- Welcome to Daytrotter
- Pinecone
- Stamina
- Jury Duty
- What If We Are Not After All, Destined For Greatness
The mood that Tim Kinsella sets with his Joan of Arc material is one of cool depression. It’s one of rusted pessimism. There’s no telling where it originates, but it’s likely not without cause. It probably belongs where we find. It probably belongs with the person it comes from. They know where they got it and it’s theirs to keep. It won’t be easy to shake. They’ve been trying for a good amount of time. It hangs on them like the stink of a skunk. Most everything that they lay eyes on, most everything that they think about is in some kind of disrepair. There’s no helping the condition. It’s just going to crumble more and more until there’s nothing else to watch crumble.Kinsella writes about lives – their causes and their effects – as if they’re all just kindling. There’s not a whole lot to be thankful for. Even the most universal things to be amazed by – the complex idea of evolved beings and the Earth’s processes – he finds ways to deduce them down to banalities – just a rock circling around a ball of fire. He finds emptiness everywhere and he digs into it – as if it were actually substance. It makes for these wonderfully post-apocalyptic stories where everything’s a task and a drag and something that’s already been burned and mourned. He sings, “And all we talk about is stamina and how we’re broke all the time/And stamina has proven to be the final virtue/I’m left looking/Resigned to looking/Resigned to nothing left to find,” during this session and it has the feel of a cancer that we’ve determined we’re just going to let eat us, as quickly or as slowly as it wants to.