You know how Olympic runners push their heads and chests forward at the end of a race to cut their time across the finish line? That’s me getting to this post, only I’m not in shape. And I’m flat-footed. And okay you know what, so maybe that’s not me, but the point is it’s been a long week and I’m glad to see the other end of it. Fine. You got me.

Let’s start over. “Try again?” as The Pecan says these days.

Time for a confession. Acid King‘s utterly brilliant 2015 album, Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere (review here, track premiere here, interview here, slathered praise here and here), is one that — even with that glut of parenthetical “link here” coverage — I still feel guilty about not giving its due. Issued through Svart Records as what was the essential San Francisco trio’s first offering in a decade since 2005’s III (discussed here), it was far and away my favorite full-length released that year. I put it on and it’s still a record that strikes me as an ideal vision of what their kind of heavy rock should be.

It’s heavy — always a good start — and spacious, melodic and reaching outward, flowing and carrying a presence of tone that is established with the immersion that starts on its “Intro” and carries through the subsequent “Silent Pictures,” the superlatively-catchy “Coming Down from Outer Space,” through “Laser Headlights” and “Red River” and “Infinite Skies,” “Center of Everywhere” and the bookending “Outro” with variations in tempo but an unwavering central purpose in its nod and groove. Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere is as gritty as it is gorgeous, and five years later — if the band are feeling social-media savvy, perhaps they’ll put up a post noting the anniversary; that seems to be a thing bands do these days; fan engagement and all that — and from its staff-wielding-bony-fingered-Gandalf-riding-a-tiger-through-space-past-a-pockmarked-moon to the gong in “Laser Headlights,” the record exudes a righteousness that, from the first time I heard it, I knew I was going to be living with it for years to come. It was, unquestionably, my album of the year.

And there’s the rub. Because when December came, it wasn’t.

It’s silly, I know, and it doesn’t really matter, I know, but I put a lot of thought into those year-end lists. Once they’re out there, that’s it. I may update them for a few days, add honorable mentions or something I forgot, whatever, but after that, they’re set, and years later, I look back on them to see what was going on when, how I felt about it at the time and where records and bands sat in relation to each other at least in my mind.

Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere was every bit my favorite album of 2015, but it wasn’t the album of the year. I gave that to Elder‘s Lore instead.

I remember it well, making the decision that morning as I was adding the final part of the post which I’d written over two days, and I decided that the Elder record was too important, too forward thinking and too massive in its immediate impact on the heavy underground to not be the release that defined the year. And five years later, I’d make the same decision. I don’t regret it. Lore was glorious, but I listened to the Acid King more, and I still listen to the Acid King more, so on a personal level, there’s some part of me that will forever feel like I undersold just how much I love these songs.

That’s a bummer, but even that doesn’t stop me from enjoying the album. How could it? How could anything but the end of the universe itself? Follow the river to the hills, man. Pray for the blast off.

Make no mistake, we’re not anywhere near the end of the universe, or even humanity. I’m not going to downplay the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic or my own country’s inept federal response that, mired in politics and petty ratings games, will only prolong it. But the universe’ll still be around another 10 billion years or so without us and, yeah, sorry, we just don’t matter that much. Even the planet feels better when we take a seat for a few weeks, and there’s recent environmental data to prove it.

But people are dying, and the projections are that many more will, and that the next two weeks will prove pivotal in determining the ultimate direction the outbreak takes. I don’t know what magic line exists thereafter to make it start to get better, but at least here in the New York area — which is the epicenter of the US’ woes, as ever — that’s what Judy Woodruff is saying, and hell’s bells, if you can’t trust Judy, then we might as well be done as a species.

The epidemic doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with my confession about the Acid King record. I’m not laying it all on the line in case I get sick and my lungs catch fire or some such. But Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere is another record from which I’ve derived significant comfort over the last five years. Something I put on when I’m sick of everything and just want to hear something I love and groove for a while. And so I hope maybe it can do a little bit of the same work for you, if maybe you’re anxious like everyone is, or you’re tired of everything, or you’re overwhelmed by the noise and misinformation that are so, so, so rampant and so unrelenting.

It’s okay to feel exhausted and overwhelmed. This is hard. I don’t even mean social distancing and isolation. I know people are hurting financially and that stress is always a killer — sometimes literally — and that over nine million Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the last two weeks and that is both insane and unprecedented and it means that the multifaceted recovery from all of this will take years not the months being promised, but as screwed as we might all seem, at least music still sounds good.

At least there’s still that. Right?

—

Have a great and safe weekend. I wish you the best and continued health. Thanks for reading.

New Gimme show today at 5PM Eastern if you can listen. FRM.

The Obelisk Forum

The Obelisk Radio

The Obelisk merch

Tags: Acid King, Acid King Middle of Nowhere Center of Everywhere, California, Middle of Nowhere Center of Everywhere, San Francisco, Svart Records

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2020 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.