10 Years Of A Party

I can’t really remember if I first heard The Party by Andy Shauf because a guy I dated in college liked it or if I just think of a party I went to at his house in LA when I hear it and that’s basically the same thing to me. A lot of music I listened to at that time came to me down an internet-crush-turned-real-life-boyfriend shaped pipeline. I would be surprised if that one was an exception.

I don’t remember what the occasion of that house party was. Maybe it’s really a handful of parties. Maybe it’s several of his houses that have been molded into one nondescript bungalow in 75 degree weather. I remember halloween once. I remember a last minute Batman mask the day I landed at LAX, but nobody in my memory is dressed up inside. 

Mostly I remember standing in living rooms and kitchens getting asked what I did— a question that was a hope they could tell me about the Netflix show they worked on or what venue they did sound for recently. Or maybe that’s what I tell myself because I wasn’t doing much. Mostly I was standing at this party visiting my boyfriend who was doing stuff. I was here choosing this long distance relationship over an on campus experience to the detriment of my friendships in Chicago.

I’ve never been great at parties, I still am not, but I was worse when I was younger. Self conscious and anxious. Thinking about myself to a point of repulsive obsession. Struggling with the dregs of an eating disorder, but, more honestly at that time, an inferiority complex. 

Then and now, I think about The Party when I go to one. I’m never closer to the 2016 version of myself than when I’m on a south bound bus trying to hype myself up. 

I listened to The Party on my way to a friend’s birthday party where I would have stood outside taking deep breaths if another friend hadn’t arrived moments after I confirmed the address between my phone and the building. 

I thought of it at the pre-festival party thrown by an online music journalism publication where I word vomited an apology for ghosting their editor about a reading and ran away from a musician I admire. I ended up walking around the block with my friends instead. Might as well have twisted my ankle.

To me, The Party is one of the great concept albums of the modern era. At least it’s one of the most special in its approach. There is little bombast or theatricality. I like to call an album like Illinois by Sufjan Stevens a Big Concept concept album. It’s theatrical. It’s a full ensemble stage show of an album. It was literally adapted into a stage show! You’re bludgeoned with the concept. That’s what’s good about that album. The ambition is in the enormity of the emotion sometimes because of, but often in spite of the dedication to the stories he’s telling of my home state.

The Party is a small concept, but not in a way that loses definition. The vignettes are always front and center. Sometimes there are arguments about whether an album can count as a concept album, but I think it’s not a concept album if there can be debate. That’s just an album with storytelling and themes. 

Consider Separation Sunday by The Hold Steady, a Big Concept concept album by a band that’s mostly about parties and the aftermath of them. It’s an album that stands out against the rest of their albums because I don’t really consider any of their other albums true concept albums at all. They feature characters and storytelling, sometimes with recurring characters and a sort of world you can buy into, but the individual albums I don’t consider concept albums because they’re mostly just stories about similar types of people. Storytelling and themes. An easter egg of a name, but not a concept in entirety. A concept album is a play, not a TV show.

The Party is focused. It’s a tight shot. It’s a black box theater. It can be anywhere in the big picture, but you’re confined to the small rooms and lawns of your friends’ homes. There’s never confusion about whether it’s a concept or not, but it remains small in scale — a collection of vignettes focused on discomfort where there should be ease and the clumsiness of friendship and romance — and that’s what’s beautiful about it. There’s mastery in the details of the uneven, on edge, desperate stories against a warm backdrop of anonymous people drinking and dancing and watching magic.

As someone chronically on time, my favorite song is “Early To The Party.” The front half of the song is a subtle social nightmare— too early, you’re bothering the host. Major faux pas. You can feel it. The second half deepens as the desperation of the waiting for one person to show up sets in. 

“Quite Like You” and “To You” are kind of ugly songs. Confessions of desire — thinly veiled with some plausibly deniability if you want to see it — that shouldn’t be spilled building over the strings and horns. The ugliness in the emotion is the appeal of the album. It’s not just anxiety and self loathing inside one mind, there are stakes to it all interpersonally.

No, no, that’s not what I meant. I’m not in love with you. Shut up.

Oh my god how could she still want him. What if she tells him what I said about him? That’s my best friend. 

At these parties, everybody wants someone they can’t have. Everybody’s drunk. Everybody thinks they’re the only one embarrassed. Maybe nobody will remember. Maybe they’ll all talk about it later.

All these half confessions and moments of internal collapse will turn into hangover anxiety the next day if you’re lucky enough to not fall off the porch into a pit of hell. 

Open me up and spill me out.

I wrote this while in turmoil over the Carolina Hurricanes looking like they might get shut out on home ice in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup final. I believe the spirit of their coach, Rod Brind'amour, was with me tonight as the universe rewarded hard work and productivity.

They won 4-3 in overtime. Let's go Canes.