. I don't for the life of me know why I bought
. I was shopping for nautical music. See, I was planning a pirate RPG campaign, and I wanted music with a nautical theme; so I was wandering some of the more obscure corners of the music store. And although the Great Lakes have got their share of ship traffic (the climax of my campaign involved a Templar fleet massing on Lake Ontario, getting ready to sweep out and conquer the world), they're not what you usually think about when you're talking about pirates. But for some reason, I picked up the CD. I listened to bits of it, found it was full of too many modern references for a pirate game, and set it aside.
Well, my new campaign is a modern horror campaign; and at the suggestion on one of the players, I set it on the northern shores of Lake Michigan. So to get in the mood for it, I went through the music library looking for inspiration. And there was the Myth Society. I listened again.
Wow! Is that ever the right music for me! It's a little bit folk, a little rock, and a little intense. The blend is perfect for a fictional small Michigan college filled with strange happenings. And with more careful listening, I've found it to be pretty compelling music.
Now I'll be honest: as a guy who mostly picks music by lyrics over tune, I find the lyrics on this CD to be its weakest part. Some of them are good, but some verge on nonsense. Some tell stories, and some just tell images. There's not a song on the CD that I can recite yet, nor even sing along with.
But the lyric faults don't matter. To me, this whole album just feels like Michigan. It feels like home.
Here are the songs, and my impressions of them:
1. Red Jacket Miners/The Salt Trucks. Oh, what a perfect opening. My players don't get it yet, but this is the campaign's theme song. A theme of the campaign is ancient forces and powers intruding onto a modern world, and how this little corner of the world is where they intersect. Well, this song starts out with a folk-y, simple vocal, telling of simple, pleasant, common images that any Michigander will recognize; and then suddenly, it shifts into a dark rock tune, full of ominous overtones and more sinister Michigan imagery. I play this tune in the car every time I drive to gaming, just to get me into the right mood.
2. Across the Bridge. And this is the perfect follow-on to Red Jacket Miners. Driving beat, catchy melody, full of kind of cold, autumnal images. It's no coincidence my campaign starts in the fall: when the chill starts to hit around here, it's easier to believe that something in this world is out to get you. While the campaign is actually set south of the bridge, it's far enough north to have a distinct UP edge. Oh, and this song has a great
Duelist line: "If you don't know where we are/hang a lantern at the bar."
3. Love Story. Eh. Haven't connected with this song yet. The tune is nice, if dark. Lyrics just haven't made any sense to me. "Is that the sound of a man looking for a love story? Is that the sight of a grim falling from thirty floors? Is that the jury or the bride tugging at the trampoline to bring the gleam from the urn of the gravedigger's sword?" Lemme hear you say, "Huh?"
4. Buffalo Nickel. Starts simple and mellow, and then builds to a cacophony. Like a storm. Which I guess is exactly the metaphor they were after. Two lines from this song was what made me start to connect with this CD: "Come rain, come strangers at the bus stop. There's a fare on Ann Street." As I've said in other venues, I have a strong hatred for buses; and the trips that gave me that hatred all ended up at the bus depot in Ann Arbor. On Ann Street. And I said, "Hey, this sounds familiar." Those lines also inspired me to create one of my NPCs: Duff, the friendly cabbie who always knows when you need a ride.
5. Big Jim Hawkins. A story of one heck of a bar fight. Part Irish folk, part rock, mostly gore and death. Good inspiration for a battle scene. And maybe more: it has a mythical aspect.
6. Marquette County, 1959. There's an irony in this song, never explicitly stated, but implicit from the very first line, practically the only line from the CD that I can recite from memory: "Jimmy Stewart came to Marquette County in 1959." I know, I've seen the signs. It's emblematic of certain small towns, where nothing much ever happens and nothing much ever changes, that when something big does happen, they're still talking about it 47 years later. (For the record: Jimmy Stewart came to Marquette County in 1959 to film "Anatomy of a Murder", which was based on a real case that happened up there.)
7. Seeds for Sale. A quiet little tune, title based on a sign we all saw growing up. This starts as a simple song that tells scenes from life in rural places. But there's an undercurrent of quiet hysteria: "These are the days of blackboards and fingernails!" With that last word practically shrieked. And from there, it gets more and more deranged. Think "The Shining", where the isolation gets you, sooner or later.
8. Pining, Drinking, Understanding. A great response to Seeds for Sale, this song keeps pointing out things in the world that might drag you down, and contrasts them with the simple pleasures of life in a small Michigan town.
9. Isabella County, 1992. This song reminds me of
Geoff: the narrator tells some rustic and maybe distasteful aspects of life in Isabella County, but then responds, "My friends call me up, and say ‘What were you thinking? Come home!' I tell 'em 'I am home.'" It's the story of a guy who's well aware of all the "modern" world has to offer, and who consciously chooses the "backwater" anyway, and he's sick of people trying to convince him what a "mistake" he's making.
10. No. VI. Named for the
urban myth that Novi was named after a train stop (No. VI), this song tells of hope and disillusion in just another suburb down the line. My favorite music out of the whole CD, even if I don't buy into the whole disillusionment schtick. This is just pretty, and multifaceted.
11. The Northern Lights Over Atlanta, Michigan. Another song that hasn't clicked with me yet, as far as lyrics. I like the way the tune shifts moods. Of course, the Northern Lights have a big role to play in my campaign; but I really don't see them in this song.
12. The Foolish Motives of Lost Debates. Oh, man, what a bummer song. If you're at all prone to depression or self-pity or self-recriminiation, don't listen. "Tell me, when will IIIIIIIIII ceeeeease f***ing uuuuuuup endlessly?" You just know the guy screaming out that line is in the seventh of what will probably be a dozen beers tonight.
13. Railway Ties. A sad solo vocal tells of two people separated by time, distance, and a really long train ride.
14. Cottonmouth. Lyrics are too muddled for me to really tell what this song is about. Maybe that's why they call it "Cottonmouth"; but since I'm usually listening in the car, this is the first time I knew the title. I think it's about absent drinking buddies. Pretty song, but four minutes of cottonmouthed lyrics is a long time.
15. Lake Effect. More scenes from snow country, randomly strung together. No plot, more of a pastiche of north country life. There are some nice bits of sampling from various radio broadcasts that blend well into the music.
