at folsom prison and viagr aboys

After listening to the newest Viagra Boys album, I decided that I wanted to go back to my roots a bit and listen to some good country music. I also got Johnny Cash's cover of Hurt stuck in my head around the same time, so I figured he was as good an artist as any and looked up what is best regarded albums are. To my surprise, by far his most lauded is the live album At Folsom Prison, which I had heard of but never actually listened to. I gave it a shot and came away quite impressed, but more importantly I had a realisation about my taste in media. Something I've said to friends and family for a while is that I don't care for subversion for its own sake, and that media which is too self-referential or self aware in the post-modern sense makes my skin crawl. What I've had trouble explaining is why it doesn't bother me in cases like Viagra Boys, Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, or any other bizarre and out there piece of media I like. Listening to At Folsom Prison, I got my answer.

This feels rather obvious in hindsight, but I like my art sincere. When the newest Marvel thing has a character reference how goofy the superhero landing is or something, it's a mask which never really drops and is meant to project an I-don't-care-what-you-think attitude. I have a sort of yearning for a post-post-modernism, if you will, wherein you can have the bizarre or self-aware as long as it's rooted in sincerity. Spoilers for the works I mentioned earlier, but in viagr aboys even the most insane moments are grounded by the lead singers statements of self-doubt and pain, with the last song even being a soft piano ballad that plays it completely straight. There's no record scratch moment, no hiding, just vulnerability. Everything Everywhere All At Once was literally about how important sincerity and being true to oneself is in a climate of existentialism. The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe spends the entirety of the "bonus content" riffing on bad sequels only to reveal at the end that the entire time it was the creator flailing because this is the sequel and he has no idea how to deal with all the attention the first game got. There is the mask of irony in all three cases, but it's always dropped when it matters most.

The reason that At Folsom Prison is what made me realise this is that, for a large part of the album, I couldn't explain why I was enjoying it so much. I like gallows humour, but I've heard far more technically excellent songwriting in other albums which use gallows humour that I didn't like in the same way. Towards the end of the set it hit me: Johnny Cash is an expert at weaving that sincerity into the dark moments and vice versa. Cocaine Blues and 25 Minutes to Go are largely played for laughs, but then you have The Long Black Veil, Send a Picture of Mother, and The Wall right afterwards. At Folsom Prison works as well as it does because it walks the line (heh) between treating topics with the gravity that they deserve and making fun of those very same topics.

If you'll pardon the digression, this is also what a lot of people who say they like "dark humour" are missing. The people who truly are able to leverage dark humour can do so only because they're also able to take whatever thing seriously. It is a way of introducing levity without changing the topic, which can be a powerful poetic device. Another very random example, but Lars and the Real Girl has the impact it does because, despite it being an overall rather light movie in tone, it never deviates from its core themes. It has this unity of focus and direction which is only possible by mocking the same things it's making serious comments about. Dark humour, irony, and even absurdity are powerful tools, which is why it's such a joy to see them used well. I highly recommend viagr aboys and especially At Folsom Prison, and I'll be returning to both of them many times in the coming days.