she can’t remember which came first: the house, the home, or the terrible thirst

Today I attempt to return to some semblance of normalcy after ten days saturated with music + art + travel across two countries. From the urgent opening lines, this is the song that I need today:

I keep having dreams
of pioneers and pirate ships and Bob Dylan
and people wrapped up tight in the things that will kill them
being trapped in a lift plunging straight to the bottom
of open seas and ways of life we’ve forgotten
i keep having dreams…

I Am Disappeared – Frank Turner


This is a propulsive, visceral song for this Monday morning that makes the grind a bit more bearable. I am working alone in a small old stucco house on campus all summer, so I can turn this up as loud as I want and let it reverberate off the hardwood floors and old cool plaster walls. It lassos all the wanderlust that’s crackling in my veins this morning, the currents that always have their way with me for a few days when I return back to “real” life from my (other real life) adventures in faraway cities.

I don’t know much about Frank Turner, except for that he is British, he’s toured some with The Gaslight Anthem, and that this song makes me feel a burning in my belly.

It’s reminiscent of an urgent anthem that I would have loved from 1995, like when Jarvis Cocker would throw his head back and wail about never getting it right when you’re lying in bed at night — but in place of the ennui of wealthy students, we find a cavalcade of fears and dreams about leaving, leaving only imprints on bedsheets. And don’t you maybe also hear a few thematic parallels in here to my favorite parts of Springsteen (“blow away the dreams that tear you apart / blow away the dreams that break your heart”)? Wordy and potent and terrific.

It also makes me wish at the 3:02 mark that I had my drumkit here in my office.

and on the worst days
when it feels like life weighs ten thousand tons
she’s got her cowboy boots and
car keys on the bedstand
so she can always run
she can get up shower and in half an hour she’d be gone


This song is out tomorrow his new album England Keep My Bones (Epitaph Records) which you can stream in full on his website. He is touring the States this Fall! Excellent.

Thanks to Denver’s The Ruckus for the tip, who is having an entire Frank Turner Week to celebrate the album release.

[Top image from SXSW 2009, credit Graham Smith]