The Best Things Keep Disappearing

The Mynabirds “Golden Age”

Even now, when musicians have the power to immediately release a new song to a variety of digital platforms, there’s usually a lag between a song being recorded and it being available to the public. This is part of why we haven’t had a lot of music responding to the election of Trump just yet, though –- I dunno, maybe it’s time to get that rage and grief out there into the world? I find myself having to go back to music from the ‘90s to find suitably angry and topical songs to listen to in 2017.

“Golden Age,” from the Mynabirds’ new album out this week, sounds like it had to have been written sometime around late January/early February, just after the inauguration. The line that dates it most obviously is when Laura Burhenn sings “I think even I could punch a Nazi in the face” in reference to the viral clip of Richard Spencer getting a knuckle sandwich, though that could just as well have been from last week. The song is a pensive ballad that perhaps deliberately evokes the feeling of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and borrows some of that song’s approach to rhetoric. This is a song inspired by anger and distress at what is happening in the world, but that’s not the tone of the lyrics or music. Burhenn is being calm and reasonable, and making a case for regular activism and holding on to the best of humanity while pushing back on the worst of it. She gets sentimental in moments, but her message is practical and optimistic in its belief that we can get through this. But only if we do it together.

Buy it from Amazon.