Issue 4: Drug Church – Cheer

On radical honesty, the humor in that and putting a pretty bow on a grimy reality.

Part I: Woof

Drama in my inbox. Drama with myself.

Not too long ago, when searching for a particular email, I found myself being sucked into a black hole, reading mails to and from an ex.

Yeah, I know, shut up already.

Anyway, I’m not even going to get into the details of the relationship, that would be shitty to the other party. But I do have an innate and irrepressible feeling to be self-centred and talk about how I felt about it.

For context, the relationship didn’t work out for a lot of reasons, but mainly because we were completely different types of people and wanted extremely different things out of life. She had a very particular vision for the rest of her life, I was content being a boring dipshit with a stable job.

At the time, being the 23 year old white man child I was, I felt wronged. This should’ve gone my way. I had everything to offer. Except, of course, what she wanted. Well, that was going to be her problem, I was out.

Of course, in the end it was for the best. And frankly: things worked out, we kept in touch, we’re ok with each other. I’m good with where I am in life.

Back to the emails.

Do you ever talk to old friends about something that happened a long time ago and it turns out they remember it completely differently? Fucking Gmail apparently remembered things quite differently from how I recalled them.

Reading the email conversations was kind of shock. I was so whiny. Holy shit, was I an exhausting person to be with at that time! I suppose I knew all along, really, but these emails certainly confirmed it. It was a very uncomfortable truth.

(I like to think I’ve grown since and learned to listen more and be more empathetic. I’m sure I’m still exhausting – my brain certainly tells me so all the time – but hopefully it’s not because I’m a whiny shithead.)

Ruminating on uncomfortable truths, my mind wandered to Drug Church’ Cheer album, which deals in these in abundance.

Part II: Harsh but funny

The reluctance to go to parties, even when your friends keep nagging you to show up. Getting shit at work for doing a bad job even though you don’t care about the damn job in the first place – and it pays shitty anyway. The shit realities of being poor and trying to get by.

These are all not necessarily typical poetic fare, but Drug Church makes it work for them.

It starts with the lyrics: clever, dry, cutting. Kinda dark, but not overly so. All describing situations clearly, painting pretty specific pictures that are hard to mistake for something else. And yet, they are relatable because most of us have been in situations like that, to one extent or another.

They resonate, because they’re the unpolished truth. Or at least it’s how many of us experience moments like these, without overly romanticising them. A lot of what’s being sung about on Cheer is not something people proudly come out and say. Under other circumstances, it would be papered over, hidden, or at the very least dressed up with some fancy language.

It also makes the songs funny, as a lot of comedy is just having the balls to say the bare, uncomfortable truth. To uncover this truth below socially accepted norms and values and just lay it out as it is. It forms a connection, makes you realize that all the euphemisms and socially accepted language and bullshit we hear day in, day out is absolute nonsense.

You’re not in between jobs, you got fired. You’re not cash-strapped, you’re poor – and you live with everything that comes with that.

Life is shitty, sometimes for some, most of the time for others. And it’s alright to acknowledge that and bond over it, which is what Drug Church facilitates with its lyrics.

But to limit the impact just to the lyrics would be shortchanging the band as a whole. The grimy, dirty guitars create a grungy tone (both in the ‘genre’ sense and in the 'filthy' sense) that makes it feel like you could get an ear infection just listening to it. A nice chunky bass fills it out, with punctuating drums that drive the whole thing forward.

The music (and production) fits the subject matter, is what I’m saying. It harmonizes with the lyrics to let the message of gross, unfiltered 'real world' into you heart.

Part III: The right frame

A peculiar thing happens when you try to stuff an unromantic reality (as laid out above) into a romantic framework. Or at least, a framework that generally is used for romantic purposes. And I would argue most songs take a romantic view of the world, or shine light on their subject matter (regardless what it is) through a romantic prism.

The human brain cares a lot about how something is presented. It cares about the stuff around the core picture. So give it an unromantic world view in a romantic package, and it starts to force positive associations on it, making it almost aspirational. Hell, starving artists have made an entire lifestyle out of it.

To be fair, most of Drug Church’ songs on this album deal with what most would call petty stuff. Shitty jobs, social anxiety, an extremely uncomfortable situation. But they’re really not all that petty – these are what shape life for many people. It’s what makes the songs relatable. For most of us, those kinds of shitty experiences are the pain we deal with every day. Sure, we face tragedies – I don’t want my mom to die, but she’s going to, at some point – but those are bigger periods throughout our stories. It’s the commas that hurt. Because you gotta keep going after a comma.

That’s the surface level, intuitive appreciation, though. Start poking through that layer and you’ll arrive at something much more interesting: empathy and acceptance, but like, in a cool wrapper.

I mentioned earlier that the cool part of making art about a grimy life, is that it opens doors to acknowledgment of unideal situations, leading to bonding. We don’t like to talk about the shit we go through, we’d rather suffer in silence, scared that everyone else is doing way better and at best would shower us in pity, and at worst judge us for our deficiency in the realm bootstrap-pulling.

"I am a loser, why is everyone else successful and happy?" we ask. Turns out, no one is happy. Not really. Not in the way we see on tv and movies. No happy endings here, because life goes on. After the climax, you’re bound to come down, and that’s not what we’ve been taught so the comedown is unexpected and harsh.

Art like Drug Church’ Cheer helps us see through that. Openness, especially in a framework that generally facilitates romantic idealism, can have a big impact.

About the intentions of the authors I refuse to speculate. Maybe they want to make something slightly different. Maybe it’s therapeutic. Maybe it’s the only thing they know how to make. Who the fuck knows. I can’t even tell what’s real and what’s made-up – and I attribute that to good writing.

Whatever the case, I hope it helps them, in whatever way.

It helps me to look at myself in the mirror in moments when I realise I was a shithead fifteen years ago, because I know that I’m not the only one that was a shithead fifteen years ago.

And when you realize that, it’s almost kind of funny to think about it.