This is the second in a series of short essays looking back at the records we loved from 2020. The series focuses on how each album impacted Jason Earle’s life this year.
Few records rise to all occasions. There are songs for dancing. Those for drinking. Music for lounging. Road trip music. Songs for fucking. Sometimes an album overlaps in a couple of those places. Other records remain siloed.
Then there are albums like Roll On by Water Liars. The rare artistic effort achieving universality of mood. An album for any moment.
You get home from one of those days for which you were unprepared. The kind where dominoes seem to resist gravity.
You just got a promotion, have been feeling good and taking care of yourself- eating right and exercising. You want to rock. Bounce up and down and sing at the top of your lungs.
It’s Saturday. The rest of the family is out doing family things. They let you sleep in because you are a lucky mother fucker with a bad ass family. You enjoy the luxury of a slow cup of coffee sitting by the window and watching your world awaken.
Roll On does what its title track promises- carrying the listener through whatever life presents. Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster’s writing spans a lyrical spectrum from epic ruminations on love and perseverance to sparse, abstract nods to anxiety. The imagery is vivid. The mood in each song is set.
“Down Colorado I followed your shadow/And credit card receipts/The cocaine receding, the western sky bleeding/The mountains in relief/I never deserve you but how could I earn you/When stone ain’t made to bleed?”
On the whole I have been one of the lucky ones in the year 2020. The pandemic slowed me down and made me rethink my day-to-day. I was able to refocus on the relationships that mattered and distance myself from those that were taking more than they were adding. I stood up and advocated for myself. I fought the right battles and let go of the other stuff.
There were personal and professional challenges, both self-created and as the result of outside forces. It was not a perfect effort but again, relative to most folks I was fortunate.
July and August was a tough stretch of the year. COVID-19 cases were climbing. Schools weighing whether to re-open despite not having the resources to keep people safe. The 2020 election loomed as the potential final nail in the coffin of our eroded democracy.
Roll On was delivered right on time. The record was made in 2015 but released in the middle of this year. It may not have reached my ears in 2015. Hell, even if it did I may not have needed it so bad five years ago. Roll On was there for what turned out to be a second half full of hope in 2020.
I kept coming back to the record, bingeing it and finding new nuggets during each listening session. I also went back into the Water Liars catalog and those of its individual members. I found comfort in the atmosphere of Water Liars. Roll On was a steady friend and a willing partner in the second half of 2020.