12 RODS — Split Personalities
Here’s my candidate for best hard indie rock song ever: Red, Song 2 from 12 RODS’ Split Personalities. Plodding pace, distorted chug-chug power chords, a drummer showing off his entire verse-backup range, a lead vocalist seamlessly shapeshifting between nonchalant off-pitch speak-singing and emotional outbursts, tons of feedback, ethereal pads in the backdrop, perfectly placed yet somehow seemingly random clicks and electric noise. It’s insanely cathartic, full-body moving, memory-inducing rock. The whole album, in fact, is among the most cathartic experiences in modern rock history. Existing in that weird valley between hard rock, alternative, and indie, every song in the album is a cathartic burst made for days as blue as its album cover.
I've gotten into the habit of putting whatever I'm listening to, reading, or watching into a broader context of where I believe the world is and where in the world I believe I am. But with albums like this one, I feel empowered to forget these questions of my place in the world and just move.
Yes, there's the occasional intrusive thought. Do people care about albums anymore? Will the hyperreal chances of professional success that appear to be on my horizon materialise? Will we ever learn how to put our devices aside for a while and smell the flowers or the plaster-of-paris or AstroTurf or whatever it is that adorns our surroundings? I can't help myself: I'm not who I am if I don't occasionally drift away into reverie as a solid slab of 90s music blasts away on my headphones. But the sheer unmissable quality of Split Personalities always brings me back to the real world, a world in which I'm listening to one of the best rock albums I've ever heard. It's the easiest way for me to 'be present'. In that way good music is the closest I come in daily life to the stillness everyone always says we must achieve. Mindfulness, centredness, the four noble truths.
Does it matter if the album is a dying artform in the streaming world, a world of singles and playlists? (For the record, I believe the album is alive and well, thank you very much.) As long as we can still listen to albums like this one, the artform is doing well.
