[Repost from Nick Prevenas, via Substack; November 13, 2024]
If you want to get a sense of whether “Sound Tucson” is your kind of music book, give this 2023 essay a read. It’ll take you about 6-8 minutes (maybe longer if you choose to listen to the song embedded in the Bandcamp CMS). We’ll be here when you get back: Monsoon Twilight Amid a Wave of Destruction: Forest Fallows’s “Lightly Down”.
In late 2022, the fine folks at Bandcamp solicited pitches for Resonance, the site’s series of personal essays “exploring our emotional relationship with music.” If there was a Venn diagram comparing the tone/feel of these essays with the tone/feel of my book, it would be an overlapping circle. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to write about one of my favorite songs (Lightly Down) from one of my favorite local records (At Home) by one of my favorite local bands (Forest Fallows).
Even though the album is about 10 years old at this point, it still sounds every bit as fresh and exciting as it did when I first heard it. There is an unstuck-in-time quality to the kinds of songs Alex Morton and Mike Barnett write together. There are no production tricks or trend-chasing tendencies that would tie their music to any specific moment. In the essay, I wrote that Forest Fallows has “the wooziness of a Kurt Vile record was superimposed on top of Real Estate’s jangly hooks.” I assumed for years that “At Home” would be a one-and-done experience – one pristine record from a band that comes and goes as intermittently as a gentle breeze.
The Bandcamp piece got back to Alex, Mike, and James at Fort Lowell Records. Their kind words about my essay really struck a chord in me. Music – and the appreciation of it – can be a two-way street. If someone creates something that matters to you – particularly independent creators – try to find a way to communicate that to them.
They were eager to let me know that they were close to completing the “At Home” follow-up that had been nearly a decade in the making. They sent me an early copy with hopes that I would review it, but the words escaped me. I truly, honestly didn’t know what to say. What if “Palisades” didn’t hit me the same way “At Home” did? I am a completely different person in 2024 than I was when I first heard this band in 2014-2015. What if I couldn’t muster the same kind of enthusiasm? I didn’t want to let them down.
It can be hard to look back on the person you used to be. The vast majority of “Sound Tucson” was written several years ago – pre-fatherhood, pre-COVID, pre-everything. You ever glance at an old high school yearbook photo and think “who WAS that person?” You ever listen to an old mixtape/mix-CD/playlist and wonder what the hell you were thinking? The future can be terrifying because of the unknown, but the past can be equally terrifying because of everything you now know about yourself.
But you have to get over it.
I finally listened to “Palisades.” Again and again. It doesn’t pack the same wallop “At Home” did for me, but that hardly matters. I came into it knowing (mostly) what to expect. “Palisades” is more playful than it’s predecessor (check out those cheeky synths on “Saturday Rose”) but it is still a woozy/jangly delight. This music is a warm blanket and two hands around a warm mug of hot chocolate.
I’m listening to it as I review the “Sound Tucson” manuscript to update references, dates, double-check name spellings – you know, the fun stuff. I was worried this process would have the same “yearbook photo” quality and I would delete the Word doc from my hard drive in a fit of embarrassment. I’m thrilled to tell you that I’m having the opposite reaction. I can’t wait for people to read it.
