“Blackout Days” is, at its core, about loneliness. Not damaging or diminishing, this kind of loneliness might even be what I’d call reparative:  by distancing myself, by banishing my mind, I heal.  It’s not something a lot of people get but it’s my primary mode of dealing with the world. Has been for years now.  Weeks and even months of many years of my life, as trauma trickled down the veins of my brain,  I’ve bandaged myself into this bubble of sadness, madness, loneliness. First, like the original track, I’m an angry observer far above my body, succumbing to the blackout days that the intimate presence of others bring.  And I can float for what feels like forever like an apparition above the legacies of bedrooms that brought me here, caressing with hands of soft spite my lovers, the fiends.  Voices, the many voices you hear, just a reason to disassociate.

But eventually, like the Future Islands remix, you slow down and linger. You land back in those beds, and you look those lovers in the eyes dispassionately.  It’s interesting to me that here Future Islands mute what is arguably the most potent lyrical outcry (and one of my favorite sets of all of last year):

Fireworks exploding in my hands
If I could paint the sky
All the stars would shine upon in red

Those lyrics own fury. I remember listening to them last year and imagining my hands bleeding from the pressure of all my emotions squashed, of careening into that healing darkness that the best Phantogram songs send you to, but never quite give you the signal that it’s going to be all right.  That uncertainty, that lack of a promise is my favorite thing about Phantogram’s music: things don’t always have to portend a solution as long as something–anything–is in motion.  But it’s nice, for once, on this remix to see that the swirling storm of sadness, madness and loneliness settled on new life somewhere down the road.

PHANTOGRAM are tied for my favorite band, so I can’t encourage you enough, if you aren’t to
FOLLOW THEM ON SOUNDCLOUD / FACEBOOK.

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