Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
When you grow up in the Midwest and meet someone else from the Midwest, it’s pretty common to have a junk drawer of unspoken, shared experiences. For instance, someone who grew up in Michigan knows that “up north” is the only description for a summer vacation, and Vernors is the cure-all for bellyaches. In high school, once or twice (at least), you probably hid in a cornfield after cops busted a party, or you went into the garage or shed to smoke (insert habit of choice) during the brutal winters that had a tendency to bite back. Lake-effect snowstorms gave you days off from school where you spent the afternoons sledding before a slow-cooker dinner, and resented it all when summer break was cut short due to the make-up days dragging into June.
Michigan has a split second of pleasant weather and about nine months of winter that is often below zero and creates new potholes that result in years worth of construction on I-75 to fix—rarely, the snow sparkles down and when it does, it never lasts as long as you hope, eventually turning into black and gray slush. It gives people a hardened exterior and after so much layering, you forget to unbundle your thoughts and feelings. “Midwest nice” is being non-confrontational and guarded, which gets lumped into never talking about things. In my experience, I’ve found that long winters and lacking communication skills lead to boredom and finding new ways to experience the mundane. During the long winter, you have to get creative about passing the time—whether that means hunting, making music or art, gambling over euchre, drinking at the closest bar you can drive to, or experimenting with drugs.
powerline traps airplane, a shoegaze/trip-hop project (a side project of Grand Rapids-based band 3AM) has a self-titled debut out now from Candlepin Records. For fans of Helvetia, Duster, salvia palth, sign crushes motorist, and Bandcamp-era Alex G, these slowcore songs offer a story with each track. Every time I listen, I find new snapshots that feel familiar and result in a rich nostalgia. The songs touch on grappling with loneliness, smoking in an attic, and trying to pass the time when the days feel long. As a kid, you stare at airplanes in the sky in a big backyard, watch VHS tapes, ponder the spider in the cellar basement—and later as a teenager, you experience this loneliness in a new way. Being young is constantly reaching out for something unattainable, like trying to hold on to exhaled smoke. powerline traps airplane taps into these moments with a lyrically simplistic and accessible way of explaining these burdens.
One of my favorites off powerline traps airplane is “never warm again.” The accompanying music video is made up of an old reel shot on 8mm film found in a grandmother’s basement. The reel conveys what life in Michigan was like throughout the 1970’s on the farm: chopping wood, sheep scurrying in the mud, two people chasing a pony, and a man grinning as he dances with a dog on its hind legs as the truck’s exhaust blurs the shot. It also shows footage of the Great Blizzard of 1978, when Muskegon saw 30 inches of snow and Lansing and Grand Rapids got more than 19. Twenty people died during the storm from heart attacks or car accidents and it’s still the most extensive winter storm in Michigan’s history, and a reminder that the forces of nature are not to be reckoned with.
The video pairs perfectly with the song’s themes and evokes such a sense of nostalgia, and the struggle to overcome depression and addiction. The song is a slow drip beginning with “It’s a warmth that you can’t get from clothes, I know” into the pivotal climax that confesses a fuzzy escape. It then builds up similarly to how the rage of mental illness can get too loud and sometimes, you’ll do anything to quiet it down. The music uses similar tones that perfectly capture a wintery, Michigan landscape—like when the calmness of light, falling snow can still become daunting. The lyrics admit to not doing opiates because it was too well liked in the past—and how it’s something that’s always missed. “never warm again” is a door creaking open to how it feels when you shiver something out of your system, and no matter how much time passes, some part of you will always remember that feeling. The pairing of the blizzard footage gives this song the winter wallop it deserves. The memories and stories these lyrics and brain-worm chords speak to shed new light on how we experience internal and external storms, and it all feels undeniably Midwest-attuned to me.
Stream powerline traps airplaine now
Watch the video for “never warm again”
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Ryleigh Wann | @wannderfullll
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