LogFAQs > #928384777

It's likely too early to start inflating point values, but we're at another point where I don't want to cut anything... so let's start raising everything to 7.1 from here. A small enough increase that there's still room for further increases before we reach level 8, but still something to indicate an increase in quality.

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#114 [#93]:

Name: The Grocery
Origin: Manchester Orchestra
Link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0nfNw6SS54" data-time="

Nominator: NBIceman (6/15)

("6-ish or something, whatever", 7, 7.1)

[Mass shooting followed by attempted suicide, huh? Im just gonna move on to the next song now.]

That's not even getting into religion, crises of faith, or all the images used in the video--including sliced wrists, so we can have visual types of suicide to go with the singing about suicide attempts.

It's a well made song, but I'm not in a mood to listen to it or watch the video. Some days I'm better able to be slightly objective or at least pretend to be: "ooh, listen to how powerful it and the subject matter are, hmm yes, truly speaks to the human condition and people losing faith, hmm" but not right now.

[Final-ish Thoughts: I think YouTube's ad algorithm is broken. Before this song, I got this commercial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DALO2_UqE-o" data-time="

I think going directly from something that childish, pink, and sparkly to this song is the new winner for worst case of whiplash in the topic. Bravo, YouTube.

Anyway... tonight I'm back to being able to enjoy the song--mostly. This song (and as far as I can tell, the entire album it's on) deal with really heavy topics--to a point that Tender Comrade seems incredibly tame by comparison. I think this is probably the heaviest song in the entire topic? Which is impressive, because I'm not convinced that it's the heaviest song on the album--I think The Alien may be even harder to listen to and it's the only other song on the album I've tried.

(Seeing the theory that the character in The Alien & the character in The Grocery are the same person... makes sense, but then we get into repeated suicide attempts and severe child abuse and I'm finding it harder to stay objective.)

One random person commented that this band felt like "Sufjan Stevens meets John Wayne Gacy". That feels like a disturbingly accurate way of describing them. That rather mellow voice the lead singer has does compare favorably to the few Sufjan Stevens songs I've heard (his work is good, but not the style of music where I'd want to hear more than one or two of his songs per day) and...well I'm not going to try to compare the character in this song to a real murderer, let's just presume the reference works.

But as referred to in my original write-up, my thoughts on this song are tied to whatever state of mind I was in at the time. There are definitely days where I'll never be able to stomach a song like this; there are other days where I'll respect the song--for having the courage to not pull any punches in its subject matter, for the album taking this story and running with it so completely, for the quality of the singing, for how relatable the crisis of faith is in spite of the character's actions, the way the video somehow has nothing to do with the song -but- gives off an unsettling vibe that almost perfectly compliments it anyway, blah blah blah. There's a lot to praise about the song. And, like Trains, this is definitely going to be one of the more memorable songs.

...I'm just not entirely sure I want to remember...]

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