Post-American Americana: MBD's SPELL/BOUND

[@cedarlynn]

Very glad KZbin suggested this video to me. Murder by Death is far and away my favorite band, and I'm always happy to find another fan. There's no side lore, all of it is contained in the music, but the band themselves are very good people. About a year ago they donated merchandise to an auction to raise funds for a woman's gender affirming surgery, and they have a history of similar donations and support.

[@VeritasUnae]

Beautiful video, even more beautiful ending. Toot toot! What I particularly love, and am always inspired by, is your panache at capturing not just an idea, but the central ethos and deep understanding of a whole cosmos of ideas. And then to communicate that purely and understandably... I'm awed, always. Looking forward to the future!

[@MrCardz]

Giant fan of Murder by Death, surprised to see another KZbinr talk about them. Haven't seen your channel before, but I'll definitely be taking a look at your other content too.

[@mattiesavannahpahl9934]

Great fucking video. Really made me think about their work in a way that I haven't! Really stoked to spin the new album some more with this backdrop in mind.

[@stephenfriedrich8551]

I’m also such a massive fan of MBD, I’m so happy that a friend sent this to me. You put so much of what I love about them and Spell/Bound specifically into words

[@ansibleblackwind7195]

Thank you from under the creaking floor boards of the crumbling remains of the ramshackle shelter of my thanking place.

[@fastplant64]

I haven’t heard of this band before, so this is a really cool introduction. I’ll have to check them out now.

[@hectic-glow-clouds8723]

Amazing video! I’ve never heard of this band, but I’m going to check them out immediately! Your feelings about this remind me of how I felt when the mountain goats released “songs for Pierre chuvin” in 2020. Recorded on the same Panasonic tape recorder that the very first mountain goats albums were recorded on, it’s a bittersweet return to some of the very first stories TMG (back then just John darnielle) told. But it’s not simple nostalgia- in all the time that has passed, the storyteller has changed too, and begs us to revisit and reconsider some of the old stories. There’s a similar apocalypse theme, as the album is inspired by the last days of pre-Christian traditions in what became europe. There’s a deep melancholy in what is being lost through the violence of conquering, civilization destroying empires, but at the same time, an understanding that even those empires will crumble to dust in time. One of my favorite songs off that album, “For the snakes” is narrated by snakes: “All your brambles, all your creeping vines All of the trash that people leave behind All your fine, fine columns poking up through the pond scum We will have uses for these things when we come. … Pale imitations that you brought back from afar We will show them to you as they are Wind through the ruins, high and lonesome We will have uses for these things when we come” I listened to this album so much at the beginning of the pandemic while walking to work as a grocery store cashier and it absolutely made me weep. To hear that the music I had listened to in high school had grown up and transformed as I had grown up and transformed, but was still familiar, walking beside me through our slow, lonely, crushing apocalypse- it meant a lot.

[@seraaron]

I first listened to Murder by Death over a decade ago. I only had the one album 'In Bocca al Lupo' and listened to it repeatedly back when when I used to like music with lyrics. I found the lyrics to be very sad, mostly, but also vaguely profound in a way that I probably didn't mentally interrogate much at the time. I've never heard any of their other music. And no one I knew knew of them. So seeing this video and suddenly remembering them was very cathartic. It wasn't all just a dream! I should re-listen to In Bocca al Lupo sometime, and maybe Spell/bound too. Thanks for reminding me of these guys existence

[@letstalkaboutstuff]

in bocca al lupo has been in my regular rotation for years! there's a bunch of songs on that one that are just a blast to belt out as loud as you can. i had a similar experience in that, besides the person who introduced me to mbd, *no one* i knew had heard of them. worse, when i tried to get my friends into mbd, they always seemed to bounce right off without much interest at all. but i kept listening to them because their albums are always so unique and special. i wrote my first novel based on good morning magpie! i would say if you want to listen to their other albums, red of tooth and claw and the other shore are the ones i tend to come back to the most

[@seraaron]

@@letstalkaboutstuff Thanks!

[@Switch013]

"Fill your pockets up with hope, So much that they choke" I'm vibing so hard with this video. Murder by Death's music has meant a lot to me over the years as well. Like others have said, you do a great job putting into words what makes MBD's music appealing on many levels. I loved your point about Spell/Bound processing the apocalypticism of their earlier work. And the intertextuality with previous albums, as usual for MBD, is intense. It seems to me that this album begins with several songs that feel like "traditional" MBD songs in narrative content and to some extent musical style. However, they all express a somewhat different attitude than before - more accepting, more hopeful. Then after only three songs we get something of a turn with "Sandy." With themes of observation, judgement and rebuke, as well as rapture imagery, there is a clear beginning here of the "apocalyptic breakdown" (great term.) The rest of the album thus has the sense of "those left behind processing stuff," and it does seem like a more "complete" metabolism than ever before. Like you said it kinda feels like coming out on the other side of the apocalypse. I definitely feel like "The Other Shore" felt like it was moving in this "kind" of direction. But it was more a meditation on like... dreaming of escape as a way of building something new. Whereas here, the character who escapes (Sandy) heralds the Apocalypse while the perspective remains Earthly and endures, to potentially rebuild. It's really a cool evolution of storytelling.

[@cedarlynn]

Your comment just sparked a realization in me, they've been telling this story since their first album. Those who stayed/those who left all the way back from Like the Exorcist seems to be in reference to the same events of The Other Shore, and by extension Spell/Bound, Red of Tooth and Claw, and In Boca Al Lupo. I suspect that parts of Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon also tie to this overarching narrative they've created

[@Switch013]

@@cedarlynn Yeah imo you're spot on. I think it's been a very natural evolution but at the same time they've seemed to be mulling over and over the same themes in a progressive, expanding manner. And these themes definitely were there right from the start on "Like the Exorcist.." You're so right to point out "Those who Stayed/Left" (I didn't think of that when I commented before!) And I also think "Flamenco.." and "Intergalactic Menopause" lay groundwork for "Spell/Bound." Gosh I love this music.

[@spencertrusque7966]

You've convinced me to go check out something new. Given how tired I always am, that's saying something.

[@colerussell5817]

Thank you. Needed this today. Got alot to talk about with this album. Video games not so much. Dude I watched this with a lethargic late night heart and am going to bed with a sense of zeal purpose and can't wait to listen to this record some more and follow yr narratives. So goddam good. Please keep it moving. Big Love from my Shore to yours:)

[@epicninjafork2866]

HOLY SHIT SARAH THE LOOK THOUGH

[@stephenfriedrich8551]

Have kept thinking about this, second comment, sorry. Part of what I love about MBD and why they’re so easy to listen to on repeat and repeat and repeat is that their albums are so narratively circular in a way that makes this meta-reflection in Spell/Bound hit so hard. From Spring Break 1899 both literally starting with a new day breaking and ending with the opening riff of “The Devil in Mexico,” literally starting a *different album* to The Devil Drives being the end of a voyage through hell and into purgatory with “There’s still time to start again,” they’ve always done so well to thread things back to where they started. Like you were saying, Spell/Bound I feel does that for their discography as a whole. Even set against not one but two closing tracks where the world literally ends, Strange Song is somehow to me their most profoundly melancholy closing track, looking back as it does both at the world as it is and 20 years of their own careers. And still they keep that circularity - let’s find another. It’s just so fucking good, I absolutely adore this band. There’s still time to start again.

[@ashtonmackle4242]

Glad to see you back!

[@mattiesavannahpahl9934]

Lmao @6:37 this was the entry point to MBD for me. That music video was on a Take Action Tour compilation DVD that I watched over and over again

[@totallynotbiased9269]

I've known about this band for awhile but I had a hard time getting into them until I saw them live this week. they're actually pretty awesome and your video deepens my appreciation for them. I'd like to describe thier sound as the killers if they where founded by blaze Foley

[@atomicmonkey5225]

Awesome video!

[@Sirenensang]

i did not expect an album review, but you actually sold me on giving it a chance. So like, i believe you have taste now.

[@RebekahSolWest]

Eyyyyy good to see you!

[@vordreller6428]

Yay art

[@magnolia8549]

Oh, you have to listen to Casualties of Cool. You're gonna love it.

[@Ocyon]

Normally I don't comment on the looks of KZbinrs, but I like what you did with your hair :) I think together with the hat this style suits you very well.

[@death_bot]

I loved coheed for years and they will always be foundational to my music appreciation. you are absolutely not supposed to read the comic lmao

[@user-wm1em1rg4p]

If you want to be able to do in-depth music analysis without claims, Patricia Taxxon has a sizable discography and a healthy disdain of copyright. Leslie Fish's music is also a good anticapitalist source for analysis if you want someone who does more Western/guitar stuff, though a few of her songs are copy claimed. You're covering music content well regardless; happy to see you pulling through the end times with us

[@ansibleblackwind7195]

Engagement

[@foxgloved8922]

Yo I was just thinking the other day what happened to the other Sarah Z??

[@notsam7928]

He Hey! New video!

[@KnaveMurdok]

If you have not already, you should check out: 1. The Handsome Family 2. Current 93 If you like that kinda twingy twangy apocalyptic irreverence to the darkest humanity has to offer, then yeah, these bands may very well just vibe with you.

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

bump

[@torsegundo637]

You talk about Post-American Americana, but feels like some of what you're talking about in that section of the essay is like trying to describe the Revisionist Western genre of film. Is MBD Revisionist Americana? Or post-Revisionist Americana? Something where we aren't trying to re-contextualize the romantic notions of Americana and the C/W music genre in so much as trying to rebuild what Americana has to say at weird, violent, shattered beginnings of the end of empire.

[@letstalkaboutstuff]

i would say that MBD's early stuff definitely falls into a camp with revisionist westerns, and you could probably call the new album post-revisionist. to my mind though, this is a level of semantics that needlessly separates the western from americana- to my mind a big point of the new album is that we now feel the unresolved tensions of the imperial conquest of the old west (alongside the similarly unresolved tensions of slavery) in every facet of our lives. it's no coincidence that the conservative states driving america into oblivion are Southern and Western. so to my mind "post-american americana" is a more satisfying term in a broader sense because it speaks to how, despite how hard we've tried to separate that era of history from our Enlightened Modern Present, it is in fact still with us.

[@cheeseburger2662]

your a big nerd