Does This Work For You?

Saturday night, 19 May, Brittany, Chris, Jazz, and I creak up the steps of Valley Bar, dodging dancing dresses and appetizer platters on the way. They always kick the shows out early on the weekends. The free dance nights make far too much in bar revenue. Plus, I imagine so long as the show sells well, bands can’t possibly mind the extra hour or two of sleep. Here we are, all the same, my ears ringing from the impassioned barrage downstairs. I step out into the fresh(er) early summer air, second hand smoke from the two dozen or so mulling around the alley pavement. My ears find space. I no longer feel dizzy. The ring and the buzz have both faded to a dull hum. It’s only 10:30 and yet the night like it has offered all it has.

I look over towards the clumps of smokers, knowing I’ll find the faces I’m searching for. By design, the only place for bands to smoke at Valley Bar is right outside the front entrance. So it’s never terribly difficult to introduce yourself if you so desire. I look for a brief minute, confirming, then turn back to the group.

Me: “There they are.”

Jazz: “Who?”

Me: “Sean from Moaning, and Mike from Preoccupations.”

Brittany: “The beautiful drummer?”

Me: “Yes.”

Chris: “You should go talk to them.”

Me: “No, it’s cool.”

Brittany: “Are you serious right now?”

Me: “I don’t know, probably.”

One thing that has surprised me about aging is that my concept of fandom has never changed. No matter the size of the band, the hours I’ve given them, the capacity of the venue, or the lack or presence of an adoring fan base, I’ve always been starstruck. Never for reasons of fame or glory - rather, because I have so much enviable respect for these individuals who, at some point either 30 years or 3 weeks ago, told the world to fuck off so that they could hear their own thoughts and write the songs that have shaken me to my core.

After additional goading, the group convinces me to walk over. Mike and Sean are laughing about something. I nudge my way into the heaving circle, knowing I’ve interrupted the reprieve, but too deep now to make a painless exit. They look over, equal parts amused and annoyed.

Sean: “Hey there.”

Me: “That was radical.”

Sean: “Hey man, thanks.”

Me: “Can’t believe you guys have played Phoenix three times in the last six months.”

Sean pauses, tilting his head back ever so slightly. He’s caught off guard, the way you find yourself when someone else notes the passage of time in a way that’s evaded you.

Sean: “Wait… really? No.”

Me: “Yes.”

Sean: “Are you serious?”

Me: “Yes.”

Sean: “Wow.”

Me: “Yeah.”

A few more minutes of smalltalk and the moment is over. We talk briefly about the possibility of further communication for Gila, but with next week’s trip to Europe, it’s (understandably) bad timing. Then it’s over. The guys walk back downstairs to sell merch. Brittany and I part ways with Chris and Jazz, minds still reeling from the distorted onslaught we just witnessed. The night draws near to its resolution, and tomorrow brings another new batch of worries, excitements, and surprises.

I’ve never agreed with The Pretenders on one count. I’ve never seen time as an avenger. Rather, time is an awkward and frustrating family member, who never manages to directly impact my life and my choices, but whose uncomfortable proximity and incessant blabbering reminds me that I am tethered, and that at least some (maybe even a majority) of my existence is predetermined. Time is an automated alarm, voiced by a bored, nosy distant uncle or aunt. Time reminds me of genealogy. Time reminds me of geography. Time reminds me of the inevitability of born circumstance. Time reminds me that I am a bound mortal with limitations beyond even my own self-doubt and discouragement. But the struggle against time and time’s understanding of me is what makes my life worth living. And in this sense, time is not an avenger. I am the avenger, the avenger of my own passing seconds, taking every creaking step back from greedy hands.

I stand in the front row at Valley Bar, Borderlands’ Toole Ave in my hand, and Moaning is a testament to the passage of time. In the two and a half months since it’s release, I’ve listened to the self-titled debut record an unfathomable amount of times. It’s one of those records where, if I end up putting it on in the morning while I’m at work, I’ll end up leaving it on all day. There’s an endless repeatability about the record, due to its sonic continuity and brilliant emotional pacing. But on stage, Moaning communicate beyond the limitations of their recording. Sean, Pascal, and Andrew have been playing in bands together for ten years. You feel it in their independence, never faltering, never glancing over shoulders for a queue. Without words, they tell us their story. The narrative is set. The transcript is clear. The speakers are loud. The uninitiated are ripe for the picking.

The band is dressed down from when last we saw them. Before, it was springtime, 2nd avenue between Fillmore and Van Buren, downwind from the Honey Buckets in the light evening breeze. There’s Sean in a trenchcoat, staring out at the crowd with the same unshaken, stark reality as the last post-punk god to take the stage in a trenchcoat daring the youth to dance dance dance to the radio. Go on, he seems to say, give it a try. But nothing changes - we’re the same, everything else has changed.

Preoccupations watch from the side stage. This is their last date with Moaning, and you can tell it’s all too soon for their departure. Moaning have joined them on a particularly tumultuous leg of a tour in support of their 2018 release New Material. In Vancouver, they had gear stolen, then returned. In San Francisco, they had their entire touring van stolen and then lost entirely. The tour was cancelled for about 20 hours before the band set up a GoFundMe to replace their gear, seeing generous returns above $30,000 CAD within two weeks for stalwart fans. But in times of doubt following the theft, Moaning offered up their gear without question, knowing the show must go on.

I’d like to think this is because in the short time Moaning has existed, they have seen the full spectrum of experiences as a rock band in the modern age. March 2018, Moaning play Stateside’s Flying Burrito Festival 30 minutes after No Age. But at the end of the aughts, the trio is listening to Nouns on loud headphones just like the rest of us, the full extent of a hopeful proximity. Sean, Pascal, and Andrew had begun playing together as part of Moses Campbell, the band that helped Moaning grow as songwriters and performers more than half a decade before the trio gave us “The Same”. Comparing the two, you hear, in Moaning, a band that has learned how to attack, how to counter, how to dip and dodge and dance with the incandescent glow that spectator insects like myself feel so drawn to. You hear growth.

Experience is strange this way - a trophy to hold up in the face of time to triumphantly pronounce a victory, though neither side ever formally announced the start of a game. But it an important measure, to wake up today, weeks or months or years or decades apart from yesterday, and know that today, you are better than you were before. Objectively, unequivocally, indeterminably better. This is a victory unlike any other.

Moaning announced their signing to Sub Pop on October 4, 2017. This announcement coincided with the beginning of a tour in support of Canadian punk band METZ, also signed to Sub Pop, having recently released their third LP Strange Peace. It wouldn’t be until the end of November that we heard “Don’t Go”, the first official release in support of Moaning’s record, despite the fact that the band had recorded early versions of “The Same” and “Misheard” as far back as 2014, and their full Alex Newport-produced LP was done almost three years before it saw the light of day. But Moaning understand patience better than most of us. Maybe it’s fitting that Strange Peace was the first record they (albeit secondhand) supported upon signing. There’s nirvana in knowing that you have created something perfect, letting time be the handler, despite clumsy and often inappropriate behavior.

December, the tour with METZ begins. The string of dates descents the west coast, eventually traveling along the southern border to Texas, retreating back to the southwest with a handful of Arizona dates wrapping things up. I was confused when I bought my tickets in mid November. METZ and Moaning playing LBX a week before Christmas? Sweet baby Jesus. I saw Uniform earlier in the year there and thought my skull was going to crack. It wasn’t until later that I noticed the asterisk on the date. METZ were done at this point. Moaning would headline. Their first headliner date in Phoenix, and here it was, at LBX, the four walls of undecorated BYOB brick where it deserved to be.

Sickness got the best of me. I gave my tickets to Chris, refusing to let them go to waste. Chris came away in a daze. Closet Goth opened, and RNA would close, starkly different, but equally vital local offerings to bookend Moaning’s post-punk altar. Even then, he noted their patient control, the ability to wrangle and subdue chaos into something productive. A punk wind turbine. He returned for the May date with Preoccupations.

Two and a half months of relative silence passed. Two more singles, “Artificial” and “Tired”, would debut before the album went to full streaming on Brooklyn Vegan. Then, suddenly, it was here. The record that had laid dormant for years, finally released to the world, an animal set free, partly domesticated, yet still ready to embrace the carnal, generational guidance that gives it underlying clarity. Moaning were free to embrace the future.

A week later, Moaning arrived in Arizona for their second outing in the Valley: the Flying Burrito Festival. They’d played one show since the album dropped, a release show at the Echo in LA where they call home. It’s a good crowd, especially considering the timing of the album cycle. The Bean & Cheese stage onlookers make up every rock fan present that isn’t currently struggling for a front spot to see Albert Hammond Jr. down the street inside Crescent Ballroom. They are mesmerized by what they are seeing: Pascal’s hypnotizing bass, Andrew’s relentless drive on the kit, and Sean’s unending Ian Curtis glare. Brittany leans over to me, shouting so I can hear above my earplugs. “I hope he’s okay.”

Sean has talked in interviews about how depression and the extent to which it played a part in the writing of Moaning tracks. On some level, I feel like depression an inherent and unavoidable facet of the choice to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is difficult and discouraging. It’s a bet, often at bad odds, that your gifts of self will be received in their intended manner. There’s frustration when these gifts are misinterpreted, and even more when they are ignored.

So when Brittany shouts into my ear, she knows I don’t need clarification. She knows the saints I pray to. I’ve read Touching From a Distance a half dozen times. I remember marking the day in my calendar when I turned 23, 9 months, and twenty-some odd days, and as the night fell, I put on side A of The Idiot, just to see how it felt. I only made it as far as “Nightclubbing”, turning it off, feeling no closer and no further from myself. I watched Trainspotting instead, slouched contentedly on the couch, texting my sister to see what she was up to - it had been a while.

I talk to Sean at the merch table after the gig. I buy a t-shirt to pay for the time I spend gushing about the record. He’s candid, cheerful, happy to be playing gigs again after some time away, and I know that for him, there’s a separation of where the live transmission starts and stops. There’s a time to turn off and wait a while until time says it’s ok to turn it on again. And sometimes, it’s nice letting time boss you around. From time to time, time just needs to feel in control. And that’s ok.

March, Moaning plays SXSW and a series of follow up dates in the states.

April, Moaning go to Europe for the first time.

May, Moaning return to the states, ending the month with a stint with Preoccupations, a band their senior in some ways, not in others. Including their time under the name Viet Cong, Preoccupations have three LPs and an EP to Moaning’s one release over four years of existence. But yet, it’s Moaning who so willingly offer their gear when Preoccupations face the dire will of chance. It’s Moaning who stick it out to the very end, keeping Preoccupations in the game all the way to the end of the known world, Phoenix, Arizona, to wrap up their tour at the brink of hopelessness. And here we are again, at the beginning of Moaning’s time in the sun. Don’t go… don’t go…

June, Moaning returns to Europe for 3 more weeks before a well deserved trip home.

Ian Curtis had a day job. He worked in the state employment office. “She’s Lost Control” is supposedly about a woman that he helped once to try and find a job. But the woman in question had such a severe case of epilepsy that any sudden change in the light around her would trigger a reaction. Being epileptic himself, this woman scared Curtis on a deeply personal level. In this moment, he realized his own mortality. For the rest of his life, for all that time offers him, he’d have this cross to bear. For a born performer, what ironic cruelty could surpass this one that he found himself dealing with? Isolation doesn’t spell the half of it.

For Moaning, 2018 marks a strange first for the trio: the band and the day job have become one. Since their album dropped on March 2, the band has played upwards of fifty or sixty gigs over multiple continents. Gone are the days of Moses Campbell two week stints touring four states before making it back for flexible schedules and other adventures in hustling. Now, the band is all in on their vision. It’s a risky, hair-raising commitment that (should) invoke unmatched respect and even envy. This is the source of my starstruck nature. This willingness to embrace the dream and pull it down to earth’s gravity where everyone else comfortably points to the clouds and laughs in false pretense.

Between LBX, Flying Burrito, and Valley Bar, Phoenix has gotten the rare opportunity to watch a top shelf band grow in front of their eyes in fast forward. I feel like with every return journey to the Valley, Moaning only brought more fire, more magic, more brilliance. At the Valley gig, after wishing a happy birthday to a member of Preoccupations, the band breaks into a new song - a yet unheard tune from the inevitable follow to their Sub Pop debut. The nameless track is a total burner, hosting one of Pascal’s most brutal basslines. It makes me excited for what’s next in ways I rarely afford myself. It’s so much easier getting on board for someone else.

A day passes, and suddenly, it’s Monday again. I return to cubicles, workstations, Internet firewalls blocking streaming music formats. I can get down on it all, “Artificial” blaring in my ears - feel sad for me, I seem to beg. But the song cuts the feeling in two. Sean’s chorus rips through my head like a bullet. “Who is it for?” He asks. And suddenly, I ask the same. Who is this sadness for? Who does it benefit? And if the answer is no one, then why does it exist? Why should it matter?

Tony Wilson tells the story in 24 Hour Party People that in 1980, after Ian Curtis died, Bono came up to him and volunteered to take Ian’s place in Joy Division, to which Tony, in his ever quintessential way, told Bono to fuck off. This is extra funny because the timeline infers that Bono, with U2, had already released the handful of singles leading up to Boy, including “11 O’Clock Tick Tock”, when he said this to Wilson, arrived at the day job but not quite at the fame. What a world we would live in if Wilson had somehow been convinced to take his offer. Instead, I prefer a world in which New Order and U2 live in bizarre tandem, one inevitably inspired by tragedy, and one inspired by everything that tragedy might lead to given a world of resolve and near-savant levels of human understanding.

Moaning find themselves somewhere in between, not fooled by the cynical determinism of post-punk, but also not fooled by the capitalizing tendencies of idealism. Rather, much like the unwillingness to accept the monotony of a day job but equally unwilling to exist without direction, their melodies find a middle ground. And I have an inclination to say, this middle ground will lead to sustainability. At least I hope so. Because that’s what I tell myself. And really, how much of our interpretation of art is simply our own projection onto it? Let’s end this before we disprove the entire thing. If they want, they can fix it in post.