA: The Love Letter, Between Breaths, Wake Up Open The Door…, Mouth to Mouth, Down Here
What are some other recurring Davey pleas that I’m missing? Hit me up!
Tonight, In the Whispers 