Music is the food of love, and sadness, in ‘Long Players’
Most of us probably know somebody whose relationship with music borders on the obsessive.
Band T-shirts outnumber, by far, any other type of garment in their wardrobe. Even in this age of Flash Seats, a shoebox full of old concert stubs lurks at the back of a closet. Come moving day, their collection of LPs, CDs or even cassettes takes up an inordinate amount of space in the van.
Full disclosure: I am one of these people. So is Chicago-based writer Peter Caviello, though I suspect he and I belong to different genres, so to speak, of this peculiar anthropological pastime.
Caviello enjoys making mixes for other people and does so, meticulously and faithfully, throughout his new book, “Long Players” (Penguin/Random House). I prefer rolling the dice with Apple Music’s oracular Genius Shuffle. But we both grasp, instinctively, how easily us like-minded folk turn to pop songs in order to help us understand ourselves, our fellow men and women and the wider world beyond our earbuds.
For us — and especially when performed live — our favorite pop songs act as crutches, talismans and the bonding agents of lifelong friendships. But they’re also problematic, frequently relaying messages that are at best incomplete and at worst outright deceitful. But when one’s life is in tatters, a welltimed pop song dangles a shot of redemption and grace when more reasonable options have long been exhausted.
Now, imagine being married to one of these poor people.
Technically, “Long Players” is nonfiction, but it reads more like a novel. Caviello’s story cycles through about a decade of his life, roughly his 30s, spent teaching English at a small college about 20 miles from Portland, Maine. Some of the things that happen to him are merely poignant or amusing, others hilarious or catastrophic. His tone ranges from bemused to mordant to shell-shocked; the literary allusions fly fast and furious.
His soundtrack, meanwhile, would surely make Rob Fleming of “High Fidelity” crack a smile — not least because Nick Hornby’s aging-hipster guidebook originally came out in 1995. He borrows chapter titles from songs by Bob Dylan, Steely Dan, Katy Perry and Gillian Welch, among others.
Newly arrived in Maine, Caviello meets a gorgeous, artsy older woman, a museum curator who, in short order, becomes his wife. Then, just like that, they’re not married anymore, and the two adorable, precocious little girls he’s inherited go from being his stepdaughters to … well, he’s not sure exactly, but he’s sure as hell not about to drop out of their lives. At this point, he’s just “Pete.”
Also, he cries a lot. The amount of tears spilled in this book would flood Johnny Cash’s “Big River.”
Occasional lapses into music-critic jargon aside, Caviello’s prose lopes along with the easy rhythms of someone who has spent countless barroom hours in beery, impassioned conversation about music. On lengthy walks around European capitals during a three-semester sabbatical, Pete rejoices when bands like Bad Brains effectively reboot his internal wiring.
“My thoughts, which for so long had been traveling the well-worn circuits of recrimination, find themselves battered and contorted, propelled into new configurations,” he writes.
The book opens in Madrid; Pete is ecstatic at stumbling across a gig by thorny ’90s Britrockers the Wedding Present. But he immediately pulls back the curtain to reveal the despair that drove him to Spain, cagily holding back any specifics regarding exactly why he’s so despondent. (When the revelation comes at the end of the first section, it’s like, “Yep, that’ll do it.”) Later on, the central question is whether he’ll pull it together enough to arrive at a place of, if not happiness, at least somewhere he feels less broken. It’s a close call. Besides the book’s more explicit themes — infidelity, grief, friendship, therapeutic travel, step-parenting, ex-step-parenting — “Long Players” considers the many ways music permeates our relationships with other people. It’s basically one long argument that pop songs can be more than just, to quote Henry James (one of Pete’s go-to authors), “cheap raptures.” But how much more?
The insinuations of middle age lurking in The National’s “Apartment Story” bring on the book’s first tears. Hazy discussions of “Astral Weeks” with a college friend open the door to the elusive pleasures of art criticism and, indirectly, a career. A cross-country trip with a friend becomes one long semi-amicable argument because Pete simply cannot abide Fugazi. (“Anhedonic boys with rules,” he scoffs.) When things are good, Pete and his wife grow campusfamous for their Princethemed parties, and postbath-time “naked dancing” to the Jackson 5 is a treasured family ritual with the girls.
Perhaps this story would have turned out differently if Pete’s tastes weren’t quite so circumscribed. His sweet spot is definitely ’90s bands that blend loud guitars with some sort of social anxiety — Superchunk, Helium, Jawbreaker. Pavement is a big one for him. But “Long Players” is also littered with tantalizing allusions (Lyle Lovett, Ornette Coleman) that Pete chooses to keep on the shelf, as it were, not to mention some frankly baffling omissions.
No Pixies? What about Radiohead? My Bloody Valentine?
But people like what they like, and no true music nerd would ever apologize. Much better for Pete to spend that time discussing “I Kissed a Girl,” or debating Kanye and Jay Z, with his now-former stepdaughters. Even their brief exchange about Justin Bieber’s “Baby” is a keeper; any time they show up, Pete — and the book — noticeably brightens.
Late in the story, Pete finally seems to come to terms with his new reality with a little help from Gillian Welch’s “Silver Dagger,” off 2011’s “The Harrow and the Harvest.” He begins to appreciate the seductiveness of grief, perhaps the first step toward finally putting it behind him. Songs like that, he writes, “are about a certain kind of illness of spirit. The kind that makes you a conspirator in your own destruction.”
Never mind what it takes to withstand his broken marriage or the string of post-divorce affairs that may or may not help him heal — the book leaves this question a little open ended — Pete shows real bravery here by holding his musical tastes up to such public scrutiny. “Long Players” understands, painfully so at times, that pop songs don’t have all the answers. Nor should they. But sometimes, listening to the right songs at the right moments can help you arrive at the right questions.