A Series of Essays on The Marinade's Favorite Albums of 2020 | Fetch the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters blasted into the world while much of the United States was still in quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Do you remember when you first listened to it? I was in my living room. My partner and I had just played a game of Scrabble and I succumbed to my Twitter-checking reflex. My feed is full of artists and fans of art so just about every other Tweet referenced the triumph of Apple’s surprise album.

We dialed it up in an instant and listened while dinner was prepared. About once a week for a couple of months we listened together, not to mention the times we each listened alone. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is unlike anything I have heard this year or any other. It is unpredictable, powerful, honest, cathartic, pop, rock, hip hop, soul. Every time I think I have the record figured out another listen sets me straight.

Fetch the Bolt Cutters comes from a place of liberation and this year in so many ways felt like a personal liberation for me. I was forced to confront my anxiety about mortality without the benefit of escape. I was faced with an examination of my commitment to causes I have long made noise about but which require more than just noise. And, I insisted on being paid what I’m worth. 

Apple’s masterpiece was a fitting soundtrack to a tumultuous year of growth. It was messy, complicated, and challenging. There were fits of anger and bursts of hope. At the end, as difficult as it may seem, love won a lot more than hate. Anger was channeled into action. And, the future looks brighter than the past. 

A Series of Essays on The Marinade's Favorite Albums of 2020 | Roll On by Water Liars

This is the second in a series of short essays looking back at the records we loved from 2020. The series focuses on how each album impacted Jason Earle’s life this year.

Few records rise to all occasions. There are songs for dancing. Those for drinking. Music for lounging. Road trip music. Songs for fucking. Sometimes an album overlaps in a couple of those places. Other records remain siloed. 

Then there are albums like Roll On by Water Liars. The rare artistic effort achieving universality of mood. An album for any moment.

You get home from one of those days for which you were unprepared. The kind where dominoes seem to resist gravity.

You just got a promotion, have been feeling good and taking care of yourself- eating right and exercising. You want to rock. Bounce up and down and sing at the top of your lungs. 

It’s Saturday. The rest of the family is out doing family things. They let you sleep in because you are a lucky mother fucker with a bad ass family. You enjoy the luxury of a slow cup of coffee sitting by the window and watching your world awaken.

Roll On does what its title track promises- carrying the listener through whatever life presents. Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster’s writing spans a lyrical spectrum from epic ruminations on love and perseverance to sparse, abstract nods to anxiety. The imagery is vivid. The mood in each song is set. 

“Down Colorado I followed your shadow/And credit card receipts/The cocaine receding, the western sky bleeding/The mountains in relief/I never deserve you but how could I earn you/When stone ain’t made to bleed?”

On the whole I have been one of the lucky ones in the year 2020. The pandemic slowed me down and made me rethink my day-to-day. I was able to refocus on the relationships that mattered and distance myself from those that were taking more than they were adding. I stood up and advocated for myself. I fought the right battles and let go of the other stuff. 

There were personal and professional challenges, both self-created and as the result of outside forces. It was not a perfect effort but again, relative to most folks I was fortunate. 

July and August was a tough stretch of the year. COVID-19 cases were climbing. Schools weighing whether to re-open despite not having the resources to keep people safe. The 2020 election loomed as the potential final nail in the coffin of our eroded democracy. 

Roll On was delivered right on time. The record was made in 2015 but released in the middle of this year. It may not have reached my ears in 2015. Hell, even if it did I may not have needed it so bad five years ago. Roll On was there for what turned out to be a second half full of hope in 2020. 

I kept coming back to the record, bingeing it and finding new nuggets during each listening session. I also went back into the Water Liars catalog and those of its individual members. I found comfort in the atmosphere of Water Liars. Roll On was a steady friend and a willing partner in the second half of 2020.

A Series of Essays on The Marinade's Favorite Albums of 2020 | Reunions by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

This is the first in a series of short essays looking back at the records we loved from 2020. The series focuses on how each album impacted Jason Earle’s life this year.

“Be Afraid,” the first single released from Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s Reunions came out in February of 2020, the same weekend I ran my first marathon. It was a fitting release date. The great ones have this way of putting out the sentiment we need at the right time. The novel coronavirus arrived in Florida in the same month but life was continuing as normal. Our challenges were of our own creation at the moment.

For the amateur, running a marathon is an encompassing endeavor. Most of your free time is spent training, meal planning, and recovering. Your emotional bank account is on life support for several months. 

To get across the finish line you need your personal support system, which I consider to include my friends and family but also the art I consume. Like art, running is rhythmic. The physical act itself and the process of training for a race both require a consistent commitment to coming back to the things you need to stay in the moment. 

The act of creation is similar in so many ways. When we find ourselves doing the work on a regular basis, treating it with a certain rhythm, breakthroughs happen on a more regular basis. 

What we know about Jason Isbell is that he does the work. Hours of guitar practice every day. Going back to the well again and again. 

Photo by Jason Earle

The result of Isbell’s dedication is a succession of classic albums. Prior to his 2020 release, the last three (or four) of his records are brilliant works. But, it is possible no record has ever hit me as hard as Reunions. 

The year 2020 was one for facing fears. Fears of democracy’s decline and possible end. Fears of mortality. We as a species had to dig deep. Isbell could not have known the depth and breadth of challenges humans would face this year, and that is why a song like “Be Afraid” is so powerful. Its message matters as much now as it will in five or ten years. 

New challenges and fears will follow. The same ones will rear their heads. All the while, great art - works of the magnitude of Reunions - will be there as support. A way to think through and deal with our fears. A “battle cry” as Isbell says on that first single.  

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s Reunions is the record I listened to the most in 2020 because it represents the best of us. Our ability to endure and innovate. Our willingness to keep fighting when the finish line seems to push further and further away. Whether pushing ourselves to run a marathon or just surviving a once in a hundred year shit storm, we can “be very afraid,” but we also must ask ourselves, “What have I done to help”?