Sat, 6 May 2023
A Beautiful Letdown
Yesterday, in commemoration of its 20th anniversary, Switchfoot rereleased their breakout album The Beautiful Letdown, which they entirely rerecorded front to back. The original album was one of the single most formative pieces of music from my childhood. And while it’s true that contemporary Christian music propagated, perpetuated, and reinforced in me myriad toxic ideas about myself and others, this album still slaps so hard.
I listened to both albums—old and new—back-to-back on a run yesterday evening. The rerelease is so much more mature, so much older, wiser. And yet, the content is not significantly different from a lyrical perspective. Plus, the album is structurally the same in all the ways you would expect.
But in listening to the original album, there’s this youthful idealism, this sort of rose-colored optimism in the aural tones even while the lyrics demonstrate the philosophical incompatibility of late stage capitalism and human value as distinct from monetized quantification. In the newly revisited recordings, the lyrics are almost entirely the same (with a few impactful exceptions), but there’s a sense of altered perspective.
The twenty intervening years between the original release and the reprise are evident in every conceivable way—from the artwork to the production. The album artwork for the original cover was of an electric guitar lying in what appears to me to be a grimy empty swimming pool. It had this warmth in the color temperature throughout the image and, while the empty pool basin seemed gritty, everything else had this defiant youthful verve that conjured feelings of optimistic blue skies.
The new artwork is, again, largely the same in concept, but the pool is either different or has been updated and renovated since the original photo. The guitar still lies in the basin, but the walls are cleaner, more sterile. The color temperature is significantly cooler and, instead of those blue sky vibes, there are pronounced shadows of the band members obstructing the light in the pool basin, one of those shadows flashing a peace sign out to the side.
Likewise, the production on the original album has a warmer, muddier sound to it whereas the rerelease feels more crisp and polished. The twenty-year gap in the vocals is similarly evident with all the qualities of both maturity and the sort of weather-beaten essence that comes with the passage of time.
All combined, the original feels like a warm midsummer day and the rerelease feels like a crisp afternoon in late autumn.
The original album is a time capsule for me. I was ten when it came out and I have such distinct and fond memories of that time in my life. I still go back to that (and most of the rest of Switchfoot’s discography) with varying degrees of frequency. And I do this well after personally unsubscribing to the religious and faith-based overtones.
In listening to this rerecorded version, I experience a remarkable combination of emotional realities that should be contradictory and mutually exclusive. And yet? There they are, existing within the context of equilibrious simultaneity, confusing though it may be. I can hear the passage of time and it is somehow both nostalgic and the opposite of nostalgia. It places a beginner’s mind at the forefront of my conscious awareness without losing any of the well-trodden familiarity I so intimately associate with the album.
In listening, I feel at once a child again and the oldest I’ve ever been. I hear everything that twenty years did to the bright-eyed ten-year-old kid I used to be. I hear the eroding effects of depression, and the naïve idealism of youthful excitement. I hear the gradual onset of an age far beyond my years juxtaposed by the blissful delight of a young boy running and spinning in circles in his parents’ living room after returning home to freshly cleaned carpets.
In listening, I hear both the sheltered innocence of youth and the inevitable decay of my mental health. I hear all the lofty promises made, and I hear all the moments they were broken. I hear all the unenlightened certainty of childhood as it crumbles before the ensconcing, oppressive realities of an uncertain future.
In listening, I hear everything I used to be and everything that I am.
Such an experience is not a common one for me. It’s not often the remake of a beloved childhood staple elicits in me such a strong and welcome response. In equal parts, I am as euphoric as I was in my happiest childhood moments and as melancholic as I was in the wake of my first depressive episode.
There’s a delightfully prosaic contradiction between remaining alive and remaining joyful. These albums—unified in essence, disparate in context—remind me of something I know all too well.
Life is a beautiful letdown.