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All My Friends essay
I saw this on a blog and thought it was worth sharing..
All My Friends
By: David Plante
This track is what I consider to be a genuine “headphone song.” It isn’t such because of many layered electronic pulses skipping quickly from channel to channel, or because of some virtuoso drum part that dances back and forth through your head as you try to grapple with its speed and weight. This is a headphone song because it’s best appreciated walking lost through a tangle of streets or gazing through the windows of a train, subway, airplane, or taxi. It’s a song about movement, stasis, and more movement, and it’s a song that can only really be digested when accompanied by the movement it reflects on a much grander scale; it’s also a song that can best be considered by listening alone, allowing it to track the cars rushing past, the people pressing by, and the sunlight warming the back of your neck. It describes the changes we see in ourselves, the changes we see in each other, and the way our lives will always return to what we truly value, regardless of any past trajectory or decisions reflecting the contrary. A breeze flashes across your face at the same moment James Murphy sings, “When you were drunk and the kids looked impossibly tan / You think over and over, hey I’m already dead,” and you’re taken back to another place in another life, barely visible through the rear window yet rising fast upon the dawning skyline.
Perhaps this song resonates so much because of the time during which I’ve been listening to it. As I prepare to pass into the latter half of my twenties and am finally beginning to gain a clearer appreciation of who I am and what I want for myself and for others, “All My Friends” descended like a whirlwind upon my thoughts, hopes, and fears, somehow ordering them all through the crescendo of its frenzied chaos. There’s just a point when lyrics like, “I wouldn’t trade one stupid decision for another five years of life,” make sense in a way that you’ve felt but could never quite articulate with such vulgarity. You reach a place—somewhere in the valley between childhood and adulthood, between fancy and resolve—where your world seems divided, with all that’s past behind you and all to come crouching ahead, where both sides look alike at some moments and different at others, and this is one of those songs that guides you in the direction of the future, but not before twirling you through the past to make certain you never forget it. While the words and the emotions occasionally seem to unravel, the chugging keyboard and steady percussion fix the track’s momentum, charting its course and drawing deviations back to a single focal point.
It’s rare thing, casting beautiful, significant lyrics in the mold of an electronic rhythm that is eminently danceable. In this regard, “All My Friends” might be placed within the pantheon that houses such classics as New Order’s “Temptation” and the Knife’s “Heartbeats.” But more than that, it’s a song about growth, a song about life, and a song that won’t let you forget just how wonderful life is, so long as you don’t lose yourself in all of its movement