Blood Buzz & Long Walk Home

I was listening to the sonic wave in the
middle of Blood Buzz Ohio   
when I suddenly realized that the
beautifully textured instrumental break
reminded me of another song.  It took me
several days to realize with surprise that 
the song it resembled was Springsteen's
Long Walk Home.

Although the songs and the artists might
seem on first consideration about as different
as two "wall of sound productions" and
bands could be - Springsteen being a classicist
from the lost generation of rock n' roll and
The National being post modernists from
the contemporary splintered music world -
I soon saw the songs actually have some
incredible similarities.

Both have a political resonance; both have
main characters who no longer know and
are known at home; and both look to a
return journey as a response to alienation.

Though in the Springsteen song, there seems
more hope for the journey than in the Ohio
where things have grown desperate for our
loveless and deeply debt ridden hero, in neither
is the return at all certain.

The beautiful sonic wave of each song
doesn't so much carry our heroes forward
as flow against them as they try to beat their
way onward through the rising tide of
American Mediocrity.

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