Give me a grave-silent office or the muted patter of ice falling in the woods out my window or even the ambient bustle of a classroom, coffee shop, or bar and I can tune out the world and slip into a vacuum so solidly that it’s like I’ve grabbed onto electrified metal and the only way to break me free is with a two-by-four or some similar nonconductive object of considerable heft. In the song, the speaker fusses that “cousin Clifford, he got the good land / right on the highway out by Air Base Road / looks like a Wal-Mart waiting to happen.” In “Mistletoe,” the protagonist tries to prevent his dead brother’s son from turning his extant sister’s orchard into a truck stop to keep the land from being “purposed for a reason other than the family had intended.” But Jason Molina can perform open-heart surgery with his precise lyrics, and the following lines from Magnolia Electric Co.’s “Whip-poor-will”—”I’ve made more mistakes than that just tonight / so all of you folks in heaven not too busy ringing the bells / some of us down here aren’t doing very well / some of us with our windows open in the southern cross hotel”—felt more inclusive of all the characters in the story framed in the windows of their figurative motels and waystations, waiting and wondering when grace is going to find them.
Author: largeheartedboy
Published at: 2025-06-03 21:47:46
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