From the Archive: 385 getting older

Boy Scouts, Waxahatchee, and The Staves

Track two on this playlist is “The Last Time I Saw Richard” by Joni Mitchell, currently unavailable on Spotify.

The first appearance of a Boy Scouts song in my playlists occurs mid-2019, the summer after my freshman year of college. I made 302 more than anything while I was living in this huge craftsman style house with stained glass windows and superb natural light that filtered through them in the afternoon, a picture perfect place.

Thorsen House (credit: Will Brinkerhoff)

I knew when I moved in that I would never live anywhere as beautiful as Thorsen again. The renowned architectural firm Greene & Greene built “ultimate bungalows” all around the country, of which there are only four remaining at present. This one turns into student housing in the summer, its many rooms split up between anywhere from ten to thirty young people. I lived on the third floor, in a room with a South-facing window and a fire escape that looked out over the huge yard. There was a massive tree in the middle of the lawn, as tall as the house itself, whose broad leaves blocked out the worst of the beating afternoon sun in the sweltering afternoons. In the bedroom adjacent to mine, you could climb out the window onto the roof to watch the sunset over the bay.

Boy Scouts feels like this summer, like this house. Although the next appearance of a Boy Scouts song isn’t until 334 healing, a playlist made a month after I had moved out of Thorsen, I associate the lilting melodies with the summertime, the many beers drunk in pursuit of the perfect evening. Something about the warm nylon guitar and the layered vocal harmonies reminds me distinctly of the long, slow mornings I spent pondering the transitions I’d undergone since I’d moved out to the Bay a year prior.

It turns out that my sense of place in the music wasn’t entirely personal—Taylor Vicks, who goes by the stage name Boy Scouts, is based in Oakland. Her sound is distinctly Californian, in a way that is impossible to describe. It’s rather understated, with a focus on vocal harmonies and repurposed surf rock guitar tones. When I saw her perform recently at the Chapel, the strength of her songwriting carried the otherwise simple performance. The signature break in her voice is especially captivating in a live setting.

I saw Waxahatchee open for HAIM on Friday night. She was almost ghostly onstage, dressed in a sheer white dress that glowed under the blue lights. I’ve been a Waxahatchee fan since Ivy Tripp (2015), which came out when I was in high school, but I actually much prefer her most recent two albums, Out in the Storm (2017) and Saint Cloud (2020). Her earlier indie rock work is almost unrecognizable now; she has become a young Lucinda Williams or Bonnie Raitt type, a folk-country icon. Her voice is so well suited to this style of music that it’s hard to remember a time when she made anything else.

“Can’t Do Much” is one of my favorite songs off of Saint Cloud. She’s said that it’s about her early feelings for artist Kevin Morby, who she’s still with, the sense of apprehension at the loss of control that comes with falling in love. It was the first song she wrote for the record, an album largely about her decision to get sober. It’s clear on songs like “Oxbow” and “Fire” that she is determined to be gentle but firm with herself, to see the journey as one of freedom rather than loss. It’s a deeply hopeful album, and singing the songs with a crowd felt almost spiritual.

“Can’t Do Much” addresses the other themes of the record, codependency and anxiety, by way of a very pragmatic love song. She says it plainly:

Love you that much anyhow
Can't do much about it now

I find Waxahatchee’s songwriting to be inspiring; these huge ideas are treated thoroughly and yet subtly, so as to not overwhelm or preach at the listener. By working through her own journey in music and being vulnerable with the world, she’s created this truly beautiful thing, a happy accident made from personal hardship. I respect her so much as a songwriter and as an artist, one that isn’t afraid to be honest with her audience.

The Staves are a trio of three sisters (like HAIM but also definitely not HAIM) from England. I first started listening to them in middle school when their album Dead and Born and Grown (2012) was released. It was my favorite record for a good while there, and their harmonies are a clear influence on my work. I was fascinated by their guitar lines that doubled the vocal melody, especially in the song on this playlist, “Icarus:”

Visually, this video is deeply 2012, but the sound is timeless; the lyrics are delicate and understated in their sadness:

Moment has gone
I'm not the best at moving on
Nothing to say, no one would listen anyway

Listening to The Staves, or any other musical family affair for that matter, is like watching twins play tennis doubles. They fit together innately, like puzzle pieces—it seems almost psychic. Their voices are so well matched that their harmonies lack all frayed edges and sound unimaginably clean. Every live video of them sounds like a studio performance.

Listening to music that reminds me so much of the past this week in preparation to write this issue has been an interesting retrospective for me, when so much of my musical consumption is oriented towards keeping up with current releases. I am so much a product of songs like “Icarus” that they seem to almost blend into me, whereas everything new feels sharp and specific. I had obviously forgotten about this song until early 2020 when I finally put it on this playlist. It’s always so gratifying and sweet when I rediscover something that I haven’t heard in years but loved so well at one point—I hope that this newsletter gives you that feeling sometimes.