In the closing pages of Don DeLillo’s White Noise, the youngest son Wilder takes his plastic tricycle to a busy expressway and commences to peddle across the stream of traffic. Ignoring the calls of concerned adults, the toddler defies death in a Frogger-like manner right across to the median, then slowly walks across the grass, gets back in the saddle, and rides across the endless flow of vehicles in the opposite direction. The boy has no idea he is going against the unstoppable order of the traffic, no concept of death. The audience watch on, awe-struck, and when he finally comes to a stop a passer-by picks him up like some holy icon, “holding him aloft for the clamouring elders to see”.
‘Saurkraut’, the sophomore single from Talking to Bob, the new EP from Bronx-based Your Dog, might not be quite as dramatic, though holds the same desire to retreat into the vaguely supernatural ignorance and innocence that childhood represents. The Bronx-based band, featuring Kate FitzSimons, Julius Bowditch and Ian Bond (formerly of Margo), combine earnest vocals and upbeat acoustic guitar with harsh percussion and swamping distortion to highlight the juxtaposition between past and present, painting young adult angst as a seismic force caused by friction between the giant plates of childhood and maturity.
“Cause it’s been months since I’ve felt something short of nothing.
I just want something.
Actually, nothing is fine.In the middle of a one lane highway
Sitting criss cross, opposite to you.
Playing jax, got a baseball bat.
How about that?”
The result is a cross between indie rock bands such as Cold War Kids and the sincere bedroom pop that has risen out of Bandcamp, oscillating between cynicism and sentimentality and never quite settling on either. The song delineates the Millennial condition of frustration, anger and doubt with no obvious source or target (“I don’t really know what I oppose, but I’m starting to think that it blows”), and the huge, limiting pressure to look/sound/be a certain way in a world dominated by online images. There is no answer here, childhood remains firmly in the past, but there is value in the question and comfort in hearing a shared complaint. How do we find peace and connection in this world? How do we love and be loved?
“Searching for the ways that I want to seem to those who don’t know me.
I just want to feel alright.”
Photo by Hayden Sitomer, Album art + tour poster by Aiyana Jaffe